Half the districts receiving funding from the federal School Improvement Grant program reported in the early months of this year that it was too soon to tell whether the grants had made a difference, according to a report released last week by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy group in Washington. About one-third of districts reported positive results.
The grants, which are intended to turn around the nation’s lowest-performing schools, were distributed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic-stimulus measure passed in February 2009. Schools began implementing the program during the 2010-11 school year.
The report is based on a survey of nationally representative school districts taken in late winter and early spring of 2011.
