Many of Pennsylvania's lowest-ranked schools are seeking three-year, multimillion-dollar federal grants to help improve student achievement.
The Philadelphia School District, which has 98 schools on the state's list of lowest performers, has applied for the School Improvement Grants for 50 of them.
Also among the 19 districts and five charters statewide seeking the money are the Chester Upland, Southeast Delco, and William Penn districts and two city charter schools.
Most grants would be for three years, starting in the fall, with a maximum award of $2 million per year for each school in the program. Pennsylvania schools are getting a total of $141 million.
The money comes at a price: Schools accepting it must agree to adopt federal government-specified "interventions" that would lead to staffing changes and other shifts in how they operate.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education is expected to announce the list of recipients this month.
In New Jersey, the state announced in June that $45 million in School Improvement Grants would go to 12 schools. Locally, two schools - Cramer Elementary and U.S. Wiggins Elementary in Camden - were selected to share $5.4 million. The Camden district had submitted proposals for three additional schools.
In Camden's application for Wiggins and Cramer, various reforms, including considerable staff development, were proposed.
In addition, $28 million will be awarded in New Jersey next school year.
The School Improvement Grant program began in 2002, but much more money is available now because of the one-time addition of almost $3 billion in stimulus funding.
What is new this year is the requirement that districts seeking the money must agree to implement one of four so-called intervention plans. The plans are similar to those of another federal program, Race to the Top, that also pumps money into low-achieving schools.
Under the first and most widely used School Improvement Grant intervention model, schools that get the money must replace principals who have been on the job for more than two years. Learning time for students must also be increased.
This approach also requires the schools to use a teacher-evaluation system that includes student achievement as one of the factors in gauging how well educators are doing their jobs and whether they get to keep them.
Most districts don't now use student test scores to evaluate teacher performance. Philadelphia is developing such a plan, part of the latest teacher contract.
