Program Announcement: Chronically Low-Performing Schools Research Initiative CFDA 84.305G

Program Officers:
Dr. Allen Ruby
Allen.Ruby@ed.gov
(202) 219-1591

Dr. David Sweet
David.Sweet@ed.gov
(202) 219-1748

Purpose

To increase research efforts to improve chronically low-performing schools, the Institute is launching its Chronically Low-Performing Schools Research Initiative (Low-Performing Schools Initiative). For the Low-Performing Schools Initiative, the Institute invites applications to develop interventions that target specific problems faced by chronically low-performing schools and test the promise of strategies for successfully addressing those problems within a relatively short time period. Over the five-year project period, grantees will be expected to develop and test a number of practices that principals of low-performing schools, with support from their district, could implement to improve their schools. The Institute views this approach as distinct from comprehensive school reform strategies. That is, the purpose of this initiative is not to generate a single approach to simultaneously address all of the problems that a low-performing school faces. Rather, the purpose of this research initiative is to systematically develop and test practices that could contribute to a menu of practices that principals, with support from their district (or districts with the support of their principals), could choose from to target specific challenges in their persistently low-performing schools. The Institute realizes that chronically low-performing schools may require more than the practices developed and piloted under this Initiative to fully address the causes of their persistent low performance. At the same time, the Institute recognizes that districts and principals often do not have access to research-based practices to address specific problems in their low-performing schools. By developing a set of such practices, this Initiative seeks to provide them with such options.

Background

At the core of many efforts to reform education in our country are initiatives to improve the subset of American public schools that are chronically low-performing schools — schools that bring down the average levels of performance of U.S. schools and underscore inequalities in educational outcomes. Decades of education reform have acknowledged chronically low-performing schools, implicitly and explicitly, ranging from Title I to comprehensive school reform to charter school laws. Interventions to address chronically low-performing schools have varied dramatically, from providing extra funding and support to low-performing schools to exposing them via high-profile accountability policies to providing "escape valves" through school choice policies. Despite multiple attempts to improve them, chronically low-performing schools remain, in large part because these schools have little evidence-based guidance on what strategies will be most effective given their particular challenges and, in some cases, they lack the capacity to implement strategies that have been found to be effective. However, recent research has highlighted several areas in which low-performing schools face specific challenges that are potentially amenable to interventions (Jacob and Ludwig, 2008).

Although low performance can be marked in a number of ways, in general these schools suffer from persistently low levels of achievement. Student achievement can also be measured in different ways. One of these ways, chosen for illustrative purposes only, is the drop-out level in secondary schools. Arguably one of the most important measures of a school's effectiveness is its ability to keep students on track to graduate high school on time. In 2005–06 the nation's Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR is an estimate of the percentage of a freshman class that graduates four years later) was 73 percent; however, this figure varied considerably across the country (Stillwell and Hoffman, 2009). For example, among the largest 100 school districts in the United States, this rate ranged from a low of 43 percent in Cleveland City schools to a high of 98 percent in Alpine, Utah (Garofano and Sable, 2008). Of the five largest districts in the United States, four had AFGR of 55 percent or below (New York City, Los Angeles Unified, Chicago and Dade County, Florida). Furthermore, an examination of the class of 2002 found close to half (46 percent) of African American high school students and more than one-third (39 percent) of Latino students attended high schools where they faced a 50 percent chance of graduating on time (Balfanz and Letgers, 2004). In order to better guide policymakers in developing solutions, researchers have been working to identify the key factors responsible for drop-out. For example, research on Chicago public schools has shown that academic success in the ninth grade is critical for students' progress towards high school graduation (Allensworth and Easton, 2005). This line of research has uncovered factors that are related to high school drop-out, such as course failures and credit accumulation in the ninth grade, leading researchers to develop an on-track indicator that can be used to identify students who are at risk of dropping out. A next step would be to develop and test interventions that target those students who are identified as being at-risk for dropping out.

B. Overview of the Low-Performing Schools Initiative Projects

For the Low-Performing Schools Initiative, each research team will focus on at least two specific problems faced by chronically low-performing schools by developing and testing the promise of practices to address these problems. The long-term outcomes of this research program will be a better understanding of the processes that contribute to low-performing schools, diagnostic frameworks that principals or districts could use to identify specific problems within their low-performing schools, and an array of practices for improving low-performing schools. The practices are those that could be implemented by a principal of a low-performing school or by a district in conjunction with the principals of low-performing schools.

The FY 2010 competition focuses on development and initial testing of the promise of practices for improving low-performing schools. Through developing a detailed diagnostic framework for evaluating the contributing factors to low performance that is grounded in both theory and data, each grantee will identify at least two specific problems whose solution would contribute to improved school performance as the focus of their work. Each grantee will develop and test the promise of specific practices for addressing these two (or more) distinct problems of low-performing schools. The development of these practices will entail a systematic process of development, implementation, collection of empirical data to provide feedback, and refinement of each practice until it functions as intended. Each grantee will also test the promise of their practices for improving student outcomes and school performance using a detailed research design; however, evaluating the efficacy of the practices using group designs will not be funded under this grant.

To foster exchange among the research teams involved in the Low-Performing Schools Initiative, grantees will meet twice each year in Washington, D.C. to discuss their projects and what they are learning in addition to also attending the annual IES research conference.

Finally, a critical aspect of this initiative is the contributions of school and district partners to the work. Too often researchers develop their interventions without collaborating with district and school personnel who have intimate knowledge of the capacity, constraints, and challenges of teachers, principals, and district staff. A requirement of the Low-Performing Schools Initiative is the inclusion of school and district staff on each research team.

Although the Institute has supported research on programs, practices, and policies to improve school performance through its research programs on Middle and High School Reform and Education Policy, Finance, and Systems, the Low-Performing Schools Initiative differs from these programs in its sole focus on schools that are persistently low performing and in its structure and requirements. These differences are due to the importance of the issue, and the multiple and seemingly intractable difficulties that must be overcome to successfully address it. To improve the likelihood of developing practices that can help improve chronically low-performing schools, the initiative includes: (a) a requirement to closely collaborate with districts and low-performing schools in the development of the practices in order to address the specific obstacles faced by and opportunities available to the schools involved; (b) funding for development of practices and their promise for improving school performance, but not for group impact evaluations of them, in order to focus efforts on strategy development which may require many iterations; (c) a five-year project length in order to provide more time to address the difficult obstacles faced by such schools; and (d) inter-project meetings to support the transfer of ideas on overcoming these obstacles.

References

Allensworth, E., and Easton, J. (2005). The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Balfanz, R. and Letgers, N. (2004). Locating the Dropout Crisis. Baltimore, MD: Center for the Education of Students Placed at Risk Report No. 70.

Garofano, A. and Sable, J. (2008). Characteristics of the 100 Largest Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts in the United States: 2005–06 (NCES 2008-339). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC.

Jacob, B. and Ludwig, J. (2008). Improving Educational Outcomes for Poor Children. Cambridge, MA: NBER Working Paper No. 14550.

Stillwell, R. and Hoffman, L. (2009). Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2005–06. First Look. NCES 2008–353. Retrieved 27 April 2009] from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008353rev.pdf.