District leaders often face hurdles when it comes to school improvement. Decisions are limited by competing priorities or tight budgets and lack of adequate funding. Below are some sources and opportunities we've identified around grants and funding that might be available for your district.
Title I Part A
Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), provides financial assistance to school districts and schools with high numbers or percentages of students from low-income families. The purpose of the assistance is to ensure that all students meet state academic standards.
Illuminate Education, eduCLIMBER & FAST + Title I Part A Funding
Our products (Data & Assessment, eduCLIMBER, FAST) help districts, schools, and educators identify individual students’ areas of success and needs for support in order for educators to provide differentiated instruction support to ensure students reach state standards proficiency and close the achievement gap regardless of socioeconomic status.
With the use of multiple measures, and a holistic approach to student learning, educators are able to dig deeper into understanding barriers to student learning, and teachers have additional time to deliver tiered, strategic, culturally relevant and timely supports to all students.
eduCLIMBER helps educators, schools, and districts coherently address a comprehensive academic and behavioral MTSS and RTI framework. This comprehensive approach allows educators to focus on personalized supports, ensuring every student finds their inner gifts and talents.
Title II Part A
The purpose of Title II is to provide resources to schools and districts to increase student achievement through building the capacity and efficacy of highly qualified teachers and principals. Strategies include teacher preparation programs, recruitment and retention, hiring, induction, and professional development of educators.
Illuminate Education, eduCLIMBER & FAST + Title II Part A Funding
Illuminate Education provides timely data and insights that are crucial in the teaching and learning process. With the information gained from Illuminate Education, eC, and FAST, educators can reflect on current practices, focus on root causes and engage in inquiry cycles to ensure all students reach their highest potential.
Through the use of a robust bank of online training sessions, first-class customer success managers and high-quality professional development webinars, and school hour support, educators can implement school and district strategies to gauge progress effectively.
Illuminate Education and eduCLIMBER also support administrators in developing a comprehensive understanding of how their educators are utilizing the tools to increase engagement, efficiency, and efficacy across their network of educators.
Title III
The Title III grant program is known as the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act. Title III provides funding to help districts supplement their English language instruction programs.
eduCLIMBER + Title III Funding
eduCLIMBER provides academic and behavioral progress monitors that supports the needs of English Language Learners. eduCLIMBER can clearly identify supports needed for ELL’s and progress their achievement towards reclassification. The featured tools help educators understand comprehensively ELL’s areas of success and pinpoint focal areas for growth, both from the behavioral and academic perspectives, while having the robust ability to communicate to all vested stakeholders.
Title IV
The Title IV Part A grant program is a new $1.1B grant, with three main categories: well-rounded educational programming (ie STEM, SEL, CCR); ensuring a safe and healthy learning environment (PBIS, Risk, Prevention); effective use of technology (Teacher PD, blended learning, 1 to 1) – with up to 25% of these funds may be used to buy software.
Districts that receive more than $30K of Title IV Part A funds must complete a needs assessment and submit a plan to the state which will describe how the funds are distributed and coordinated across all 3 categories.
eduCLIMBER + Title IV Funding
Districts can apply for funding, and because of the grant's focus on safe and supportive schools (which includes intervention), eduCLIMBER and related services like custom reports and dashboards would be worth considering as a potentially good fit.
IDEA
IDEA Part B
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that requires all children with disabilities to have access to free public education that emphasizes participation in the least restrictive environment, services designed to meet students unique needs, and preparation for continuing education, employment, and independent living.
The aim of IDEA is to assist states in meeting the costs of providing special education and related services to children with disabilities. In most instances, IDEA resources are used for salaries of special education teachers, speech therapists, psychologists, and other personnel or support including technology in the classroom.
eduCLIMBER + IDEA Part B Funding
eduCLIMBER provides a comprehensive behavioral and academic online platform for districts, schools and educators to coherently address and implement a behavioral and academic Response to Intervention plan (RtI) and Multi Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). With eduCLIMBER, educators are able to ingest and collect all relevant data to progress monitor student support services, interventions, assessments, and meetings.
eduCLIMBER gives insights to educators to ensure that they are meeting the needs of students by providing the appropriate level of services to students. This is possible by accurately assessing needs and providing visibility around the duration of time and progress with various interventions.
eduCLIMBER provides data analytic tools to help administrators identify trends over time for individuals or groups of students, teachers, grades, schools or districts to ensure that every student receives the most appropriate supports in the least restrictive environment.
School Improvement Grants
The Office of School Turnaround provides School Improvement Grants (SIG) to support districts that demonstrate the greatest need for the funds and the strongest commitment to substantially impact the achievement of students in their lowest-performing schools.
Illuminate Education, eduCLIMBER & FAST + School Improvement Grant (SIG) Funding
Illuminate’s software solution was designed to increase efficiency and efficacy for educators by supporting educators with timely and relevant feedback to reduce time spent on reports and maximum time with students. The process of using research-based supports and assessments is directly correlated with improved academic and behavioral outcomes. The platform is used by educators across the country by educators as a training and support tool, by providing ongoing insight and guidance on implementation of best practices.
Featuring a balanced assessment system, student-centered achievement system, RtI/MTSS platform, and a robust data analytics engine (designed with strategic supports), Illuminate and eduCLIMBER can significantly improve outcomes for students, parents, educators, schools and districts. Student and parent portals provide real-time progress monitoring so that educators can collaborate with administrators, interventionists, and other classroom teachers to support student achievement.
Illuminate and eduCLIMBER can be leveraged and implemented as a strategy to resolve issues related to insufficient or inappropriate service delivery for struggling learners. It is frequently adopted by schools to respond to citation for over or under identification, both of which negatively impede overall school performance.
Sources: https://www2.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.html
