A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

   FOR RELEASE                             Contact:  David W. Thomas    March 16, 1995                                     (202) 401-1579

Palm Beach County Schools First In The Nation To Receive Waiver Under Improving America's School Act

As a result, Palm Beach County can continue pursuing improvement strategies in 22 elementary schoolwide programs and follow through with long-standing plans to begin six new elementary schoolwide programs next school year.

"This is a good example where easing regulations helps schools," Riley said. "Our main goals in granting waivers are to help increase the quality of instruction and improve students' academic performance. That will be the result of the waiver."

Riley granted a one-year waiver of a provision in the new law that requires a school district to serve all schools with percentages of poverty at or above 75 percent, including middle and high schools, before serving schools with lower poverty rates. Under the waiver, Palm Beach will delay providing Title I funds to four secondary schools until the 1996-97 school year.

Without the waiver, according to Palm Beach school officials, they would have insufficient Title I funds to serve their elementary schoolwide programs at the level necessary to sustain them, or to carry out plans to add six more elementary schools that have 60 percent or higher poverty levels.

The school district decided three years ago to focus on elementary schools and to have all eligible schools operate as schoolwide programs, consistent with the local belief that "intervention in the early years is crucial to at-risk students."

As the name implies, schoolwide programs seek to improve the academic achievement of all students in high-poverty schools, rather than targeting special help only to students identified as educationally disadvantaged. Research and evaluations of effective schoolwide projects have shown that the whole-school approach can help all students in high-poverty schools by offering them the best instruction based on challenging standards, and by keeping the most needy students in class with peers who can show the way.

The Improving America's Schools Act enables more Title I schools to develop schoolwide programs by lowering the minimum poverty level at which a school can become a schoolwide program from 75 to 60 percent.

In addition, schoolwide programs can combine Title I funds with other federal, state, and local funds to serve all students in the school.

At $7 billion a year, Title I is the federal government's largest contribution to K-12 education for disadvantaged students.

The new waiver provisions respond to a longstanding request that originated during a 1989 education summit convened by President Bush and the nation's governors -- including President Clinton and Deputy Education Secretary Madeleine Kunin. The governors asked the federal government for more flexibility in exchange for greater accountability -- and that is accomplished under the new law proposed by President Clinton.