Read this report. The title’s boring: The Longitudinal Effects of School Improvement Grants. EdWorking Paper No. 20-177 by Min Sun, University of Washington, Alec Kennedy, San Francisco United Public Schools, Susanna Loeb, Brown University.
The first sentence is measured: “School Improvement Grants (SIG) represent one type of governments’ capacity-building investment to spur sustainable changes in America’s persistently under-performing public schools.”
The research finding is exciting: “we observe that SIG showed larger effects in the second and third years of the intervention than the first year on 3-8th grade student test scores—a pattern of gradually increase over the course the intervention. These positive effects are largely sustained three or four years after the funding ended.”
The School Improvement Grants were a substantial federal investment. Schools were required to change. The lowest achieving schools were targeted. They had to choose one of four models of change:
• Transformation – replace the principal, reform instruction, increase learning time, evaluate teachers, at least in part, based on student learning, base personnel decisions on those evaluations (75% tried this)
• Turnaround – all of the above plus replace at least 50% of the staff (20% tried this)
• Restart – close the school, then reopen it under new management – a charter school or education management organization (5% tried this)
• Close – Simply close the school (Hardly any schools closed permanently)
This research, like previous research, found gains were gradual, increasing, and genuine. While the researches don’t say it boldly, the investment was worth the money, The Federal Government got a real return for its money in school and student improvement. This is what change looks like.