No Child Left Behind (NCLB) included the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, which was intended to help improve the nation’s lowest-performing schools, those schools that persistently fail to meet AYP.  The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) re-energized the SIG program with $3 billion in funding, but added restrictions on how school improvements can be made.  According to an April 27, 2011 Education Week article, over 730 schools across the country participate in the SIG program, but some efforts may be hampered by the restrictions included in ARRA.
 
ARRA requires the use of one of four models to turn around persistently low-performing schools – Turnaround, Closure, Closure and Reopen as a Charter, or Transformation.  The models often involve firing principals and/or teachers.  According to the April 27th Education Week article, Transformation is the most popular model because it promotes the development of reforms such as measuring teacher performance based on a student’s academic growth, rather than solely on test scores, and extending students’ learning time.  Implementing the reforms is often challenging due to factors such as collective bargaining agreements, student bus schedules, and finding effective teachers and principals willing to work in low-performing schools.  The article provides an example of a Turnaround school (required to fire half of its teachers) having to select new teachers from a pool of teachers that had been fired from other Turnaround schools in the district.  Despite the hurdles, Education Week reported that school officials in various states indicated that they are “pleased overall with the progress they’re beginning to observe.”
PCG Education offers web-based tools and professional consulting services to enhance teachers’ performance, improve student academic achievement and turn around some of the nation’s lowest-performing schools.