Gift Horse, Trojan Horse, or Windfall? Feds Giving New Grants to State’s Lowest-Performing Schools

Any day now, the state of Washington will announce a list of K-12 schools that are eligible for federal grants this year.

The grants are sizable – up to $2 million per school annually, renewable for the next three years. Funded mostly with federal stimulus money, these grants are meant to help these schools – deemed the “lowest-performing” in the state – boost their academic achievement and their graduation rates.

As many as 50 schools could qualify.

Governor Chris Gregoire’s education reform bill, SB 6696, also contains provisions for turning around the state’s lowest performing schools.

But although all of Washington’s schools endured sizable state budget cuts last year, and are facing more cuts this year, they are not all jumping at the opportunity to get a piece of this particular federal pie.

It could be that they don’t want to be labeled as the worst schools in the state.

Or it could have something to do with what they have to do to get this money.

A school which accepts this federal grant, called a “school improvement grant,” has to choose from four kinds of interventions, all of which mean big changes for the kids who attend that school.

Here are their choices:

- The school can close and its students sent to better schools;

- The school can close and then be restarted as a charter school. (This option is not available here in Washington state, because charter schools are illegal here.)

- The school can replace its principal and at least half of its staff; or

- The school can replace its principal, increase the length of the school day, build up community support and reward teachers who improve student achievement.

Not the best of choices, according to Greg Day, director of student assessment for the Yakima School District.

“If you’ve got a principal who’s putting in 110 percent, you think we’re going to put somebody else here and it’s going to be better?”

The Yakima School District has 15,000 kids, many of whom are poor and many of whom are not native English speakers. Four schools in Yakima are likely to qualify for the federal grant, but only one school will probably apply for it.

“The buildings that were identified [as lowest-performing] … they’ve already done everything you would do. There’s nothing else out there they haven’t tried,” Day said.

In the Yakima schools which could receive the federal grant, almost all of the children qualify for free or reduced lunch, Day said.

“[S]tudents of poverty come to kindergarten two years below where they should be. They’re already starting at a two-year deficit,” Day pointed out.

Some schools in Washington state, however, are eager for the federal money, according to Nathan Olson, a spokesperson for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

“There are some schools that have come to us and asked us,” Olson said.

On the west side of the state, in Seattle, school administrators are working with the teacher’s union, the Seattle Education Association (SEA), to figure out how – and if – they can take the federal school improvement grants this year.

Three schools in Seattle are likely to qualify: two elementary schools and one high school, according to Glenn Bafia, SEA’s executive director.

If Seattle does accept the grants, it would likely choose to remove the principal and some of the staff at these three schools, Bafia said

“It is changing the culture of the school by changing half the staff,” Bafia said.

Those principals and teachers would be reassigned to other schools in the district, he said.

The school day – or the entire school year – could become longer at these targeted schools. They might also lower their class size and/or bring in extra teachers and staff.

And these schools would likely have to add incentives to attract and keep teachers – extra pay – which is something the teachers’ unions in Washington state have always opposed, preferring pay levels based on seniority.

“If a law passes next year this will all be mandatory,” Bafia said, referring to SB 6696, the governor’s education reform bill. “We’re trying to be a step ahead.”

SEA plans to ask its members to vote on accepting the federal money and approving the proposed interventions next Monday.

The education reform bill is likely to become law this year, many say, because without it the state will miss the opportunity to receive bigger federal grants – through the program known as “Race to the Top.”

“If you have any chance to get Race to the Top, it has to pass,” said Alan Burke, deputy superintendent for K-12 education at OSPI.

SB 6696 passed out of the state Senate last week on a vote of 41 to 5.

Once the feds approve the state’s list of low-performing schools, things will move pretty quickly. The schools which are getting the federal money this year will see changes as soon as this fall.

And many of the changes will be brand new for Washington, said Dan Steele, the assistant executive director of the Washington State School Directors Association.

“We’re going to have to come together and help those districts,” Steele said. “We’re actually trying to get the list so we’re prepared to work with those folks.”

OSPI said it will release the list by the end of February, after it is approved by the federal government.