Hawaii Gets $11M To Turn Around School Turnarounds
Some good news for Hawaii schools that are struggling most.
The Hawaii Department of Education was selected to receive an in exchange for taking extreme measures to turn around its lowest-performing schools. The grant will augment the $5 million the department has budgeted for school restructuring the past few years.
It’s a big deal in a year when one-third of the state’s public schools qualified for “restructuring” because of consistently low student achievement. The award money also comes with strings attached, and will change up the way the education department restructures its lowest-performing schools.
With this windfall of cash, under-performing schools will be able to apply for between $50,000 to $2 million — depending on the size of the school and the level of need.
This year, one-third of the state’s public schools qualified for “restructuring” because of consistently low student achievement. Until now, schools in restructuring mode have had two turnaround options:
- Go under the direct supervision of the appropriate complex area superintendent and select what areas to focus on improving.
- Employ a private consulting organization to audit and help reorganize the school — from curriculum to accounting practices to professional development.
But the federal grant means the days of choice may be no more. In Hawaii’s for the $11 million School Improvement Grant, which will be distributed over the next three years, department leaders said the last five years helped them determine what works best. Those best practices will no longer include options for “persistently low-achieving schools.”
“Schools will no longer have the option of selecting preferred strategies and non-selecting other approaches,” the application states. “Rather, schools will be required to implement all aspects of selected intervention models. Further, the models will be selected based (on) the true root causes of lack of improvement that emerge from an in-depth comprehensive needs assessment of the schools.”
Complex area superintendents will apply this coming spring on behalf of their schools that qualify. In their applications, they will have to indicate which of four school reform models they will implement in their lowest achieving schools:
School Closure — up to $50,0000 for one year: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
Restart Model — up to $400,000 for first two years: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
Transformation Model — minimum of $400,000 per year: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.
Turnaround Model — up to $700,000 per year: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.
Sources: , U.S. Department of Education; Hawaii SIG grant application.
Perhaps more interesting are the department’s “sample budget guidelines” (per school per year) for the turnaround model, which are supposedly based on those best practices the department has identified:
- $200,000 for literacy and math coaches that will provide job-embedded professional development, mentoring and coaching.
- $11,000 per teacher for extended learning time that will add 30 percent more student contact hours.
- $100,000 for early childhood education for children in pre-school through second grade.
- $350,000 for a professional services provider (e.g. ).
- $5,000 per teacher for starting the new school year two weeks early.
- $50,000 for community engagement and “wraparound supports.”
- $50,000 as a bonus for meeting federal benchmarks.
The schools that are eligible for these goodies are distributed into three tiers with complicated criteria for each tier.
For example, Tier I schools:
- Already receive , which are allocated to schools with a high percentage of disadvantaged students;
- Have a demonstrated lack of progress in academic performance that falls within the lowest 5 percent of Title I schools;
- And be classified under federal regulations as “In Need of Improvement,” “Corrective Action,” Planning for Restructuring” or “Restructuring.”
From the best I can tell, the education department will use an even more complicated points system to prioritize the schools and determine how much each receives.
