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

Section 3:
Focus on Teaching and Learning Title I Support for Enriching Curriculum and Instruction

What the New Provisions Are

Curriculum and instruction. The reauthorized Title I aims to improve the fundamental quality of curriculum and instruction for students served through the program, whether Title I provides services to individual students or supports whole school reform. Using Title I to support enriching curriculum and instruction requires that schools:

• Use effective strategies to improve children's achievement in basic skills and core academic areas by increasing the amount and quality of learning time and emphasizing instruction by highly qualified professional staff; and



• Provide students who have trouble mastering established standards with additional assistance that is timely and effective.

By requiring that Title I schools hold students served by the program to the high achievement standards approved by their state, the law presumes that Title I resources will help these students to acquire the full range of knowledge and skills expected of all students. Title I is no longer intended to operate solely as a remedial program focused on low-level skills development.

Changes in Title I student eligibility provisions have implications for instruction. Removing certain provisions governing participation by limited-English proficient students and students with disabilities should widen the instructional strategies used in Title I to accommodate students who may not have been previously served. The new law also explicitly links Title I to Head Start and other preschool education programs. Helping children make the transition from early childhood education programs into the elementary grades requires attention to language development as a foundation for success in reading and other subjects.

Whole-school and targeted assistance. For high-poverty schools, the new law expands the option of using Title I funds to strengthen the entire school and makes it a school-level decision. Schoolwide programs are intended to benefit all children in a school by upgrading the academic program for the whole school. By giving schools the flexibility to integrate their education programs, strategies, and resources, Title I can become the catalyst for comprehensive reform of the entire instructional program, rather than merely an add-on service. New provisions require schoolwide programs to:

• Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment based on the performance of children in the school in relation to the state standards for content and student performance, as the standards are developed.



• Develop comprehensive plans, based on the results of the needs assessment, that provide a strategic guide for addressing the needs of all children but especially those who belong to the target population of any federal education program included in the schoolwide program.

Schools with schoolwide programs can use their Title I funds combined for the first time with other designated federal funds and resources as they choose, as long as they engage in schoolwide reform strategies focused on high standards of achievement. These strategies are intended to increase the amount and quality of learning time and help provide a high-quality curriculum for all students. As in targeted assistance schools, schoolwide programs are expected to show increased student achievement and progress toward meeting the state's challenging standards, particularly by children in the target groups intended to benefit from the specific federal education programs included in the schoolwide plan.

In targeted assistance schools (those with lower poverty rates or that choose not to develop a schoolwide program), the new Title I statute encourages effective instructional strategies that minimize removing children from the regular classroom during regular school hours. Extended learning opportunities can include lengthening the school year and providing programs before and after school and in the summer.

Supports for school staff to improve curriculum and instruction. Title I, along with other programs reauthorized by the 1994 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, focuses on improving the knowledge and skills of school staff and building their capacity to teach to challenging standards by:

• Establishing high-quality professional development as a priority in districts receiving Title I funds. For example, each state plan must describe how professional development supported by the Title II Professional Development Program will effectively address the needs of teachers in schools receiving Title I assistance. At the school level, Title I schools are required to use resources to support high-quality professional development. Title I schools identified for school improvement (those not making adequate progress) will need to devote resources--over two consecutive years--equivalent to at least 10 percent of the Title I funds they received during one fiscal year to professional development; or otherwise demonstrate that they are effectively carrying out professional development activities.



• Encouraging professional development that focuses on challenging state content and performance standards and is integrated into overall reform efforts. This priority is highlighted in all parts of the new law. In addition to emphasizing state standards, the legislation specifically allows states to combine Title I funds for professional development with funds from Title II (the Eisenhower Professional Development Program) of the ESEA and Goals 2000. The new law expands the subject areas that can be supported by Title II beyond mathematics and science when higher funding levels are reached. Title I funds can be used for a variety of professional development activities including training school staff to work more effectively with parents and creating career ladder programs for paraprofessionals to enable them to become certified teachers.

To provide external support to Title I schools in building their capacity for improvement, the law calls for:

• Each state to establish a system of school support teams to assist schoolwide programs in helping all students meet state performance standards. Each state will also establish a corps of distinguished educators to provide intensive and sustained assistance to schoolwide programs and to those schools and local education agencies furthest from meeting state student performance standards.



• Comprehensive federal technical assistance centers, organized regionally, to replace those formerly tied to categorical programs. These centers are intended to provide coordinated assistance to school systems in implementing federal programs to support improved teaching and learning.

What the National Assessment of Title I Has Learned

Findings on curriculum and instruction. Under the antecedent Chapter 1 program, students typically were pulled out of their regular classroom for a limited amount of time to receive supplemental instruction in reading and math. Although use of the pull-out model had declined moderately over the previous decade, it was still used by three-fourths of Chapter 1 elementary schools in 1992 (Millsap, Moss, & Gamse, 1993). Gradually, other forms of Chapter 1 instruction have become more prevalent, including in-class models, computer-assisted instruction, and the use of multiple teaching strategies within schools.

The 1993 National Assessment of Chapter 1 found that the program relied heavily on drill and practice to reinforce basic skills taught in the regular classroom (U.S. Department of Education, 1993). Although research shows that children can be exposed to more challenging, enriching course work as they learn basic skills (Knapp, Shields, & Turnbull, 1992), children in Chapter 1 often did not have an opportunity to learn more advanced curricula. Moreover, the reliance on pull-out programs often meant that Chapter 1 students missed instruction in some academic subject during their Chapter 1 classes. The National Assessment of Chapter 1 concluded that the program contributed only 10 minutes of additional learning time each day.

Other data on trends in high school coursetaking indicate that American children in general, and those in high-poverty schools in particular, can meet high expectations when challenged and given the opportunity. The United States has made substantial progress in increasing the percentage of students who take core academic subjects since 1983, when the watershed report, A Nation at Risk, called for more rigorous graduation requirements (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Students in all racial/ethnic groups have shown appreciable gains in academic coursetaking, while graduation rates have continued to improve (National Center for Education Statistics, 1995). Participation in Advanced Placement programs, particularly among minority students, is further indication that students respond to academic challenge and an enriching curriculum (The College Board, 1995). At the same time, however, continuing disparities in coursetaking for students in high-poverty schools and for low-income students show that schools must do more to provide access to challenging curriculum for all students.

Findings on whole-school and targeted assistance. The most disturbing finding from the National Assessment of Chapter 1 was the general lack of exposure of students in high-poverty schools to challenging curricula, not just through Chapter 1 but through their regular course work. Although schoolwide programs hold great promise for upgrading the entire curriculum in high-poverty schools, they were used mainly to reduce class size (Schenck & Beckstrom, 1993). Little strategic thought appeared to have gone into how Chapter 1 could be used to upgrade curriculum and instruction for the entire school. The tendency to regard Chapter 1 as separate and distinct from school reform efforts reduced its potential as a resource for academic improvement.

Research on the most promising instructional interventions in Chapter 1 suggests that, when thoughtfully implemented, a schoolwide approach can be an effective option for high-poverty schools (Pechman & Fiester, 1994). Strategies affecting the entire school day, such as schoolwide programs with site-based management or those that take a team approach to addressing student needs, typically result in greater coordination and integration with a school's regular classroom offerings. Strategies designed to affect students' whole days typically result in higher levels of interactive instruction throughout the students' reading, language arts, and mathematics classes than programs that are adjunct to the regular curriculum (Stringfield et al., in press).

When the target of change is the entire school, not just the poorest-performing children, schools serving even the most disadvantaged students can succeed (Slavin, Karweit & Madden, 1989). Research has also shown that in schools where the majority of students are poor, it makes little sense to attempt to target supplemental instruction on individual students to the exclusion of other needy students (Abt Associates, 1993).

Extended-time models accounted for a small percentage of Chapter 1 services; they were used by 15 percent of elementary schools during the summer and by 9 percent during the regular term (before and after school) (Millsap, Moss, & Gamse, 1993). In 1993-94, public elementary schools with high poverty were no more likely than low-poverty elementary schools to offer before- and after-school programs (National Data Research Center, 1995). Public schools in general were less likely than private schools to provide before- and after-school learning opportunities.

Findings on supports for school staff to improve curriculum and instruction. Research on school reform has consistently shown that adequate implementation, based on a well-articulated strategy, is the key to success--almost regardless of the particular improvement model adopted (Stringfield et al., in press). New analysis from the evaluation of special strategies in Chapter 1 schools reiterates this finding. It suggests that successful strategies build the capacity of schools to change, providing ongoing support and professional development for school staff that focuses on attaining agreed-upon goals.

The evaluation of special strategies in Chapter 1 schools suggests several factors critical to successful implementation. They include: adequacy of resources, external support, effective leadership, buy-in from key stakeholders--particularly teachers, principals, and parents--and congruence between identified problems and intervention strategies. Sustained support for change from within and outside the school is essential; strategies that are not consistently supported by school principals and central office personnel are marginalized or eliminated. Systemic support through professional development and efforts to build the capacity of teachers, principals, and other school staff is also essential for implementation and institutionalization of innovative strategies (Stringfield et al., in press).

While high-poverty schools share the same goals as lower-poverty schools, teachers in high-poverty schools see many more challenges to achieving their goals for students. About half of all public elementary school principals reported in 1993-94 that building basic literacy skills was their schools' most important education goal. Their second most important goal was encouraging academic excellence (National Data Research Center, 1995). Poverty level and participation in Chapter 1 did not appear to differentiate responses on this item. However, teachers in higher-poverty elementary schools were much more likely than their counterparts in more advantaged schools to identify the lack of academic challenge as a serious problem (9 percent in the highest-poverty schools compared with 3 percent in the lowest-poverty schools).

Other findings suggest that teachers in general and those in high-poverty schools in particular felt that they were ill-equipped to teach to high standards. In a 1992 national survey of teacher attitudes, only 3 out of 10 teachers overall believed that they were very well prepared to apply higher standards in their classrooms; teachers with more lower-income students in the school felt somewhat less prepared than teachers in other schools to set higher standards (Harris & Associates, 1992).

While Chapter 1 teachers experienced a few more hours of professional development each year than teachers in general, Chapter 1 teachers' aides received very little ongoing training. Given that most aides lacked college preparation for the classroom, their use in unsupervised instruction, reported in 20 percent of Chapter 1 schools, was equally troubling (Millsap, Moss, & Gamse, 1993). Overall, the use of teachers' aides in high-poverty schools appeared to be more prevalent than in low-poverty schools and to have increased between 1991 and 1994 (Abt Associates, 1995). While 23 percent of first graders in low-poverty schools were in reading classes with teachers' aides, 44 percent of first graders in high-poverty schools were in such classrooms. Aides also tended to work with either low-achieving students or with a mix of students in the class; rarely were they assigned to work with high-achieving students.

The professional development of school staff did not appear to differ significantly according to the level of school poverty. Teachers in high- and low-poverty elementary schools participated in about the same number of hours of short-term workshops; most teachers took training in 1993-94 in a variety of topics--teaching methods, cooperative learning, and student assessment--and almost half took training in using new technologies (National Data Research Center, 1995). Most training was of short duration (eight hours or less). Sustained professional development linked to core academics was less common for teachers in both high- and low- poverty schools.

Performance Criteria for the National Assessment
of Title I

Performance criteria for Title I-supported curriculum and instruction. Title I calls for comprehensive planning at several levels to coalesce efforts around a common mission: improving student performance. Based on an assessment of student needs, schools are to design and carry out their programs by drawing on and developing available resources, supports, and staff strengths. States and local school districts are to provide direction, guidance, and assistance to schools as they work toward improvement. Indicators of progress include:

• Reviews of plans at state, local, and school levels would show that Title I is being considered in coordination with other programs serving at-risk students (e.g., education for migrant students, education for students with disabilities, bilingual education, services for homeless children, Head Start). Consolidated planning and cross professional development involving staff with different specialties, disciplines, and responsibilities would suggest that the needs of children are being considered comprehensively using all available resources to support improved performance.



• Analysis of coursework would show evidence of rigorous curricula that cover the state-approved content standards and the use of assessments linked to the standards to inform instructional strategies and monitor performance. Key indicators of progress would include the exposure of students served by Title I to challenging subject matter and the effective use of instructional time and resources in Title I schools.
High-poverty schools would show progress in aligning classroom practice with challenging standards comparable to the progress of schools nationally. Instruction would show that teachers are adapting the content of their teaching and their classroom strategies to address the diverse needs of students, engage students' interest, and motivate them to reach high standards. Title I programs that rely heavily on drill and practice would decrease as teachers broaden their repertoire of ways to involve students in learning. In addition, schools would use and promote new technology to reinforce material that covers the knowledge and skills outlined in the rigorous content standards.

Performance criteria for whole-school and targeted assistance. An increase in the number of Title I schoolwide programs and the use of extended learning opportunities would indicate growing awareness and acceptance of effective and innovative approaches to improving teaching and learning. Adoption of effective curriculum and instructional strategies would be evident in school plans and classroom practice. Indicators of progress include:

• Increases in the number of extended school-year programs, before- and after-school programs, and summer programs, which show a willingness to expand learning time while enabling students who are served by Title I to keep up with the regular school curriculum.



• Evidence of comprehensive approaches to improving curriculum, instruction, and assessment aligned with challenging state and local standards (expected of at least half of all Title I schoolwide programs by 1997-98).

Performance criteria for school staff supports. Title I-supported professional development and assistance for improved teaching are expected to be integrated with other resources to address school and classroom needs for improvement. Indicators of progress include:

• The extent to which professional development is aligned with standards, addresses the needs of target populations in reaching high standards, and encourages effective strategies to engage students and their families in learning. Surveys in Title I schools would show increasing percentages of teachers who are aware of the state-approved content and performance standards and who perceive themselves and their colleagues capable of teaching to high standards.



• The quality of professional development, in terms of its content and approach and the ability of teachers to apply what they have learned to classroom practice. Most promising would be professional development that is sustained and intensive and involves the whole school in building capacity for improvement. Support for the professional growth of teachers would be demonstrated by adequate time to meet together, participate in networks, and learn from others.



• The extent to which increasing proportions of teachers' aides earn high school diplomas or their equivalent within two years of employment and take further professional training.



• The extent to which school support teams and distinguished educators provide high-quality, intensive, and sustained assistance to schoolwide programs and to the schools and local education agencies most in need.



• The extent to which professional development contributes to improved instruction and student achievement for children served by Title I.

Plans for Evaluating Progress

Ongoing and planned studies include:

• ED Fast Response Teacher and School Surveys, which will provide information on the extent to which teachers and principals report the use of demanding curriculum, promising instructional strategies, and extended learning time and schoolwide program strategies. The surveys will tap principals' awareness of the new eligibility criteria for schoolwide programs, the extent to which extended learning opportunities are promoted, and staffs' recent experience with professional development. Both teachers and principals will be asked about their confidence in their own ability to enable students to reach high standards and their assessment of their colleagues' preparation for the task. Comparative data will be reported for high-poverty schools in general, for Title I schoolwide programs, and for schools identified for program improvement. Findings will be available in spring 1996. The intent is to repeat the surveys at least two more times during the Title I authorization cycle.



• The Longitudinal Evaluation of School Change and Performance, which will track the cumulative effect of federal support for upgrading educational performance at the school and classroom level. A longitudinal design will provide a better understanding of how schools change within the context of federal, state, and local standards-based reform. The intent is to conduct the evaluation in a limited number of states, with a more in-depth examination of curriculum and classroom instruction at the elementary school level. As resources permit, the study will include a special focus on Title I schoolwide programs and schools that have been chronically identified for school improvement. Findings are expected in 1998.



• The Study of the Impact of Title I Schoolwide Programs on Migrant Children, mandated by Congress, which will examine the extent to which schoolwide programs affect the learning opportunities afforded to migrant students. Because schoolwide programs enable all students to benefit from Title I resources, regardless of when they enter a school, these programs may facilitate providing services to migrant students. At issue, however, is the concern that the unique needs of migrant students may not be met through schoolwide approaches. Given the limited-English-proficiency of many migrant students, a particular focus will be how schools accommodate their need for language instruction. A competitive procurement for the study will begin in FY 1996.

Other efforts include:

• Information Networks with Title I Schools, which will enable the Department to tap information on the progress of schools engaged in upgrading their curriculum, instruction, parent involvement, and other supports for improved teaching and learning. In turn, the network will enable schools to share information with other schools and with technical assistance providers on their problems, needs, and successes in implementing Title I and other school reform. The Department plans to begin by setting up an electronic network for Title I schoolwide programs in early 1996.



• Analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress data collected from teachers, which will provide supplementary information on coursework, instructional strategies, and professional development that can be reported on high- and low-poverty schools. Findings from the 1996 NAEP data collection will be available in 1997.



• A Joint Study of the Criteria for Alignment of Content Standards/Curriculum Frameworks and Student Assessments, which will suggest ways to measure alignment of curricula with standards and assessments. The study, supported by the National Science Foundation, is an activity of the National Institute for Science Education and part of a multiyear analysis of state curriculum frameworks and standards in mathematics and science by the Council of Chief State School Officers. The study will be completed in the fall 1996.

[Section 2: Reform through Linking Title I to Challenging Academic Standards]

[Section 4: Flexibility Coupled With Increased Responsibility for Student Performance]