Just weeks after Ed Sector’s “Portrait of School Improvement Grantees” comes this IES-funded report on the federal School Improvement Grants (SIGs). (For more information on SIG, look here and here.) While much of the information presented here mimics that delivered by Ed Sector, some valuable new insights emerge, especially regarding state differences. For example, Kentucky awarded funding to 105 of its 108 qualifying schools, while Illinois funded only ten of 738. Further, planned approaches to SIG evaluations vary dramatically between states. Eight plan to monitor their grants monthly, whereas thirty-three will do so on an annual basis. How states choose to evaluate their grantees range from conducting site visits, designating staff for monitoring, holding “check-in” meetings, and using electronic/online tools. As is common with many large-scale IES-funded reports, this report offers much data and little analysis, making policy implications difficult to determine. But the groundwork it lays—especially regarding state differences in funding distribution and implementation tactics—will surely provide helpful background and insight in future years as SIG begins to be evaluated.
Steven Hurlburt, Kerstin Carlson Le Floch, Susan Bowles Therriault, and Susan Cole, “Baseline Analysis of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools,” (Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research, May 2011).
