$7B School Improvement Grants - No Effect on Achievement

[Spare_change]

(CNSNews.com) – Days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Department of Education released a devastating critique of its $7 billion School Improvement Grants (SIG) program.

The now defunct SIG program first began under President George W. Bush and later became a key part of the Obama administration's efforts to improve student achievement at hundreds of the nation’s lowest-performing public schools

“The findings presented in this report do not lend much support for the SIG program having achieved this goal,” the report concluded.

“Overall, across all grades, we found that implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.”

Proponents of school choice are pointing to the report as evidence that spending billions of dollars on public education does not guarantee that disadvantaged children will receive a quality education.

“President Obama and his education team inadvertently handed President Trump, education secretary-designee Betsy DeVos and other school choice advocates an enormous parting gift: The now-documented failure of the administration’s massive ‘school turnaround’ program offers a convincing argument for empowering disadvantaged families with more education options – exactly what Trump and DeVos have in mind,” Andy Smarick, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in a recent op-ed.

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Coulda built 700 miles of fence with this money.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Insanity. That may be about to change....

 

[psikeyhackr]

$7 billion dollars spent on education isn't worth talking about unless you can pocket some of it.

How much did that report cost, that almost no one is going to read?

I searched it for "techno" and "compu" to see if they explained what was done with them. They just use the term "computer-assisted instruction". I think that just means reading junk from a computer screen that is no better than the junk they put in the crappy books they select.

I have seen high school kids reading about "igneous rocks" on a computer screen. This is from Harvard around 1990:



psik

 

[mgh80]

The money's not the problem: it's how it's being used. My district received a HUGE donation from the Gates Foundation...yet they couldn't afford to buy toner for the printer in my classroom, textbooks, copy paper, or even supply me with a chair that has all 4 wheels (it has 3 wheels on 4 legs).

They give us money to spend each year on our classroom, but the items have to be disposable...so basically you can buy staples but not a stapler. The money should absolutely be tracked to ensure that it's being spent on classroom materials, but I was shocked when I learned that when I bought a stapler and an electric pencil sharpener for my classroom that they weren't covered. The school board gave themselves raises though with some of the money (yes you read that correctly RAISES, not BONUSES).

What's getting in the way of the education for many students imho isn't teachers or administrators...it's the bureaucracy that give us a 2/7 off suite then wonders why the students aren't always reaching their potential.

I'm not meaning to sound like I'm complaining about my job-because I love it...I'm just saying that people have this vision of teachers possessing tons of resources for our classrooms which we just don't have.