This article summarizes findings and lessons learned about implementing school improvement grant (SIG) initiatives in rural areas of the United States. The study examines state-level survey data based on the proportion of rural schools receiving SIG funds in the fall of 2010 in each state. In addition, the authors summarize related findings from rural-focused state and district case study work. The state survey showed that, regardless of the proportion of rural SIG schools, participating state officials (N = 46) reported providing similar supports to districts, such as technical assistance and increased monitoring and data review. However, fewer states with larger proportions of rural SIG schools believed these supports were important for improving schools. Among states with larger proportions of rural SIG schools, significantly fewer reported that replacing principals through SIG was key to improving student achievement. The case study data confirmed and elaborated on the survey findings.As unprecedented funds rolled out for the U.S. federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program in 2009, many educators questioned whether rural schools could implement the kinds of staff replacement and on-site professional development practices required by the SIG program (Klein, 2010). This study examined variations in state SIG services and differences in state perceptions of schools' use of SIG funds, based on percentages of rural SIG schools in the state. The study also described some successes and challenges of the SIG program based on case study work, including a rural state and three districts and schools within that state.In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), better known as the economic stimulus package, provided $3 billion in SIG funds to help reform persistently low-achieving schools. This funding came on top of the $546 million already appropriated for fiscal year 2009 for school improvement through section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. These SIG funds remained available for use through September 30, 2013. In the first cohort of SIG (typically awarded from school years 2010-11 through 2012-13), 24% of funded schools were in rural areas and in the second cohort (typically 2011-12 through 2013-14) Correspondence should be sent to Caitlin Scott, Education Northwest,
Progress monitoring is a process of collecting ongoing samples of student work and tracking performance of individual students over time. Progress monitoring involves administering parallel sets of items to the same student on a regular basis (at least monthly) that are sensitive to changes in the student’s understanding based on instruction. The sets of items administered over time should be parallel in difficulty so that differences in performance can be attributed to differences in the student’s understanding as opposed to variability in item difficulty across sets. In this manuscript, we describe an approach to designing items that controls item-level variability by constraining the item features that may elicit different cognitive processing. This approach adapts the principles of Automated Item Generation (AIG) and includes carefully designing test specifications, isolating specific components of the content that will be assessed, creating item models to serve as templates, duplicating the templates to create parallel item clones, and verifying that the duplicated item clones align with the original item model. An example from an operational progress monitoring system for mathematics in Kindergarten through Grade 6 is used to illustrate the process. We also propose future studies to empirically evaluate the assertion of parallel form difficulty.
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