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

Chapter 1 schoolwide projects are intended to serve educationally disadvantaged students by improving the instructional program provided to all students in high-poverty schools. The Hawkins-Stafford Amendments allowed school districts to operate schoolwide projects in high-poverty (75 percent or higher) Chapter 1 schools without having to provide additional local funds for students not eligible for Chapter 1 services, as was previously required.

This report provides a comprehensive look at schoolwide projects in operation during the 1991-92 school year, as mandated by the National Assessment of Chapter 1 Act. The survey provides a wealth of information on the nature of schoolwide projects -- their settings, how they were planned, the services they provided, and their impact on schools, services, and student performance.

Characteristics of Schoolwide Project Districts and Schools

• Chapter 1 schoolwide projects tend to be located in large, urban, and high-poverty school districts with a high proportion of minority students. Eighty percent of the students in schoolwide project schools are Black or Hispanic and 20 percent are limited English proficient. Of the 1,000,000 students in the schoolwide project schools, 700,000 are educationally disadvantaged.

• Within districts with schoolwide projects, 25 percent of the public schools have a sufficiently high poverty level (75 percent) to qualify for a schoolwide project and 15 percent are operating one.

Influential Factors in Planning Schoolwide Projects

• Increased flexibility in service delivery and instructional grouping was the main reason that schools applied to become a schoolwide project; the major advantage cited was the ability to serve more students.

• Sixty percent of schoolwide project schools were identified for Chapter 1 program improvement (meaning that students receiving Chapter 1 services did not improve their performance over the course of one year) at some point during the process of planning or implementing the schoolwide project. This compares to 28 percent of all Chapter 1 schools with poverty levels of 75 percent or greater. Over half of the schoolwide project schools used the schoolwide project plan for the program improvement plan. However, only 12 percent of all schools indicated that this identification was one of the most important reasons for applying to become a schoolwide project.

• The most influential people in the decision to become a schoolwide project were the building principal and the district Chapter 1 coordinator.

• Strategies that relate directly to schoolwide reform were not a main focus of activities in schoolwide projects. Such strategies include heterogeneous grouping, regrouping for instruction or adopting/adapting exemplary whole school reform models, all used by less than half of all schoolwide projects.

• The more popular strategies included: parent education/involvement activities, staff development, and computer-assisted instruction, used by three-quarters of the schoolwide projects.

• Other popular activities in schoolwide projects included: coordinating and integrating curriculum and supplemental instruction for low-achieving students, used in two-thirds of the schools.

• About half of the schools used the schoolwide project to reduce class size.

The report concludes that although schoolwide projects provided a large number of services and were often involved in other school improvement efforts, these activities could not be attributed just to the implementation of a schoolwide project. Instead, the schoolwide project seems to have been one more funding mechanism that could be employed to facilitate the changes already desired or planned for the school.

Implementation and Perceived Impacts

• About 75 percent of all schools identified money and/or resources, lack of parent involvement, and teacher time and energy as problems in implementing school improvement efforts (which include general improvement activities and not solely Chapter 1 program improvement).

• Although about half of all schools and districts reported no disadvantages to having schoolwide projects, the main disadvantages mentioned by other schools and districts included paperwork and time requirements.

• More than 90 percent of the districts with both schoolwide and non-schoolwide projects reported no reductions in Chapter 1 services to non-schoolwide projects as a result of operating schoolwide projects.

Accountability Requirement

Under the Hawkins-Stafford Amendments, at the end of the third year of the schoolwide project's operation, the school district has two options for measuring schoolwide performance. It must compare the achievement gains made by educationally disadvantaged students in a school with a schoolwide project either with the gains of Chapter 1 students who did not receive services through a schoolwide project or with the gains of the students at the schoolwide project for the three years prior to the school's becoming a schoolwide project. Less than 10 percent of the approximately 2000 schoolwide projects in 1991-92 had been in operation for at least three years prior to the 1991-92 school year.

• Where results were available, the accountability comparisons favored the schoolwide project services in almost 90 percent of the schools.

• Sixty percent of all schoolwide project schools experienced no difficulties in developing or implementing the accountability comparisons.

Conclusions

Schools have implemented schoolwide projects to serve more students with more flexible use of resources as well as to avoid restrictions on how services should be delivered. The motivation for schoolwide projects appears to come both from the potential benefits to students and the easing of administrative burden.

Copies of the Chapter 1 Schoolwide Project Study Final Report are available by writing the Planning and Evaluation Service, Office of the Undersecretary, U.S. Department of Education, 600 Independence Avenue, SW, Room 4163, Washington, DC 20202.

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Last update September 1996 (swz).