Chapter 1 Accountability

To ensure that individual schools are effective in helping Chapter 1 students improve their skills in such areas as reading, math, and language arts, Congress created a new accountability system that measures student achievement. Local education agencies are required to identify schools with ineffective Chapter 1 programs and work with them to develop program improvement plans. If results are not forthcoming, the state education agency must intervene, working with local officials to develop a joint improvement plan for the school. Local and state education officials and recent studies have raised questions about how accurately schools have been targeted for improvement. Recent studies have also raised concerns about schools' local program improvement efforts, although no studies have focused on state and local efforts in the joint phase. This report (1) assesses the process used to identify schools needing program improvement and makes suggestions for improving the process and (2) compares implementation of the joint and local phases of program improvement, including the roles of school, district, and state staff, as well as the program changes (or strategies) schools use to bring about improvement.

GAO found that: (1) states and school districts identified schools needing program improvement if their Chapter 1 students did not show sufficient improvement in their achievement-test scores, but many schools have not been identified due to random fluctuations in test scores rather than actual changes in student performance; (2) states and districts have used achievement-test scores as unconditional criteria when identifying schools for program improvement, but the identification process can be more flexible; (3) schools with students who initially had the lowest test scores were less likely to be identified as needing improvement than higher scoring schools; (4) pressure to increase achievement test scores could have a negative effect on the instruction Chapter 1 students receive; (5) school staff had more influence in determining school improvement needs and strategies than school districts and state education agencies; (6) schools focused most on improving achievement-test scores in both the joint and local phases of program improvement; (7) schools used the same improvement strategies in both phases, which most often included increasing parental involvement, improving coordination between Chapter 1 and the traditional instructional program, instructing Chapter 1 students on test-taking skills, and adopting a new instructional approach for the Chapter 1 program; (8) large-city schools used summer and extended-day programs for Chapter 1 students; and (9) state education agencies targeted their technical assistance more to the district level than to individual schools, and the amount of assistance was dependent on the number of staff available to work with schools, and general program requirements rather than improvement of needs of specific schools.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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