State Education Department Awards $19,800,003 Federal School Improvement Grant To New York City Schools

New York State Commissioner of Education David Steiner today announced that the New York City Department of Education will receive $19,800,003 for the 2010-2011 school year to help turn around 11 of its Persistently Lowest Achieving schools through the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. These funds are part of over $308 million that was made available to New York State this spring through the United States Department of Education’s (USED) School Improvement Grant Fund under Section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from money set aside in the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Commissioner Steiner said, "We are building upon the State’s current initiatives to intervene in low performing schools and improve student outcomes.   New federal funding allows us to work with the New York City Department of Education to go beyond incremental improvements to create truly excellent models of education, particularly in those schools where students need our help the most.  We applaud Chancellor Joel Klein and his team for developing an excellent plan that incorporates proven strategies to turnaround these schools.  The State Education Department will actively support the transformation process in these 11 schools.”

In February, the Education Department identified 57 Persistently Lowest Achieving schools, in seven school districts across the state.  In June, these districts were invited to apply for School Improvement Grants under Section 1003(g), in order to support implementation of one of four intervention models prescribed by the USDE. To receive funding for the 2010-2011 school year, districts with identified schools must implement one of the following prescribed intervention models: 

• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
• TURNAROUND MODEL: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies. 
• TRANSFORMATION MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time and, by the end of the 2010-11 school year, amend any existing collective bargaining agreement as necessary to require that teachers (or building principals where applicable) assigned to these schools be evaluated in the 2011-12 school year and thereafter in accordance with recently enacted legislation pertaining to principal and teacher evaluation.
• SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.

The New York City Department of Education will receive funding in the following amounts to implement an intervention model in these schools:

Based on satisfactory implementation of the approved plans for these schools, the New York City Department of Education is eligible to receive two additional years of School Improvement Grant funding for model implementation in these schools.

The NYCDOE did not submit a SIG application under Section 1003(g) for 23 of their Persistently Lowest Achieving Schools.  NYCDOE will be invited to submit an application for a 2010-11 planning grant of up to $300,000 per school under Section 1003(a)r for these schools, which will receive Joint Intervention Team visits this fall. With this support, these schools will be better positioned to implement an intervention model, and NYCDOE is expected to submit applications for the 2011-12 school year to implement one of the four models in the majority of these schools.

The $19,800,003 made available to the New York City Department of Education was awarded based on a comprehensive review of their School Improvement Grant application, which included implementation plans for each school identified as Persistently Lowest Achieving, and required districts to demonstrate evidence that they had the capacity to support implementation of the models in these schools.  New York City’s application can be found here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/nclb/programs/titleia/sig1003g.