Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) /School Improvement Planning

Continuous school improvement is now, fundamentally, a federal mandate with the 2002 reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).  Guided by ESEA and state and local initiatives, every school and district in the country needs to establish paths and set goals in the following areas:

• Comprehensive and planned school improvement
• Highly Qualified Teachers and effective classroom instruction
• Scientifically-based or research-based school and schooling practices
• Standards-based assessments and academic progress for all students (AYP)
• Safe schools and effective classroom management
• Academic interventions and ongoing "progress monitoring" assessments for elementary-aged students not passing benchmark skills in literacy
• Professional development for all educators with documented accountability
• Parent outreach and involvement

As a national school improvement project, Project ACHIEVE has worked with hundreds of schools and districts in a partnership to help them meet these NCLB mandates.  More importantly, Project ACHIEVE has focused on the primary motivation behind school improvement:  the academic and social/emotional/behavioral development, growth, and success of all students.

For Consultation Support in this Area—Contact Dr. Howard M. Knoff

ESEA/School Improvement Planning Services:

• Strategic planning, organizational change, school improvement policies, procedures, and strategies
• Integrated "Building Committee" approaches to organization and personnel management
• Professional development, peer consultation, and technical assistance procedures, strategies, and activities
• Parent and community involvement, training, and support assessments, procedures, strategies, and activities
• Clinical supervision and peer- or co-teaching strategies and procedures
• Formative and summative Program Evaluation and Accountability procedures, strategies, and activities along with the creation of functional, interactive, real-time data-bases
• Training of Trainers programs along with other systemic capacity-building and long-term institutionalization policies, stategies, and activities

Project ACHIEVE Experience in this Area:

Project ACHIEVE components have been implemented in over 1,500 schools or districts across the country—focusing especially on school improvement and NCLB processes. Project ACHIEVE is a major anchor to Arkansas' Department of Education (Special Education Unit) State Improvement Grant which is implementing Positive Behavioral Support and Student Literacy systems and interventions, on-site, to over 60 schools statewide.

Project ACHIEVE has also worked with other state education departments over the years (e.g., Alaska, Kansas, Florida), and school districts from large and urban (e.g., Washington, DC, Baltimore, Tampa, San Franscisco) to small and rural. Project ACHIEVE presentations and keynotes also have been invited and delivered, for many years, at many notable national and state meetings—including those sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education—where NCLB strategies and issues are the main topics of discussion.