GAO surveyed states about their experience with implementation of the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. Researchers found that 26 states said they didn’t think they would be able to sustain the program’s extended learning time reforms after their federal grants expired, because they were too expensive. Just 10 said they thought they could keep it going.

GAO also found that SIG schools are challenged by the planning required to implement increased learning time well. SIG schools find it to be a complex and time consuming planning process and one that often is not embraced by stakeholders, including parents. So it’s expensive, challenging and may not be sustainable.

Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager

Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. Mailman is integrated with the web, making it easy for users to manage their accounts and for list owners to administer their lists. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more.

But a report last week by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, found that a number of states renewed grants for schools that didn't meet annual goals and said states need more Education Department guidance in making those decisions.
A collaborative reporting project drawing on the efforts of more than 20 news organizations and affiliated journalists paints a mixed picture of how the SIG program is playing out on the ground. The major findings show:
• States have pulled SIG money from at least a dozen schools that showed anemic progress on early indicators of success, such as teacher and student attendance, the Education Department says.
• Five schools in Pueblo City, Colo., have seen student performance sink even lower after awarding a $7.4 million grant to an outside provider.
• A plan for a new teacher-evaluation system in New York City led to a temporary loss in turnaround funding after city officials clashed with the local teachers' union.
• Schools nationwide, especially those in rural areas, are wrestling with personnel and leadership changes driven by the program's requirements, along with a mandate to add extra time to the instructional day.
Still, the SIG program's supporters can point to encouraging—though early—developments.

A collaborative reporting project drawing on the efforts of more than 20 news organizations (including Catalyst Chicago) and affiliated journalists paints a mixed picture of how the SIG program is playing out on the ground. The project was organized by the Education Writers Association, the Hechinger Report at Teachers College- Columbia University and Education Week. 

The major findings show:

• States have pulled SIG money from at least a dozen schools that showed anemic progress on early indicators of success, such as teacher and student attendance, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

• Schools nationwide, especially those in rural areas, are wrestling with staff turnover and the need for new teacher-evaluation systems driven by the program’s requirements, along with the challenge of adding extra instructional time.

• Though millions of dollars in grant money has gone to outside contractors, few states track the details of how that money is being spent—and some contractor-run schools have seen student performance sink.

 At the same time, the program’s supporters can point to encouraging—though early—developments. And some of the best early reviews come from students, who say their schools are calmer and more academically rigorous.

The AI SIG report

HOW DID ILLINOIS SIG SCHOOLS HANDLE THIS?
But the teacher-evaluation requirement has turned out to be a major stumbling block for many schools in the SIG program. Last summer, when the U.S. Department of Education offered waivers to extend the deadline for launching new teacher and principal evaluations, more than two dozen states applied on behalf of their SIG schools, according to federal officials. Anecdotal evidence from around the country suggests that nearly two years into their three-year grants, many schools have yet to change how they rate and reward teachers.
"You have this pressure you're putting on these schools, and it really becomes a challenge for them to respond," said Scott Marion, the associate director of the Dover, N.H.-based Center for Assessment, which has advised schools on evaluation models.

The billions of dollars that the federal government is pouring into turning around some of the nation's lowest-performing schools appear to be showing preliminary promise, according to student-achievement data unveiled by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last week.

Is this really a success story? I'm not sure we know nearly enough to tell and the data issues are crazy hard to deal with.

Cunningham introduced the metaphor of technical debt as guidance for software developers that must trade engineering quality against short-term goals.

We revisit the technical debt metaphor, and translate it into terms that can help IT executives better understand their IT investments. An approach is proposed to quantify debts (cost to fix technical quality issues) and interest (extra cost spent on maintenance due to technical quality issues). Our approach is based on an empirical assessment method of software quality developed at the Software Improvement Group (SIG). The core part of the technical debt calculation is constructed on the basis of empirical data of 44 systems that are currently being monitored by SIG.

In a case study, we apply the approach to a real system, and discuss how the results provide useful insights on important questions related to IT investment such as the return on investment (ROI) in software quality improvement.

Elena Silva updates her piece on the PPSD/Union pact to "restart" schools using a new EMO structure.