An Invitation to Your Community -- The Improving America's SchoolsAct

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

The Improving America's Schools Act

The single largest source of federal support for K-12 education is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Born as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in 1965, this $11-billion-a-year Act has been sending federal assistance to poor schools, communities, and children for nearly 30 years.

President Clinton proposed and signed into law a new focus for "ESEA" programs: they will support comprehensive efforts by schools, communities, and states to reach the National Education Goals and move every child toward high standards. States that have already developed academic standards for all children will use those standards for ESEA programs.

Under the new law, known as the "Improving America's Schools Act," schools, communities, and states will be able to rely on their GOALS 2000 plans to guide how they direct all ESEA resources -- from Title I (Chapter I), bilingual programs, the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, and other programs.

The Improving America's Schools Act will also support specific elements of your GOALS 2000 plan. For instance, it will:

Stimulate sweeping, schoolwide improvement in low-income communities -- where children often have the most to gain from dramatically improved schools. Such change will be planned and managed by each school itself, for one purpose: to propel every child toward high standards.
Target more dollars to schools in our poorest communities -- schools where outdated textbooks and inadequate support for teachers and curriculum development may be among the many and often overwhelming challenges that children and teachers live with each day.
Improve technical assistance for schools across America, including offer technology-based "one stop shopping" for advice and answers to questions about promising projects, research findings, federal regulations, and more.
Strengthen assessment and accountability -- encourage communities and states to use their own assessments for ESEA, use the results to improve teaching, and offer incentives for students and schools to improve their educational performance.
Create more sustained, meaningful professional development for teachers and principals -- opportunities to deepen their understanding of subjects they teach, master new high-performance methods of helping all children learn, share best lessons and teaching techniques with others, and work more closely with parents. Support for such professional development, under the law, can increase significantly. And it will benefit all schools.

Again, the Improving America's Schools Act aims to help schools and communities strengthen these dimensions of schooling -- not as isolated efforts, but as elements of a school's or community's comprehensive, continuous improvement effort.

[For more information on ESEA, please see the Department's ESEA information collection]

[Special Challenges -- Federal Help]

[School to Work]