Discussion Draft Review: Graduation Promise Fund

The new focus on high school improvement runs throughout the House’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) discussion draft. Examples include the new Graduation Promise Fund, the College and Work-Ready Standards and Assessments, the emphasis on secondary schools in the improvement and redesign process and the standardization of the graduation rate. Last week’s Update covered the new section 1124, Graduation Rate. This week’s Update takes a closer look at the new Graduation Promise Fund.


The new section 1006, Graduation Promise Fund, serves two basic purposes. First, it is designed to support and replicate effective secondary school reform in “eligible schools” as defined in the discussion draft. Second, it seeks to identify and target support to individual middle school students that are most likely to become high school dropouts.

The program in the discussion draft is either formula funded or is a competitive grant, depending on the level of appropriated funding each fiscal year. If Congress appropriates more than $1 billion, it triggers a formula distribution wherein the state educational agencies (SEAs) must set aside 90% of the funds for sub-grants to local educational agencies (LEAs) that have “eligible secondary schools.” Eligible secondary schools are those with an average graduation rate of 60% or less over three years or a secondary school that has graduation rates below the tenth percentile in the state. Each eligible secondary school receives a minimum of $700 per student and additional funding based on a specified formula that considers enrollment, poverty and graduation data. Grants under this section are for a five-year period.

If Congress appropriates less than $1 billion dollars for this section, the LEAs must apply for the sub-grants to serve only “eligible schools.” The SEA then awards the grants based on school enrollment, graduation rates, poverty rate and the quality of the school improvement plans for the schools to be served.

The SEA’s application must demonstrate how it will support LEAs to reform identified schools. It must demonstrate its process for classifying secondary schools with a graduation rate of 60% or less as a high priority or a high priority redesign school. It must show how it supports the use of school improvement teams, and, critically, the SEA must ensure that the state’s longitudinal data system includes specific middle school data that identifies potential dropouts. Having an operational state longitudinal data system appears to be a prerequisite.

LEAs receiving Graduation Promise Funding must use the funds for four practices. Note how the requirements split the interventions between secondary schools and middle schools. For secondary schools, the LEAs must support only eligible secondary schools according to rank, based on graduation rate, effectiveness of parental involvement and professional development, and the quality of their school improvement plan. The LEAs must also support only eligible secondary schools in developing and implementing their school improvement plans, and they may support the use of school improvement teams.

Regarding middle schools, the LEAs receiving the grants must identify potential dropouts and provide intensive support to such middle school students, but they may not spend more than 15% of their funds in doing so. The LEAs must work with their SEAs to incorporate data into the state wide longitudinal data system that identifies students who are at risk for not graduating schools with a regular diploma. These indicators include, at least: rates of absenteeism, rates of disciplinary action, failure rates and overage students. Once identified, these LEAs must provide intensive support for such students and the draft language goes on to list examples of such support.

The funding does not come without commitment cost. SEAs that receive funding under this section must provide matching funds in an amount equal to 25% of the Graduation Promise funds. LEAs receiving subgrants must provide matching funds in an amount that is not less than 15% of the total LEA sub-grant, although the U.S. Department of Education (ED) may waive the LEA matching funds upon a show of hardship.
The replication of successful school dropout prevention models is important to the Fund. The draft grants ED the authority to reserve 10% of the funds for capacity building. The funds may be used to provide technical assistance, regional training and fund eligible nonprofit entities to replicate and implement effective dropout prevention models.

To be sure, the Graduation Promise Fund is a welcomed first step toward providing more focused interventions to secondary schools with high drop out rates and their middle school feeders. While there will certainly be changes to these provisions, particularly around the required percentage of matching funds, it is consistent with the emerging focus on secondary schools and middle school advocates will assure that their provisions remain intact. We can expect similar provisions in the actual ESEA reauthorization bill that the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor George Miller (D-CA) will introduce before October.

Resources:
“Committee Releases Remaining Titles of Miller-McKeon NCLB Discussion Draft,” House Committee on Education and Labor, http://edlabor.house.gov/.
Author: DAD