U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that Ohio will receive $21 million to continue the work of turning around its persistently lowest-achieving schools through the Education Department's School Improvement Grants (SIG) program.

The funds are part of $535 million provided through the fiscal year 2011 budget and made available to states under the program. To date, Ohio has received $173 million since the SIG program was redesigned in 2009.

"We’ve stood on the sidelines for too long as our lowest-performing schools failed our children year after year,” said Duncan. "The School Improvement Grants program is providing courageous school leaders and teacher teams in more than 1,200 schools nationwide with the means to accomplish the very difficult work of turning around some of our hardest to serve schools."

To learn more about the School Improvement Grants program, visit http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/index.html or the Department’s School Turnaround Office website at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oese/ost/index.html.