A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Section I
What Are Schoolwide Programs?

Goals of the Schoolwide Program Option

The 1994 reauthorization of ESEA gave schools serving low-income students greater flexibility to systematically assess the whole school's educational needs and design schoolwide solutions. Schools enrolling 60 percent of low-income students in the first year of the law's implementation and 50 percent thereafter were allowed to combine federal, state, and local funding in new ways. The reauthorizing legislation, IASA, is founded on a strong base of research on high-poverty communities that shows all children can master challenging academic content and complex problem-solving skills, given the benefit of highly qualified professional teachers and the time to meet the challenge. However, research also demonstrates that the goal of academic success for all students requires special support that comes when resources, practices, and procedures are coordinated across an entire school.

Through schoolwide programs in elementary and secondary schools, ESEA encourages educators to embrace innovative, research-based ideas about good education and to reach out to students with the greatest needs. To support these changes, ESEA shifted from an emphasis on keeping categorical federal programs and funds separate to an approach that encourages combining federal, state, and local funding streams. The goal of pooling resources more effectively is to allow schools to better serve their poorest students by coordinating academic efforts with professional development activities, parent and community involvement, school safety initiatives, drug abuse prevention, and health initiatives. For example, schools can pool resources from federal education programs, including the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, among others, with state and local resources to increase the impact of any single funding stream. It is up to teachers, administrators, parents, and communities working together to find the best way for their school to combine available resources and use them effectively.

What Do Schoolwides Look Like?
Essential Elements and Processes

Well-implemented schoolwide programs appear in every type of community in every region across the nation, but no two schoolwides look exactly alike. ⁽¹⁾ In general, however, most:

• Combine a variety of resources and use them to enhance teaching and learning during the regular school day and in afterschool, evening, and summer "extended-time" programs

• Use improved curriculum and materials, inquiry-based teaching strategies, problem-solving approaches, and technology to create rich learning opportunities for all students

• Offer intensive and sustained professional development to inform teachers, administrators, and other professional and paraprofessional staff about how lessons learned through research can improve teaching

• Meet the complex personal and learning needs of the students through coordinated health, human, and community services

• Use school-based decision making to design and implement site-specific strategies

• Make parents and other community members full partners in learning by involving them in planning, problem solving, and conveying a consistent message of support and high expectations. Parents also sign a "compact"—a written commitment—with the school that specifies their roles in helping children learn at home, endorsing teachers' high expectations, and helping to make the school a safe and caring place for learning

• Collect, analyze, and use data to monitor progress continuously and to improve teaching and learning

A Note About Eligibility

Eligibility for the Title I schoolwide option is determined by the poverty level of the population that a school serves. A school's poverty level is determined by local education agencies (LEAs) according to one or more indicators, including the number of children who are:

• Poor and between the ages of 5 and 17, as counted in the most recent census data

• Eligible for free or reduced-price meals under the National School Lunch Act

• Living in families receiving assistance under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families

• Eligible to receive medical assistance under the Medicaid program

To determine eligibility for a schoolwide program, an LEA may use a poverty measure different from the one(s) used to identify and rank school attendance areas for general Title I eligibility and allocations. States or districts can seek waivers of the poverty threshold if they can demonstrate that a schoolwide approach is appropriate for schools with lower poverty levels.

The U.S. Department of Education encourages districts to contact its Office of Compensatory Education Programs, (202) 260-0826, to obtain information about waiver provisions before making formal submissions. Often it is not necessary for schools to seek a waiver to use their funds flexibly.

think about this. . .

Improving Program Coordination Through Waiver Authority

Principal Larry Hicok and his staff at Rudd, Rockford, Marble Rock Elementary in Rockford, Iowa, sought a waiver of the poverty eligibility requirements to improve coordination of the services that their school could offer. Although the 30-percent poverty level at the school exceeds the state's average and is still growing, it ranks below the established threshold for schoolwides. In its application, the school indicated its plan to provide intensive assistance within the classroom by flexibly grouping students at their instructional level on a skill and concept basis. After documenting the community demographics, the school's planning process, and its comprehensive plan, the team justified its waiver request as follows: "The research we're reading is telling us that identifying kids and pulling them away from their regular peers for instruction doesn't work.... Most kids at some time in their elementary school years need intensive assistance for some skills, but not for all skills. The waiver allows us to do this."

Common Characteristics of Effective Schoolwide Programs

Today's most successful schoolwide programs are comprehensive. Well-planned schoolwide programs reflect the vision and philosophy of the whole school: students, faculty, families, and the surrounding community. These schoolwides address the educational priorities that a school-based team has identified and then use an array of information—including school profiles, surveys, student assessments, interviews, and examples of student work—to decide which models or activities to implement. Decisions are based on data about student needs and achievements, which establish a link between student needs, school standards, and instruction.

Schoolwides focus on revamping curricula in several subject areas. Although many curriculum reforms emphasize reading and math, other promising programs support changes in all academic subjects, including writing, language arts, history, math, and science. Many new curricula stress critical thinking, problem solving, and study skills; others are grade-specific but can be used by specialist teachers and paraprofessionals within regular classrooms at any grade with special populations, such as those who have disabilities or limited proficiency in English.

Research shows that both areas of emphasis—comprehensiveness and specific curriculum improvement—can succeed if they incorporate the following common features:⁽²⁾

• A basis in the best research on learning and teaching

• Well-defined, distinctive goals and appropriate organizational arrangements

• Systematic methods for evaluating outcomes against rigorous standards

• Collaboration among practitioners and researchers at the school and district levels to develop and implement the program

• An array of teaching and assessment practices that are proven to work with high-poverty students

• Wide latitude for teachers to improve the school and classroom climate

• Involvement of the family and community as full partners in decision making, mentoring of students, and whole-family learning experiences such as family math or science

In addition, four especially important qualities of schoolwide programs were highlighted in the second-year report of Special Strategies for Educating Disadvantaged Children, a national study of 10 research-based strategies for improving schools that serve high-poverty children (Stringfield et al., 1997a):

• Collaboration between the school and district: The district gives sites autonomy in matters of management, program, and budget. At the same time, the district provides the support and funding needed to sustain the program through the initial reorganization.

• Strong leadership: The principal acts as a strong manager and instructional leader who shares with an experienced and committed staff a vision that is empathetic to students' needs and embraces diverse cultures and community traditions.

• A comprehensive, focused academic program: The school provides a focused academic program, approved by the school community, that is grounded in a comprehensive, research-based framework with a proven record of success.

• Highly qualified professionals: Resources are invested in professional development, smaller classes, and materials and equipment—especially technology—that enhance teaching.

"No Excuses" is a common theme. According to researchers at the Charles A. Dana Center (CDC) at the University of Texas/Austin, a philosophy of "no excuses" prevails in successful schoolwide programs. After studying the highest-performing schoolwides in Texas, CDC determined that no single formula, prescription, or model was responsible for success. In fact, schools' designs had more differences than similarities. The main shared characteristic was a commitment to seeing that students achieved their fullest potential. The programs focused on academics and established expectations for achievement that were high and unfaltering; everyone believed in their abilities and in those of their students. Faculty and staff worked diligently and collaboratively. They set challenging goals and were ready to take whatever steps were necessary to see that students achieved them (Charles Dana Center, 1997).

Finally, accountability and a process for continuous improvement are important characteristics of effective schoolwide programs. Because all students are expected to achieve the high standards measured by states' and districts' assessment systems, the entire staff of a schoolwide program is collectively responsible for ensuring that students meet their goals. By giving students access to timely, effective extra instruction whenever they fail to master any of the required standards, and by offering parents opportunities to collaborate with teachers and school officials in planning and decision making, schoolwide programs make stakeholders accountable for students' success.

In keeping with the emphasis on accountability, strong schoolwide programs continually monitor their efforts to refine and improve the essential elements described above. Ideally, schoolwides assess both students' achievement of standards and the school's progress toward the goals of the schoolwide program. Assessment tools should include a variety of measurements that are aligned with standards and curricula. School staff should use these measures routinely in classrooms and schoolwides to diagnose needs, verify progress, and identify new learning and teaching opportunities. Possible measurement tools include in-class, teacher- or team-constructed tests; student tasks and performances; portfolios; experiments; and standardized multiple-choice, short-answer, or performance-based options (Darling-Hammond, Ancess, & Falk, 1995; Johnson, 1996). Issues and strategies for collecting, analyzing, and using data for continuous improvement are described in greater depth in Section V.

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[Introduction]

[Section I - What Are Schoolwide Programs? (Continued)]