$7.3 Million Wasted On School Grant

In the last three years, schools across the nation received $1.6 billion dollars in School Improvement Grants (SIG) from the U.S. Department of Education to improve student performance. An evaluation of the program in the state of Washington has revealed the program resulted in little to no improvement. Washington public schools will use $7.3 million from the program in 2012 and have gathered over $60 million in the past three years.

A report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education found most Washington schools receiving SIGs made only marginal changes. Not one of the schools outpaced the state average in reading and math standardized tests. “The majority of schools studied show little evidence of the type of bold and transformative changes the SIGs were intended to produce,” the report states. One district SIG director interviewed about the program asked the researchers “how to successfully turn around a failing school…He went on to explain that he was at a loss as to how to do this.”