Description
The Turnaround Challenge
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
Prepared through a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Mass Insight Education and Research Institute
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108 • tel: 617-778-1500 • fax: 617-778-1505 • www.massinsight.org
School Turnaround: a dramatic and
comprehensive intervention in a low-performing
school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
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Mass Insight Education & Research Institute (project organizer)
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent non-profit
that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly
improve student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scale
depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice; and that only dramatic
and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will produce significant achievement gains.
The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform
model now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using Advanced
Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transform
school culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108
617-778-1500 Fax: 617-778-1505
For more information about Mass Insight and for additional
resources and tools relating to the turnaround of under-performing
schools, please find us on the web at www.massinsight.org.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (lead funder)
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works
to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In developing countries, it focuses
on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public
libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great
education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving
the lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer
and Co-chairs William H. Gates Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.
www.gatesfoundation.org
Copyright © 2007 by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, a 501c3 non-profit
organization. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy this report for non-commercial use.
Mass Insight Education
& Research Institute Funders
Leadership Sponsors
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Barr Foundation
The Boston Foundation
National Math & Science Initiative
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
NewSchools Venture Fund
Major and Contributing Sponsors
Analog Devices
Bank of America
Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation
EMC Corporation
Genzyme Corporation
Goodwin Procter
IBM
Intel Corporation
Liberty Mutual
Mass High Tech Council
Mass Mutual Insurance
Microsoft Corporation
The Noyce Foundation
State Street Corporation
Teradyne
Verizon Communications
Public Sources of Funds
Federal/State
• Massachusetts Department of Education
• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership
• Comprehensive School Reform
• Massachusetts Board of Higher Education
Districts/Schools: Membership fees
and earned revenue for field services
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent
non-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state
government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closing
achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that
change at scale depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice;
and that only dramatic and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will
produce significant achievement gains. The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight
implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform model now inform the organiza-
tion's national work on two high-impact goals:
• using Advanced Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science
achievement and to transform school culture, and
• the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
We are:
Synthesizers and providers of research. Mass Insight is a national resource for
practical information on how to effectively implement standards-based education.
The Turnaround Challenge represents a new form of educational policy research:
highly graphical, presented in varying user-formats (print, presentation, web), and
expressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our Building
Blocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-
practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep the
Promise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classes
subject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies for
serving them.
Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,
informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and its
predecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role in
shaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insight
consults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recently
helping to design school turnaround programs in Illinois and Washington State.
Leaders in standards-based services to schools. We provide practical, research-
based technical services, staff and leadership development programs, and consulting
services to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great Schools
Coalition, a 10-year-old partnership of nearly 30 change-oriented Massachusetts
districts. Our field services have focused on math and science, and over the next five-
to-ten years will revolve principally around using increased access to AP® courses and
improved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructional
change in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through the
National Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 million
as the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.
See www.massinsight.org for more details.
i
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Prepared through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
By Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash
ii
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The authors and Mass Insight Education & Research
Institute would like to express our deep appreciation
to the researchers, policymakers, reform experts, superin-
tendents, principals, and teachers who contributed to the
development of The Turnaround Challenge. The conclu-
sions reached in this report are our own, but they reflect
extensive input from a broad range of project participants.
Thanks also go to our partners at the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, whose support made the project possible. We
owe a deep debt of gratitude, as well, to our core advisors
on the project, particularly Irving Hamer of the
Millennium Group (www.the-m-group.com), who as
Deputy Superintendent was the architect of Miami-Dade’s
Improvement Zone; and Bryan Hassel, noted researcher
and writer on No Child Left Behind and school reform
(www.publicimpact.com). NewSchools Venture Fund
provided funding for a separate research project that
proved extremely valuable to our work on this report.
Finally, this project drew inspiration and evidence from a
wide body of research focused on under- and over-per-
forming schools, change management, and the impacts of
poverty on learning. Special thanks go to Karin
Chenoweth, author of It’s Being Done (Harvard Education
Press, 2007); David Berliner (“Our Impoverished View of
Education Reform,” Teachers College Record, 2006); and
Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (No Excuses: Closing the
Racial Gap in Learning, Simon & Schuster, 2003), all of
whose work gave us confidence that The Turnaround
Challenge can in fact be met.
Authors
Andrew Calkins is Senior Vice President of Mass
Insight Education & Research Institute. He was former-
ly the Executive Director of the nonprofit organization
Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., and a senior editor
and project manager at Scholastic Inc.
William Guenther is Founder and President
of Mass Insight Education & Research Institute.
He is also the founder of Mass Insight Corporation,
a Boston-based research and consulting firm that
seeks to keep Massachusetts and its businesses and
institutions globally competitive.
Grace Belfiore is Senior Editor at Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute. The holder of a
doctorate in education history from Oxford University,
she has worked as a researcher and editor in standards-
based education in both the U.S. and U.K., and was
formerly the director of Pergamon Open Learning, a
self-paced learning division at Reed Elsevier Publishers.
Dave Lash is a strategy and innovation consultant with
expertise in designing and implementing new initiatives.
Principal of Dave Lash & Company
(www.davelash.com), he helped develop the conceptual
models and visual orientation of this report.
Mass Insight Education
and Research Institute
Senior management and project-related staff:
William Guenther, President
Andrew Calkins, Senior Vice President
Melanie Winklosky, Vice President, Development & Operations
Alison Fraser, Great Schools Campaign Director
Joanna Manikas, Design and Production Director
Grace Belfiore, Senior Editor
Charles Chieppo, Senior Writer
Chris Tracey, Researcher/Writer
Deb Abbott, Finance Manager
Julie Corbett, Program Associate
Elizabeth Hiles, Research Associate
Linda Neri Watts, Contributing Editor
Donna Michitson, Graphic Designer
Danielle Stein, [former] Program Mgr., Building Blocks
Project and editorial consultants:
Ethan Cancell, Brockton Public Schools
Bryan Hassel, Public Impact, Inc.
Irving Hamer, Millennium Group
Richard O’Neill, Renaissance School Services
Adam Kernan-Schloss, KSA-Plus
Jennifer Vranek, Education First Consulting
Anne Lewis
Project partners:
Michael Cohen and Matt Gandal, Achieve Inc.
National project advisors
and focus group participants:
Richard Elmore, Harvard University
Tokes Fashola, American Institutes for Research
Lauren Rhim, University of Maryland
Douglas Sears, Boston University
Ken Wong, Brown University
Tim Knowles, University of Chicago
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Cleveland State University
Vicki Phillips, [formerly] Portland, OR Public Schools
Kati Haycock, The Education Trust
Andrew Rotherham, Ed Sector
Richard Hess, American Enterprise Institute
Amy Starzynski, Holland & Knight
Scott Palmer, Holland & Knight
Ana Tilton, NewSchools Venture Fund
Renuka Kher, NewSchools Venture Fund
Anthony Cavanna, American Institutes for Research
Robin Lake, Center for Reinventing Education
Monica Byrn-Jimenez, UMass Boston
Brett Lane, Education Alliance at Brown University
Cheryl Almedia, Jobs for the Future
Celine Coggins, Rennie Center for Education Reform
David Farbman, Mass 2020
Jamie Gass, Pioneer Institute
Fred Carrigg, New Jersey Department of Education
Ron Peiffer, Maryland Department of Education
JoAnne Carter, Maryland Department of Education
Dane Linn, National Governors Association
Fritz Edelstein, U.S. Conference of Mayors
Julie Bell, National Conference of State Legislatures
Sunny Kristin, National Conference of State Legislatures
Massachusetts project advisors
and focus group participants:
Juliane Dow, Massachusetts Department of Education
Lynda Foisy, Massachusetts Department of Education
Spencer Blasdale, Academy of the Pacific Rim, Boston
Sally Dias, Emmanuel College
Peggy Kemp, Fenway High School, Boston
Ken Klau, Massachusetts Department of Education
Matt Malone, Swampscott Public Schools
Earl Metzler, Sterling Middle School, Quincy
Paul Natola, Boston Public Schools
Basan Nembirkow, Brockton Public Schools
Kiki Papagiotis, Salem High School
Ann Southworth, Springfield Public Schools
Acknowledgements
1
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Introductory Material and Executive Summary
Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................................ii
Contents.......................................................................................................................................................1
Foreword......................................................................................................................................................2
12 Tough Questions: A Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround...................................................3
The Main Ideas in The Turnaround Challenge................................................................................................4
Executive Summary of the Report..................................................................................................................8
Part 1: The Challenge of School Turnaround
1.1 The Goals, Methodology, and Organization of This Report...................................................................14
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge....................................................................16
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround – and an Entry Point for Real Reform?................................................20
Part 2: How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
2.1 Understanding the DNA We Must Replicate at Scale...........................................................................24
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor Children......................................................26
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning.....................................................................................28
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness Model..........................................................30
2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP Schools ...............................................................................................38
Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Odds for Turnaround Schools
3.1 Moving Beyond Marginal to Fundamental Change .............................................................................40
3.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective Turnaround.....................................................................44
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround....................................................................48
3.4 The Third C: Clustering for Support .....................................................................................................52
Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools
4.1 Towards a Framework that Offers Good Support for Good Design.......................................................56
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School Intervention......................................................................................58
4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not Enough................................................................................................64
Part 5: A Framework for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools ............................................................69
Appendix A: School Intervention to Date: Goals, Strategies, and Impact
A.1 School Intervention to Date: Goals, Strategies, and Impact ..................................................................90
A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of Turnaround .................................................................................92
A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of Turnaround....................................................................................96
A.4 System Redesign: Program, People – and Conditions Change ...........................................................100
Appendix B: References......................................................................................................................................108
Additional information available
in the Supplemental Report
Profiles of Ten State Intervention Strategies for
Under-Performing Schools
Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia
Profiles of Four School District Strategies for
Under-Performing Schools
Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York City, Philadelphia
HPHP Schools in Action: Lessons from High-
Performing, High-Poverty High Schools
Five Schools Drawn from Mass Insight’s Building Blocks
Effective-Practice Research
Poverty's “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning
and the Implications for School Design
An Expanded Analysis
Resources for Advocacy and Research
on School Turnaround
An Annotated Bibliography of Turnaround Resources
The Turnaround Challenge and its Supplemental
Report can be downloaded from the web at
www.massinsight.org.
Table of Contents
2
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
I
n Time magazine’s recent analysis of the impact of the No Child Left Behind
Act (June 4, 2007), the effort was given an overall grade of C, with some
aspects of the law and its implementation rating an A or a B. What brought the
overall judgment down was the F, by far the lowest grade, given to the category
Helping Schools Improve. “Even the Department of Education,” Time wrote, “con-
cedes that its remedies for chronic school
failure are not working.” ABC-News was lit-
tle more encouraging in its appraisal, giving
“rescue plans for failing schools” a D.
These highly critical reports arrive alongside
of others lauding individual school success
stories. In fact, higher standards and testing
have helped to demonstrate, more clearly
than ever before, that schools serving highly
challenged, high-poverty student enrollments
– the kind of schools most likely to be
deemed “chronic failures” – can succeed. But
we have clearly not developed ways to extend
that success, or to apply successful schools’
strategies to help struggling schools improve.
It is a poignant and troubling irony. Just as
we discover that demographics need not
determine destiny, the nation’s new school-
quality measurement tools reveal that for
students attending our worst-performing
schools… in fact, it does. By the end of the decade, at current rates, about five per-
cent of all U.S. public schools will be identified as chronic failures in need of what
NCLB calls “restructuring.” (See chart, displayed with more detail on page 16.)
The vast majority of students at these schools “graduate” to the next level with a
skills and knowledge deficit that all but cripples their chances at future success.
How can we interrupt this cycle?
That was the charge given to us by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
September, 2005: examine the landscape of current effort to turn around the
nation’s most chronically under-performing schools and develop a new frame-
work for states, working in partnership with communities and districts, to apply
to school turnaround. The Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute represented
a compelling choice for the foundation to
conduct this work: a non-profit organiza-
tion that has been deeply involved in policy
facilitation, education reform advocacy,
effective-practice research, and intensive
school-improvement services simultaneous-
ly at the state level for ten years. All of these
capacities informed this report, as did the
fact that our home and our work over that
decade has been in Massachusetts – a
national model, in many ways, for effective
standards-based reform.
But on the issue of school turnaround there
is much to be done, here in the
Commonwealth and in every state, bar
none. There are no easy answers – except
one. To the question, Will current interven-
tion strategies produce the results we want?,
the research returns a definitive “No.” The
analysis, conclusions, and framework presented in The Turnaround Challenge, we
hope, will help educators, school reformers, and policy leaders across the country
develop a new generation of turnaround strategies that carry, at the very least, the
possibility of success.
William Guenther and Andrew Calkins
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, Inc.
Boston, Massachusetts
Foreword
2005-2006 2006-2007
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Turning Around the Bottom Five Percent:
5,000 Schools in Restructuring by 2010
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010
600
1,100
1,900
3,300
4,900
School Turnaround: a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in a
low-performing school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
Chart projections are based on actual 2005-2006 data for schools in Restructuring Status under NCLB with the assumption
that the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constant over the next four years. Source of 2005-06 data: Center on
Education Policy (2006).
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
3
12 Tough Questions
A Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround
Use this self-audit to measure the probable impact of your state’s approach to school
turnaround. A corollary tool for school principals charged with turnaround can be
found on page 88, following this report’s recommended policy framework.
Evaluating Your State’s Commitment
1. Has your state visibly focused on its lowest-performing five percent of schools
and set specific, two-year turnaround goals, such as bringing achievement at
least to the current high-poverty school averages in the state?
2. Does your state have a plan in place that gives you confidence that it can
deliver on these goals?
3. If not: Is there any evidence that the state is taking steps to accept its
responsibility to ensure that students in the lowest-performing schools
have access to the same quality of education found in high-performing,
high-poverty schools?
Evaluating Your State’s Strategy
4. Does your state recognize that a turnaround strategy for failing schools
requires fundamental changes that are different from an incremental
improvement strategy?
5. Has your state presented districts and schools with:
• a sufficiently attractive set of turnaround services and policies, collected
within a protected turnaround “zone,” so that schools actively want to
gain access to required new operating conditions, streamlined regulations,
and resources; and
• alternative consequences (such as chronically under-performing status
and a change in school governance) that encourage schools and districts
to volunteer?
6. Does your state provide the student information and data analysis systems
schools need to assess learning and individualize teaching?
7. Changing Conditions: Does your state’s turnaround strategy provide school-
level leaders with sufficient streamlined authority over staff, schedule, budget
and program to implement the turnaround plan? Does it provide for sufficient
incentives in pay and working conditions to attract the best possible staff and
encourage them to do their best work?
8. Building Capacity – Internal: Does your state recognize that turnaround
success depends primarily on an effective “people strategy” that recruits,
develops, and retains strong leadership teams and teachers?
9. Building Capacity – External: Does your state have a strategy to develop lead
partner organizations with specific expertise needed to provide intensive
school turnaround support?
10. Clustering for Support: Within the protected turnaround zones, does your state
collaborate with districts to organize turnaround work into school clusters
(by need, school type, region, or feeder pattern) that have a lead partner
providing effective network support?
State Leadership and Funding
11. Is there a distinct and visible state entity that, like the schools in the turn-
around zone, has the necessary flexibility to act, as well as the required
authority, resources, and accountability to lead the turnaround effort?
12. To the extent that your state is funding the turnaround strategy, is that
commitment a) adequate and b) at the school level, contingent on fulfilling
requirements for participation in the turnaround zone?
4
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Despite steadily increasing urgency about
the nation’s lowest-performing schools –
those in the bottom five percent – efforts to
turn these schools around have largely
failed. Marginal change has led to marginal
(or no) improvement. These schools, the
systems supporting them, and our manage-
ment of the change process require funda-
mental rethinking, not more tinkering. We
will not make the difference we need to
make if we continue with current strategies.
That much is clear.
What does successful school turnaround
entail? To begin with: a “protected space”
where schools are given the flexibility,
resources, and support that teachers and
administrators are calling for – and that true
cultural and system change requires.
A Specialized Discipline
Turnaround requires dramatic changes that pro-
duce significant achievement gains in a short peri-
od (within two years), followed by a longer period
of sustained improvement. Turning around
chronically under-performing schools is a differ-
ent and far more difficult undertaking than school
improvement. It should be recognized within
education – as it is in other sectors – as a distinct
professional discipline that requires specialized
experience, training, and support.
There is little track record of turnaround success
at scale. A few large urban districts such as
Chicago, Miami-Dade, and New York City have
undertaken promising turnaround strategies, but
most are in their early stages and developing the
capacity to fully implement them continues to be
a challenge.
Broader implementation of the lessons learned
from these turnaround pioneers will require state
action on a number of fronts:
• Require failing schools and their districts to
either pursue more proactive turnaround strate-
gies or lose control over the school.
• Make fundamental changes in the conditions
under which those schools operate.
• Develop a local marketplace of
partner/providers skilled in this discipline.
• Appropriate the $250,000-$1,000,000 per year
required to turn around a failing school.
A Special Zone for School Turnaround
Comprehensive turnaround will be most effective
when it is actively initiated by districts and schools
in response to state requirements and with state
support. States must work to create an appealing
“space” or zone for failing schools that provides
high-impact reforms such as control over
hiring/placement, scheduling, and budgeting, and
incentive pay to draw experienced teachers. States
must also create distinctly unappealing alterna-
tives that include consequences like school closure
or state-directed restructuring.
Within the Zone: The Three ‘C’ Strategies,
Supporting a Strong Focus on People
Turnaround is essentially a people-focused enter-
prise. States, districts, schools, and outside part-
ners must organize themselves to attract, develop,
and apply people with skills to match the needs of
struggling schools and students.
The Main Ideas in The Turnaround Challenge
Why America’s best opportunity to dramatically improve student achievement lies
in our worst-performing schools
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
5
Three basic elements, this report proposes, are
required to make that strategy succeed:
1. Change conditions. Create a protected space
free of bureaucratic restrictions and overly
stringent collective bargaining agreements.
Provide incentives to challenge and motivate
people to do their best work.
2. Increase capacity internally on school staffs,
especially among school leaders, and externally
through a strong marketplace of local
providers with the experience and ability to
serve as lead turnaround partners (see below).
3. Organize clusters of schools – either within a
district or across districts – with their own lead
turnaround partner providing comprehensive
services focused on turnaround. These clusters
can be grouped by need, school type, region, or
other characteristics.
New State Agency and Commitment
To facilitate the three ‘C’s, states must create a
visible, effective agency that – like turnaround
schools themselves – is free from normal bureau-
cratic constraints and has a flexible set of operat-
ing rules that allow it to carry out its mission.
Turnaround work is expensive. In addition to
creating a management agency with the necessary
authority and flexibility, the work requires ade-
quate resources with corresponding accountabili-
ty measures in place. Since failing schools cus-
tomarily lack a vocal constituency to champion
their cause, the state commitment must realisti-
cally include vigorous advocacy by the governor,
state board of education, state superintendent,
and leaders from the legislature, business, the
nonprofit/foundation community, and the media.
New Model of Turnaround Partners
Failing schools need skilled outside assistance to
mount a comprehensive, sustained turnaround
initiative. That will require a far stronger resource
base of partners than the patchwork of individual
consultants (mostly retired educators) now assist-
ing with intervention in most states. It also will
require development of a special category of lead
turnaround partners – providers that act as inte-
grators of multiple services. The absence of such
integrating partners leaves teachers, schools, and
districts enmeshed within a confusing array of
disconnected outside providers.
Lead turnaround partners would integrate multi-
ple services either as a contractor for school
management or on a consulting basis, in con-
junction with the district. Lead partners would
provide a comprehensive set of integrated aca-
demic (and perhaps some back-office) services.
The Benchmark: High-Performing,
High-Poverty Schools
A small number of schools throughout the coun-
try successfully serve high-poverty populations
similar to those that typically attend our lowest
performing schools. HPHP schools exhibit three
overarching characteristics. Together, they make
up what the report calls the Readiness model – a
set of strategies that turnaround efforts should
emulate. The Readiness dimensions include:
Readiness to Learn
• Schools directly address poverty-related student
deficits with such strategies as:
– Extended school day and longer year
– Action against poverty-related adversity
– Discipline and engagement
– Close student-adult relationships
Readiness to Teach
• Shared staff responsibility for student achievement
• Personalized instruction based on diagnostic
assessment and flexible time on task
• Teaching culture that stresses collaboration and
continuous improvement
Readiness to Act
• Ability to make mission-driven decisions about
people, time, money, and program
• Leaders adept at securing additional resources
and leveraging partner relationships
• Creative responses to constant unrest
With more than 5,000 schools heading towards
the most extreme category of underperformance
(“Restructuring”) under No Child Left Behind by
2009-10, states have little time to waste before
mounting retooled initiatives with the compre-
hensiveness and imagination necessary to suc-
cessfully turn around those failing schools.
The Turnaround Challenge is being released
nationally, with the assistance of a number of
education organizations. The Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute plans to follow up
on this report with a national research-and-devel-
opment initiative to produce step-by-step blue-
prints, tools, and sample policy language for
states and districts committed to pursuing more
proactive forms of turnaround. The initiative also
will examine ways that states and the federal gov-
ernment can spur the development of a much
stronger resource base of highly skilled turn-
around partners. All of this work will be under-
taken in conjunction with a number of collabo-
rating organizations and public agencies.
More information on school turnaround can be
found at our web site at www.massinsight.org.
“While 39 states have the authority to take strong actions,
and while these same 39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably improved for years,
we still find strong interventions extremely rare.”
– Researcher Ronald Brady, 2003
Call to Action
Marginal change = marginal results for under-performing schools
Massachusetts, Mass Insight’s home state, is widely (and deservedly) cited as a leader in achievement
and effective school reform. But the story of the Commonwealth’s poorest-performing schools nonetheless reflects
a national social policy crisis: America’s collective inability to help high-challenge, high-poverty, low-achieving schools succeed.
And: our willingness to let these schools (like the one described in the graph above)
struggle while generations of students pass through, emerging without the skills they need.
Massachusetts has moved, since 2005, toward stronger forms of intervention and support in its failing schools.
So have some other states and large school districts. A few high-performing, high-poverty schools are showing the way.
But without sustained commitment and dramatically different strategies, the future will look like the past.
In the spirit of igniting that commitment and galvanizing bold new responses to the turnaround challenge, we offer this report.
7
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
THE PROBLEM
Five percent or 5,000 of America’s one
hundred thousand public schools,
representing more than 2,500,000 students,
are on track to fall into the most extreme
federal designation for failure by 2009-10.
Many more schools will be placed in less extreme categories; in
some states, the percentage will significantly exceed 50%. But a
good portion of these schools will be so designated because of
lagging gains in one or more student subgroups, under the fed-
eral No Child Left Behind Act. These schools face challenges
that may be solved by fairly modest forms of assistance.
But the 1,100 schools already in Restructuring – the most
extreme designation – as well as those likely soon to reach
it represent a level of persistent failure that commands swift,
dramatic intervention.
Why Schools Fail
These schools fail because the challenges they face are
substantial; because they themselves are dysfunction-
al; and because the system of which they are a part
is not responsive to the needs of the high-poverty
student populations they tend to serve.
The school model our society provides to urban, high-poverty,
highly diverse student populations facing 21st-century skill
expectations is largely the same as that used throughout
American public education, a model unchanged from its origins
in the early 20th century. This highly challenged student demo-
graphic requires something significantly different – particularly
at the high school level.
Turnaround: A New Response
Standards, testing, and accountability enable us,
for the first time, to identify with conviction our
most chronically under-performing schools.
Turnaround is the emerging response to an entirely
new dynamic in public education: the threat of
closure for underperformance.
Dramatic change requires urgency and an atmosphere of crisis.
The indefensibly poor performance records at these schools –
compared to achievement outcomes at model schools serving
serving similar student populations (see The Benchmark, next
page) – should ignite exactly the public, policymaker, and profes-
sional outrage needed to justify dramatic action. If status-quo
thinking continues to shield the dysfunctions that afflict these
schools, there can be little hope for truly substantial reform
throughout the system. Turnaround schools, in other words, rep-
resent both our greatest challenge – and an opportunity for signif-
icant, enduring change that we cannot afford to pass up.
1. The Problem – and the Vision
2. The Challenge of Change 3. The Way Forward 1. The Problem – and the Vision
8
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
THE BOTTOM LINE
Turning around the “bottom five” percent of schools
is the crucible of education reform. They represent
our greatest, clearest need – and therefore a great
opportunity to bring about fundamental change.
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
For more information on the
magnitude and nature of the
turnaround challenge, see Part 1
of this report. For more on the
strategies and lessons offered by
high-performing, high-poverty
schools, see Part 2 and the
Supplemental Report.
The Benchmark
A small but growing number of high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools are demonstrating that differ-
ent approaches can bring highly challenged student
populations to high achievement.
How do they do it? Extensive analysis of HPHP school practice
and effective schools research revealed nine strategies that turn the
daily turbulence and challenges of high-poverty settings into
design factors that increase the effectiveness with which these
schools promote learning and achievement. These strategies
enable the schools to acknowledge and foster students’ Readiness
to Learn, enhance and focus staff’s Readiness to Teach, and expand
teachers’ and administrators’ Readiness to Act in dramatically dif-
ferent ways than more traditional schools. This dynamic “HPHP
Readiness Model” is represented in the graphic above.
A “New-World” Approach
As understanding of these Readiness elements grows, it becomes clear
that HPHP schools are not making the traditional model of education
work better; they are reinventing what schools do. We call this “New-
World” schooling, in contrast to the “Old-World” model – a linear,
curriculum-driven “conveyor belt” that students and schools try (with
little success in high-poverty settings) to keep up with.
The New-World model evokes instead the sense of a medical team
rallying to each student, backed by a whole system of skilled profes-
sionals, processes, and technologies organized and ready to analyze,
diagnose, and serve the goal of learning. The converging arrows
symbolizing this "New-World" model of education lie at the center of
the Readiness Triangle. What happens in classrooms between
teacher and student is the most critical moment in the delivery of the
education service. But the quality of that moment depends entirely
on the readiness of the system and the people who are part of it to
teach, learn, and act effectively and in accordance with the mission.
How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools Do It: The HPHP Readiness Model
FIGURE A
2. The Challenge of Change
WHAT’S BEEN TRIED
The research on turnaround of failing schools
reveals some scattered, individual successes,
but very little enduring progress at scale.
Most schools in Restructuring (the federal designation for
chronic under-performance) are like organisms that have built
immunities, over years of attempted intervention, to the “medi-
cine” of incremental reform. Low-expectation culture, reform-
fatigued faculty, high-percentage staff turnover, inadequate lead-
ership, and insufficient authority for fundamental change all
contribute to a general lack of success, nationally, in turning fail-
ing schools around and the near-total lack of success in conduct-
ing successful turnaround at scale.
Turnaround vs. “School Improvement”
Most of what’s applied to under-performing schools
today represents an incremental-change effort or an
incomplete attempt at wholesale change.
“Light-touch” efforts that redirect curriculum or provide leader-
ship coaching may help some average-performing schools
improve, but they are clearly not sufficient to produce successful
turnaround of chronically poor-performing schools. This is not
surprising, given that high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP)
schools have evolved such fundamentally different strategies to
achieve success, and that turnaround initiatives need additionally
to break through existing inertia.
Turnaround, as we are defining it here, is different from school
improvement because it focuses on the most consistently under-
performing schools and involves dramatic, transformative
change. Change that, in fact, is propelled by imperative: the
school must improve or it will be redefined or closed.
The Inadequate Response to Date
Our collective theory of change has been timid, com-
pared to the nature and magnitude of the need. Most
reform efforts focus on program change and limit
themselves to providing help. Some also allow for
changing people. A very few also focus on changing
conditions and incentives, especially the degree of lead-
ership authority over staff, time, and money.
Analysis of school intervention efforts to date confirms that they
are generally marked by:
Inadequate design: lack of ambition, comprehensiveness,
integration, and networking support
Inadequate capacity: fragmented training initiatives, instead
of an all-encompassing people strategy and strong, integrated
partnerships that support the mission
Inadequate incentive change: driven more by compliance
than buy-in
Inadequate political will: episodic and sometimes confusing
policy design; under-funding; and inconsistent political support
Focusing on program reform is safe. It produces little of the con-
troversy that the more systemic reforms (human resource man-
agement, governance, budget control) can spark. NCLB, despite
its intended objectives, has effectively endorsed and supported
risk-averse turnaround strategies through its open-ended fifth
option for schools entering Restructuring. The net result: little
track record nationally – and that mostly at the district level,
not the state – in comprehensive, system-focused, condition-
changing turnaround.
For more on responses to date, see Part 3, Appendix A, and the
Supplemental Report.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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2. The Challenge of Change 3. The Way Forward 1. The Problem – and the Vision
What Success Requires:
A “Zone” for Effective Turnaround
States and districts can engineer more effective turn-
around at scale by creating space that supports outside-
the-system approaches, focused inside the system.
The high-performing, high-poverty schools we studied tend to
reflect characteristics of highly entrepreneurial organizations.
That makes sense. These schools are succeeding either by working
outside of traditional public education structures (charters); or by
working around those structures, internally (in-district charter-
likes); or by operating exceptionally well against the system – with
emphasis on exceptionally. Lessons from these schools indicate a
need for the following elements in any school turnaround effort –
all of which reflect characteristics that are not norms, broadly
speaking, of traditional inside-the-system public schooling:
Clearly defined authority to act based on what’s best for chil-
dren and learning – i.e., flexibility and control over staffing,
scheduling, budget, and curriculum
Relentless focus on hiring and staff development as part of an
overall “people strategy” to ensure the best possible teaching force
Highly capable, distributed school leadership – i.e., not sim-
ply the principal, but an effective leadership team
Additional time in the school day and across the school year
Performance-based behavioral expectations for all stakehold-
ers including teachers, students, and (often) parents
Integrated, research-based programs and related social services
that are specifically designed, personalized, and adjusted to
address students’ academic and related psycho-social needs
A handful of major school districts – Chicago, Miami-Dade, New
York City, Philadelphia – are experimenting with turnaround zones in
an effort to establish protected space for these kinds of approaches.
(See graphic at right.) The opportunity for states is to create this kind
of protected space for turnarounds on behalf of all school districts.
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Applying Outside-the-System Approaches,
Focused Inside the System
11
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE B
Building the Turnaround Model:
In order to enable school-level reform that incorporates the three “readiness” dimensions of
high-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – either
within or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibit
reform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a framework
of strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.
3. The Way Forward
A CALL TO ACTION FOR STATES
Effective turnaround at scale calls for bold,
comprehensive action from the state, working
together with districts and outside partners.
State governments must take strong action – even in strong local-
control states. They must act in concert with districts and out-
side providers. With rare exceptions, schools and districts –
essentially risk-averse, conservative cultures – will not undertake
the dramatic changes required for successful turnaround on their
own. But while states may have the responsibility to ensure equi-
table intervention across district lines, they clearly do not have
the capacity to implement turnaround on the ground at the scale
of the need. Their role is to require fundamental, not incremen-
tal change; establish operating conditions that support, rather
than undermine, the desired changes; add new capacity in high-
leverage school and district roles and establish turnaround part-
ners; and galvanize local capacity where it is currently trapped in
dysfunctional settings.
The Three ‘C’s of Turnaround at Scale
Our research suggests that a coherent, comprehensive
state turnaround initiative would incorporate three
key elements: Changing Conditions, Building
Capacity, and Clustering for Support.
Changing Conditions
Turnaround requires protected space that dismantles common
barriers to reform. Chronically under-performing schools offer a
politically defensible opportunity to create such a space. A few
entrepreneurial school districts (Chicago, Miami-Dade, New
York) have created such condition-changing zones or “carve-outs”
for their neediest schools. But others (Philadelphia, Oakland) have
needed intervention from the state to mount similar initiatives.
States should pass regulations (as Massachusetts has) or legislation
(as Maryland has) that produce sufficient leverage for all district
leaders to create the protected space they need for turnaround to
be effective. The best regulations change the incentives for local
stakeholders, motivating the development of turnaround zones in
order to gain their advantages – while avoiding “final option”
alternatives that would diminish district and union control.
The condition changes needed for turnaround zones can be con-
troversial. But turnaround leaders clearly must have the authori-
ty to act. That means a collaborative revision of many contractu-
al requirements in districts with unions. Districts, working with
turnaround partners and the state, must be able to install new
principals if needed; principals must in turn have control over
who is working in their buildings, along with the allocation of
money, time, and programming (including curriculum and part-
nerships with social services). Schools must be freed to take on
professional norms, including differentiated roles for teachers
and differentiated compensation. Decision-making must be freed
so that it revolves around the needs of children, not adults. At
the same time, each turnaround school cannot be expected to
design and manage its own change process; its latitude for deci-
sion-making lies within a framework of strong network support
and turnaround design parameters established by the state, and
carried out by districts and/or turnaround partners.
Building Capacity
Organizational turnaround in non-education-related fields
requires special expertise; school turnaround is no different. It is
a two-stage process that calls for fundamental transformation at
the start, managed by educators with the necessary training and
disposition, with steady, capacity-building improvement to fol-
low. Neither schools and districts, nor states, nor third-party
providers have sufficient capacity at present to undertake success-
ful turnaround at scale. Building that capacity for effective turn-
around – both inside of schools and among outside partners –
12
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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3. The Way Forward 2. The Challenge of Change 1. The Problem – and the Vision
must be the state’s responsibility, as school districts lack the
means and expertise to do so on their own. Moreover: turn-
around represents an opportunity to redesign the ways schools
work with outside partners. The fragmentation that characterizes
current school/provider relationships needs to be replaced by an
integrated approach that aligns outside support around the turn-
around plan, organized by a single “systems integrator” partner.
Clustering for Support
Turnaround has meaningful impact at the level of the school build-
ing, but turnaround at scale cannot be accomplished in ones and
twos. States and districts should undertake turnaround in clusters
organized around identified needs: by school type (e.g., middle
schools or grade 6-12 academies), student characteristics (very high
ELL percentages), feeder patterns (elementary to middle to high
school), or region. Clusters should be small enough to operate
effectively as networks, but large enough to be an enterprise – i.e.,
to provide valuable, efficient support from the network center.
The Political Realities: Enabling the State Role
Turnaround of failing local schools has no natural constituency.
Coalitions of support must instead be built at two levels –
statewide and community-wide. To ensure sustained and suffi-
cient statewide commitment to turnaround reforms and invest-
ments, someone (governor, commissioner, business/community
leader) or some agency must create an advocacy coalition of
political, education, corporate, foundation, university, and non-
profit leaders. To ensure broad commitment to turnaround at
the community level, states can blend the leverage of accounta-
bility-based sanctions (you risk losing authority over this school
if you fail to act) with the “carrot” of resources and condition-
change. Finally: to design and implement turnaround effectively,
states must create an appropriate coordinating body or mecha-
nism to lead the work, ideally as a public/private agency linked
to the state department of education.
For more on the three ‘C’s and the state role, see Parts 3 and 4 of
this report, along with the proposed Framework in Part 5.
13
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE C
From Fragmented Improvement Projects
to Integrated Turnaround Strategies
T
he goal of this study was to pro-
duce recommendations for states
and school districts seeking a flexible,
systematic approach to swift and signif-
icant transformation in schools (partic-
ularly high schools) deemed chronically
under-performing under No Child Left
Behind or state accountability systems.
Our research leads us to believe that
turnaround of this kind is achievable,
and furthermore, has the potential to
open the door to more widespread dra-
matic education reform.
Transformation of this kind is, how-
ever, untested and unfamiliar territory
in school reform. There is no real
precedent for the threat of closure
due to under-performance – a new
concept in public education. There is
no clear consensus as to the distinc-
tions between turnaround, takeover,
restructuring, reconstitution, and
redesign. Finally, there is no blue-
print: despite the nation’s longstand-
ing struggle and angst over failing
schools, there is simply no consistent,
reliable, and enduring track record of
turnaround success at the district or
state level anywhere in the country.
Accordingly, the study was designed
not only to learn as much as possible
from past and current reform efforts,
but to broaden the analysis by looking
at specific root causes and at those
rare schools that defy the odds in
addressing them. This included:
• Researching the nature of under-
performance in schools serving dis-
advantaged, high-poverty enroll-
ments (which represent the bulk of
failing schools);
• Examining the well-documented
practices of individual high-per-
forming schools serving these
enrollments and distilling the strate-
gies they use to achieve their results;
• Analyzing a wide spectrum of
scaled-up school intervention, from
those simply providing guidance
and added capacity to more exten-
sive initiatives involving staff or
principal replacement,
closure/reopening, and the establish-
ment of special turnaround “zones”
with altered operating conditions;
• Isolating the key elements, intensity,
duration, resources, and funding
required for turnaround of under-
performing schools to take root; and
• Developing a framework for state
policymakers and school district
leaders to use in developing the sys-
tems, approaches, expanded capaci-
ty, and resource levels required to
bring about dramatic transforma-
tion in struggling schools.
For more on our research methodolo-
gy, see the facing page.
Tools for Practical Use
The project has produced several dif-
ferent tools for your use. They include:
• Main report: This summary of our
major findings, conclusions, and
recommendations, divided into
five Parts and Appendices A and B.
• Supplemental report: Additional
support for the most important
points made in the main report,
along with profiles of ten represen-
tative state intervention initiatives
and four district efforts, with arti-
facts and resources from several of
those initiatives. Available in print
and at www.massinsight.org.
• Downloadable presentations and
resources: Also available at
www.massinsight.org are presenta-
tion decks you may download and
customize to make the case for
coherent, well-supported turn-
around action in your state or dis-
trict. In addition, our website
offers a directory of available turn-
around resources which we will be
continually updating.
1.1 The Challenge of School Turnaround
How this report works, and what you can get out of it
1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround
Part 1 examines:
1.1 The Challenge of School
Turnaround
How this report works, and what
you can get out of it
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature
of the Turnaround Challenge
Many schools need assistance. The
bottom 5 percent need much,
much more
1.3 A Turning Point for
Turnaround – and an Entry
Point for Real Reform?
Failing schools offer a chance to do
things differently. Will we take it?
P A R T 1
14
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
15
Research Methodology
This Project Map presents the research
questions at the core of this project and the
organization of our answers in this report.
Research methods across a year’s worth of
information-gathering included the following:
• Literature analysis: More than 300
research reports, news articles, and other
resources on school intervention, related
federal and state policymaking, effective
schools, poverty impacts, change manage-
ment, and organizational turnaround
• Individual and group interviews with
practitioners, researchers, leading policy-
makers, and reform experts in more than
a dozen states
• Extensive interviews with directors
of school intervention in six major urban
districts and with 50 school management
and/or support organizations, through
a related research project supported by
the NewSchools Venture Fund
• Review of the report’s major findings
and recommendations by more than
two dozen national reform leaders and
project partners (see Acknowledgements
in the Introductory Material section of
the report)
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 1A
Research Investigations Report Elements
Map of The Turnaround Challenge
Part 1: The Challenge of School Turnaround
Understanding the nature and scale of the nation's
turnaround challenge; the reasons for hope; and the
present opportunity to make the practice of school
turnaround a model for change in public education
Part 2: How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
Three dimensions – Readiness to Learn,
Readiness to Teach, Readiness to Act –
in which exemplary high-poverty schools
excel, and what we should learn from them
Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Odds
for Turnaround Schools (See also: Appendix A)
Key lessons from existing, inadequate
restructuring efforts, resulting in a focus
on three critical elements of turnaround
design: conditions, capacity, and clustering.
Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
Why NCLB has failed to catalyze effective,
high-impact intervention strategies; how state
leaders can marshal the support required to
implement comprehensive turnaround
Part 5: A Framework for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
The core elements of a suggested
statewide framework for effective
turnaround at scale
1.1
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge
Many schools need assistance. The bottom five percent need much, much more.
T
he challenge for states and dis-
tricts seeking to turn around
chronically under-performing schools
is one of scale and of strategy, having
to do with the nature of these schools,
their students, and the systems of
which they are a part. The difficulty of
the challenge is reflected in the inade-
quacy of existing reform efforts,
proved by the lack of any sustained,
demonstrated success.
Number of Failing Schools
Rising Sharply
In 2005, the latest year for which
complete data are available, more
than 12,000 schools nationally (out of
roughly 100,000) fell into NCLB’s “In
Need of Improvement” category.
Some of these schools narrowly
missed their targets for a single year;
others missed the mark within just
one demographic subgroup (for
example, Latino students or pupils in
Special Education). Both the number
and the percentage are rising annual-
ly, and in all likelihood will continue
to do so as NCLB’s achievement tar-
gets rise towards the proficiency-for-
all goal in 2014.
This flood of schools labeled under-
performing has stirred concern across
the landscape of American public
education. Most relevant to our pur-
poses here: the concern that the ever-
increasing number and percentage of
schools falling into the NCLB watch-
lists are masking a deeper crisis in a
smaller set of schools – those in which
a large proportion of students have
failed to meet state standards for mul-
tiple years in a row.
These are not schools that have been
labeled “low performing” because of
issues with a single student sub-
group. These are schools that any
reasonable observer would agree are
chronically failing to provide their
students with an adequate education.
While states can establish different
definitions of “chronic failure,” such
as 50% of students failing for two or
more years in a row, the schools in
question are schools in which per-
formance has been so low for so long
that they would fall within practically
any definition of chronic failure a
state could devise.
Although inexact, projections of
schools identified for Restructuring,
the ultimate NCLB school-perform-
ance category, provide some estimate
of the number of these chronically
under-performing schools. As Figure
1B shows, if current trends persist,
some 5,000 public schools – about five
percent of all public schools national-
ly – will be in Restructuring by 2009-
10 as a result of failing to make
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for
multiple years.
The Roots of School Failure
These schools fail because the chal-
lenges they face are substantial;
because they themselves are dysfunc-
tional; and because the system of
2005-2006 2006-2007
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Nearly 5,000 Schools Are Projected to Be in Restructuring by 2010
FIGURE 1B
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010
600
1,100
1,900
3,300
4,900
Projections are based on actual 2005-2006 data for schools in Restructuring Status under
NCLB with the assumption that the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constant
over the next four years. Source of 2005-06 data: Center on Education Policy (2006).
The schools in question are schools in which performance
has been so low for so long that they would fall within
practically any definition of chronic failure a state could devise.
1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works
16
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
17
which they are a part is not responsive
to the needs of the high-poverty stu-
dent populations they tend to serve.
This report will discuss all of these
issues, but we begin with the first
and the third. Failing schools serve
mostly poor children. As charts from
eight states on page 27 amply
demonstrate, there is a strong corre-
lation between the family income
characteristics of schools and their
achievement outcomes. That’s not
news. What’s noteworthy about those
charts is the message they send about
the power of some high-poverty
schools to make big differences in
student achievement – and the joint
failure of public education and public
policy to adopt and extend what’s
working in those schools.
Poor children arrive at the school-
house door with deep learning
deficits. The neuroscience of disad-
vantage is clear: By age 3, children
born in poverty have acquired, on
average, only half the vocabulary of
their higher-income counterparts.
(Hart and Risley, 2003) By kinder-
garten, there is a significant deficit in
reading. (NCES, 2005) Being poor far
outweighs race/ethnicity, family struc-
ture, and other factors as causes of
cognitive disadvantage. (Lee and
Burkam, 2002)
Far from mitigating the achievement
gap, the experience of most children
in our public schools appears to
exacerbate it. As indicated in Figure
1C, by grade 4 children eligible for
free or reduced-priced lunch trail
their counterparts by two to three
grade levels in reading – the essential
skill for future learning. (NCES,
2005) By the time they reach grade
12, if they do so at all, poor and
minority students are about four
years behind other students in read-
ing. (Haycock et al, 2001)
As we will explore in Part 2, a child’s
economic circumstances are far from
the only factors inhibiting achieve-
ment in high-poverty schools. The
various risk factors have been well-
documented: higher absenteeism and
behavioral challenges, lower parent
involvement and different parenting
style, higher student migration and
teacher turnover rates, school budget
inequities, higher percentages of new
and under-prepared teachers, and a
prevailing culture of low expectations
for achievement, among others.
Furthermore, our poor and minority
students are highly concentrated in
high-poverty schools, and our minori-
ty and immigrant child populations
are soaring. (Fix and Passel, 2003)
Our failure, as a society, to interrupt
low achievement patterns in high-
poverty schools has significant conse-
quences not only for the children
involved, but also for society in gener-
al (see box, page 19).
Poverty Has an Early and Continuing
Impact on Achievement
FIGURE 1C
Being poor far outweighs
race/ethnicity, family
structure, and other
factors as causes of
cognitive disadvantage.
These schools fail because the challenges they face are
substantial; because they themselves are dysfunctional; and
because the system of which they are a part is not responsive
to the needs of the high-poverty student populations they
tend to serve.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
1.2
18
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge
(continued)
The Inadequacy
of Current Intervention
Given the nature and complexity of
these root causes for under-perform-
ance, it should not be too surprising
that existing, fairly marginal reform
efforts have generally failed to turn the
schools around. These are schools that
continue to fail students at rates that
are double their state averages, and
quadruple (or more) the failure rates
at the highest-performing schools
serving similar student populations.
For a variety of reasons, “first-genera-
tion” interventions – those prompted
since the crystallization of the higher-
standards movement in the early
1990s – have left these schools seem-
ingly untouched. Their achievement
rates are static. Their failure is com-
pounded, with interest, when their
graduates enter middle school or high
school or the workplace with skill sets
that are breathtakingly insufficient for
the new challenges they face.
Wasn’t standards-based reform sup-
posed to change all of this?
The answer is yes – or rather, yes-but.
The “but” in this context has to do
with the nature of public policy,
which tends to be long on the rhetoric
of immediacy but short on actions
that fundamentally alter the status
quo. And nowhere is that tendency
stronger than in education-related
public policy.
The standards movement, codified
nationally in 2002 with the passage of
No Child Left Behind, was and
remains today an effort billed as a
challenge to the status quo. NCLB and
the many partially overlapping state
accountability systems set in place
over the past decade have brought the
challenge of chronically under-per-
forming schools squarely into the pub-
lic limelight. Spurred in part by a kind
of sports-pages fascination with rank-
ings and lists, newspapers and other
media have enthusiastically embraced
the school-performance ratings
released by state education agencies,
splashing them with gusto across their
front pages. Lawmakers and policy-
makers across the country have initiat-
ed waves of regulation in response to
the (often) bad news in the rankings.
The new regulations have advanced a
number of different dimensions of
standards-based reform, including the
determination of the performance
standards themselves, performance
measurement in the form of testing,
and accountability systems designed to
categorize struggling schools. (See
Figure 1D, A “Pacing Guide” to
Standards-Based Reform.)
At the end of that line of standards-
based public policy initiatives comes
“intervention.” And there, public poli-
cy both nationally and in state capitals
across the country has mostly blinked.
Compared to the scale and immediacy
of the need, failing-school interven-
tion policy and the actions it has pre-
cipitated over the past decade can be
characterized this way: Ready... aim…
aim... aim… … aim some more….
A “Pacing Guide” to Standards-Based Reform:
At the End of the Sequence Is Intervention in Failing Schools
1. GOALS Establish clear standards for achievement
2. SUPPORT Provide resources, training, tools, funding
3. ACCOUNTABILITY At every level – districts, schools, students
4. ASSESSMENT High quality, matched with standards, and ensuring fairness
5. INTERVENTION First: support for struggling students
Second: turnaround for struggling schools
Intervention into struggling schools and districts is the least-
developed and least-understood dimension of the nation’s
standards-based reform movement.
Compared to the scale and immediacy of the need, failing-
school intervention policy and the actions it has precipitated
over the past decade can be characterized this way: Ready...
aim… aim... aim… … aim some more….
1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works
FIGURE 1D
19
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
The seven-year timeline, presented in
the Call to Action on page 7 of this
report, for Massachusetts’ response to
the first school to nudge its way into
the state’s Chronically Under-
Performing category is, unfortunately,
far too typical. Intervention into
struggling schools and districts is the
least-developed and least-understood
dimension of the nation’s standards-
based reform movement.
Indeed our analysis of state and dis-
trict intervention efforts (presented in
Part 3 and in detail in Appendix A
and the Supplemental Report) con-
firmed that the vast majority of these
efforts suffer from inadequate design,
stop well short of the comprehensive-
ness of change required, fail to pro-
vide the support that schools require,
and lack the comprehensive “people”
strategies needed to accompany dra-
matic change. School intervention has
been consistently under-funded and
provided with inconsistent political
support. While most involve only
changes in programs, some also
include changes in people; only a
handful address changes in conditions
that would allow the kind of
approaches used by high-performing,
high-poverty schools.
Nonetheless: it appears to us that the
time for more dramatic intervention
has come. Ironically, in making visi-
ble the indefensibility of the status
quo, failing schools’ well-documented
and chronic under-performance may
turn out to be the critical trigger for
effective reform.
Why It Matters
When Public Schools Consistently Fail the Children They Serve
It is difficult to overstate the importance of solving the challenge of chronically
under-performing schools. Within two years, schools in NCLB’s Restructuring cat-
egory will represent more than one million students nationally. Many of these
students will move to the next level without developing foundational skills that
are essential for success, particularly considering the higher-level capabilities
increasingly demanded by the knowledge economy. Many are destined to join
the ranks of high school dropouts, documented most recently in The Silent
Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts (Bridgeland et al, 2006), never
obtaining the high school diploma that is a critical, though increasingly insuffi-
cient, key to economic success. In six of the nine largest school districts in the
U.S., graduation rates are below 50%, and none of the nine has a rate higher
than 55%. (Swanson, 2004)
The statistics are even more dire for students from low-income families and stu-
dents of color, whose rates of achievement, graduation, and post-secondary com-
pletion are far lower than those of their peers. (Perie et al, 2005; Swanson, 2004;
Carey, 2005; and Part 2 of this report)
Economists and educational researchers have argued persuasively that a decent
middle class wage requires at a minimum a high school education that equips
people to pursue post-secondary education successfully. (Murnane & Levy, 1996)
The consequences of poor education ripple through society in the form of higher
crime rates, higher costs of public assistance, and lower tax revenues. No com-
munity can thrive when many of its public schools consistently and thoroughly
fail the children they serve, and our democracy suffers when so many of our citi-
zens are not equipped to participate meaningfully in civic life.
High school dropouts:
• Earn $9,200 less per year, on average, than high school graduates.
• Are three times more likely to be unemployed than college graduates.
• Are twice as likely as high school graduates to enter poverty from one year
to the next.
• Are eight times as likely to be in prison as high school graduates.
• Collectively represent a loss of about 1.6 percent of the gross domestic
product each year.
Sources: Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, The Silent Epidemic (2006); Rouse, Social Costs of Inadequate
Education Symposium, Columbia Teachers College (2005)
Ironically, in making visible the indefensibility of the status quo,
failing schools’ well-documented and chronic under-perform-
ance may turn out to be a critical lever for effective reform.
1.2
20
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround – and an Entry Point for Real Reform?
Failing schools offer a chance to do things differently. Will we take it?
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge
O
n a cloudy, atypically chilly day
last November in Washington,
DC, more than a hundred education
reform leaders from across the country
crowded into a conference convened
by the American Enterprise Institute
and the Fordham Foundation. One
after another, panels of experts – edu-
cators, researchers, public officials,
foundation leaders – took center-stage
and decried the lack of progress being
made under President Bush’s No Child
Left Behind Act in turning around
achievement in the nation’s poorest-
performing schools.
“This was a roomful of the country’s
biggest champions of standards-based
reform,” said one participant after the
conference concluded, “reflecting on
NCLB’s impact on our neediest
schools, five years after its enactment.
And I can tell you it was a relentlessly
discouraging day.”
It’s easy to be dismayed by the results
of the nation’s most vigorous effort
ever to significantly raise achievement
among all public school students.
Reading and math scores on the
National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) have nudged
upwards, but not so much as to
inspire optimism that NCLB’s goal of
proficiency for all by 2014 is even
remotely within reach. (See Figure
1E.) For the 2005-6 school year, more
than one-quarter of the nation’s
schools failed to make Adequate
Yearly Progress; a total of 29 states
saw an increase that year in the num-
ber of schools not making AYP. And
the results to date of state and district
efforts to turn around chronically
under-performing schools, spurred by
NCLB’s accountability requirements
and “toolbox” of restructuring
options, is inconclusive at best and
substantially disappointing at worst.
And yet.
And yet our research over the past
eighteen months has convinced us
that a confluence of factors has creat-
ed a window of opportunity for much
more dramatic approaches to school
reform, focused (at least at first) on
the bottom five percent of schools.
These factors include:
• The promise of high-performing,
high-poverty school success
• A new generation of comprehen-
sive intervention strategies by a few
major urban districts on behalf of
their struggling schools
• The growing sense of urgency and
acceptance that in these schools,
the status quo is indefensible and
everything has to be on the table.
The Promise of High-Performing,
High-Poverty Schools
It’s a primary benefit of standards-
based reform: our ability to identify
with confidence schools that demon-
strably outperform their peers. It’s what
gives ballast to two truisms of modern-
day school reform: no excuses and all
kids can learn. We all know the pattern:
virtually all of the worst-performing
schools serve high-poverty enrollments.
Yet in every state, some high-poverty
schools perform significantly better
than others, and a few perform nearly
as well as schools serving much more
affluent student populations.
Can good schools, by themselves,
break the cycle of diminished expecta-
tions and quality of life that rules in
impoverished neighborhoods – or do
poverty and its related issues need to
be addressed first? The answer, we
will argue over the course of this
report, is that the two are inextricably
linked, and that success lies in creat-
ing good schools that are also well-
tuned to the nature and needs of
high-poverty student enrollments.
Some inner-city schools are already
demonstrating this, creating new
models designed specifically to meet
the needs of this student population.
As Paul Tough (2006) wrote in a New
York Times Sunday Magazine cover
story that appeared the same week as
the conference in Washington DC,
“The divisions between black and
white and rich and poor begin almost
at birth, and they are reinforced every
day of a child’s life.” But, he contin-
ued: “A loose coalition of schools, all
A small number of high-performing, high-poverty schools are
demonstrating that different approaches can bring highly
challenged student populations to high achievement.
21
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
of them quite new… provide
evidence that… the achievement gap
can be overcome, in a convincing
way, for large numbers of poor and
minority students, not in generations
but in years.”
While effective school practice
research stretches back 30 years, the
high-poverty school (and especially,
high-poverty high school) that has
turned chronic under-performance
into consistent high achievement is
exceedingly rare. Still, there is strong
evidence to conclude that a small
number of high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools are bringing
highly challenged student populations
to high achievement. A number of
these schools operate outside of tradi-
tional school district structures (as
charters or as in-district charter-likes)
– and the others tend to be led by
strong, entrepreneurial principals
whose vision and effectiveness aren’t
constrained by public education’s
conventions and embedded organiza-
tional challenges. They produce stu-
dent achievement outcomes that vast-
ly exceed urban norms.
Educators and reformers have long
used effective-practice research as a
basis for school improvement pro-
grams. But in Part 2 of this report, we
argue that most of this work has taken
place within a fairly narrow band,
focused on technical solutions involv-
ing curriculum, data analysis, and
staff development. Important work –
but insufficient by itself. HPHP
schools are able to generate such high
achievement because they confront, in
specific, comprehensive, on-going
ways, the systemic effects of poverty
on their students’ learning. In Part 2
of this report we extract the essential
methods and strategies they use to do
this – a tailored set of effective prac-
tices we distill in the “HPHP
Readiness Model,” and which consti-
tute a de facto set of design factors for
school turnaround. Taken together,
they illustrate, as Tough noted in his
New York Times article, “the magni-
tude of the effort that will be required
for that change to take place.”
The Promise of District Experiments
in Comprehensive Intervention
The HPHP Readiness model requires
some fundamental changes in the
operating conditions of turnaround
schools – how much authority, for
example, principals and turnaround
leaders have in shaping and working
with their school’s teaching staff. A
handful of major districts – Chicago,
Philadelphia, New York, Miami-Dade
– have begun to experiment over the
past couple of years with more com-
prehensive forms of intervention that
incorporate such thinking. These ini-
tiatives variously provide:
• Authority to turnaround leaders
to make choices about allocating
resources – people, time, money –
in support of the plan
“When educators do succeed at educating poor minority stu-
dents up to national standards of proficiency, they invariably
use methods that are radically different and more intensive
than those employed in most American public schools.”
– Paul Tough, The New York Times
500
300
290
280
270
0
’92 ’94 ’98 ’02 ’05
FIGURE 1E
What Marginal Change Has Wrought: Static Achievement Since 1992
Trend in 12th-grade average NAEP reading scores
Souce: U.S. Department of Education, 2007
Accommodations not permitted
Accommodations permitted
1.3
22
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Turning Point for Turnaround
(continued)
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge
• Waivers of some collective bar-
gaining requirements and work
rules, collaboratively developed
with teachers’ unions
• Resources to compensate staff
according to professional norms (i.e.,
for extra responsibility, duty in high-
need areas, or for performance)
• Resources for additional time in
the school day and/or school year
• Extensive outside assistance from
providers and intermediary organ-
izations, often supported by foun-
dation grants.
It is too soon to tell whether these ini-
tiatives (detailed in Appendix A and
the Supplemental Report) will pro-
duce exemplary results. But it’s clear
that they come far closer to providing
an environment conducive to HPHP
Readiness-style strategies than the
more common, traditional forms of
incremental intervention have done.
The Promise of Growing Urgency
Regarding Failing Schools
The accountability timetable set in
motion by No Child Left Behind has
now delivered us to the doorstep of
intervention. We are at the end of a
line of public policy dominos set in
motion by a commitment to higher
academic standards – achievement
goals, resource supports, accountabili-
ty, and assessment. (See the stan-
dards-based reform “Pacing Guide” in
Figure 1D on page 18.)
But NCLB and state accountability
systems are only two of the factors
fueling a growing sense of urgency to
address the nation’s chronically
under-performing schools. Dim com-
parisons of American achievement to
that of students in most other coun-
tries and fears connected to the out-
sourcing of American jobs, among
other developments, have been wake-
up calls for federal and state policy-
makers on the critical importance of
educational attainment to society.
At the same time, awareness of the
HPHP schools, variously called
“Dispelling the Myth schools,”
“Vanguard” schools, “90-90-90”
schools or any number of other
monikers, is undercutting the long-
held dogma of education-by-zip-
code. “The evidence,” as Tough
(2006) concludes in his New York
Times story, “is becoming difficult to
ignore: When educators do succeed
at educating poor minority students
up to national standards of proficien-
cy, they invariably use methods that
are radically different and more
intensive than those employed in
most American public schools. So as
the No Child Left Behind law comes
up for reauthorization, Americans are
facing an increasingly stark choice:
is the nation really committed to
guaranteeing that all of the country’s
students will succeed to the same
high level? And if so, how hard are
we willing to work, and what
resources are we willing to commit,
to achieve that goal?”
Turnaround of America's poorest-
performing schools represents an
opportunity to take up Tough's chal-
lenge, to use these schools as a gate-
way towards the "radically different,"
"more intensive" methods so visible
in high-performing, high-poverty
schools. (See chart, facing page.)
The Turnaround Challenge offers
analysis and a framework to guide
that work. The first step in defining
the turnaround solution is to extract
the “DNA” from the HPHP schools
that already bring under-performing
students up to high standards. This is
where we turn next.
In the challenge represented by America’s most poorly
performing schools lies an opportunity for dramatic,
accessible, and achievable change.
23
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Educators and reformers aiming for fundamental, not incremental, change in public
schooling have essentially three avenues: replacing the entire public education system
with a new one, reforming that system from within, or circumventing the system with
work-around schools (otherwise known as charters). Chronically under-performing schools
and the comprehensive turnaround strategies presented in this report provide entry points,
in different ways, to all three forms of fundamental change. (See chart above.)
Replace the State Management System: Redesign of the entire state-managed
public education system in the United States was the recommendation of the New
Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce in its recently released report,
Tough Choices or Tough Times. Radical changes of the nature recommended by the
Commission – eliminating the school district as we know it now, making states the
employers of teachers, creating K-10 “common schools” that send graduates to upper
secondary or voc-tech academies – would require a vast rethinking of the current sys-
tem and enormous rearrangement of resources, people, and organizational structures.
While acknowledging that these recommendations merit close consideration, The
Turnaround Challenge suggests that the crisis in America’s most poorly performing
schools provides an even more urgent and a more accessible opportunity for dramatic
and achievable change. Urgent and accessible because the standards movement has
provided incontrovertible evidence of these schools’ failure; dramatic because that is
clearly what’s needed to turn these schools around; and achievable because other
schools are proving that similar student populations can produce exemplary results.
We propose in this report a call to arms that is located squarely in the here and now –
but could lead to broader application of fundamental change.
Reform the District Management System: School districts, particularly large urban
districts, have proved to be difficult organizations to reform. But virtually all urban dis-
tricts are under intense pressure to intervene in growing numbers of under-performing
schools. The “zone” strategies now being undertaken in some districts, and recom-
mended in this report, provide the opportunity for a fresh-start proving ground, a
chance for districts and external partners to essentially reinvent the district model
from within.
Create New-Design Schools: “Charterizing” failing schools, meanwhile, is one of
NCLB’s options for schools entering its Restructuring category of under-performance –
albeit not an option that has been selected very often. The charter-related entry point
of more relevance here is the adoption of charter-like rules and authorities for schools
within a district’s turnaround zone. Such a zone thus could become the long-awaited
vehicle for public schools to adapt what appears to work in high-performing charters.
FIGURE 1F
* 2007 Report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
Turnaround Offers an Entry Point to System-Changing Reforms
1.3
A
s ecologists are quick to empha-
size, organisms can be under-
stood only in relation to their envi-
ronments. So it is for high-perform-
ing, high-poverty schools: common
“high-performance” mantras like high
expectations, all children can learn, no
excuses, or for that matter, no child
left behind may signal important val-
ues but do little to illuminate the chal-
lenging circumstances of high-poverty
school environments or the methods
and strategies that HPHP schools
employ in meeting them. (Haberman,
1999; Thomas & Bainbridge, 2001)
Fortunately, as reform researcher
Ronald Brady (2003) points out,
HPHP schools “are a phenomenon of
sufficient import to receive significant
scholarly attention.” (For our detailed
analysis of this, see Part 2.4.)
In addition, emerging research from
a variety of fields is rapidly reshaping
our knowledge of high-poverty
school ecology and why HPHP prac-
tices are successful:
• Researchers studying national
databases of school achievement
data, indexed with school poverty
and minority attributes, are
unlocking the black box of school
performance and describing suc-
cess patterns that are reshaping
education reform as well as teach-
ing. (The Education Trust, 2005a;
Reeves, 2003; National Center for
Educational Accountability/Just for
the Kids, 2006)
• Child poverty researchers are pin-
pointing how a multitude of factors
associated with socioeconomic sta-
tus (SES) affect a child from birth to
adulthood, concluding among
many findings that even relatively
minor mitigations can translate into
meaningful improvement in student
achievement. (Berliner, 2006;
Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997)
• Cognitive scientists report that
“there is a gulf between low and
middle SES children in their per-
formance on just about every test
of cognitive development” (Farah
et al, 2006), with sweeping implica-
tions for early childhood and edu-
cation policy, but also illuminating
key causal mechanisms that might
aid remediation.
• Developmental psychologists have
begun to focus “on the factors that
enable at-risk students to ‘beat the
odds’ against achieving academic
success. Borrowing primarily from
the field of developmental psy-
chopathology, a growing body of
educational research has identified
individual attributes that promote
academic resiliency.” (Borman &
Rachuba, 2001)
Also augmenting and informing
HPHP research are studies of urban
principals (Orr et al, 2005), the
importance and dynamics of achiev-
ing teacher quality (Ingersoll, 2004;
Policy Studies Associates, 2005), the
linkage between student engagement
and academic achievement (Finn &
Owings, 2006), and the importance
for poor students of close adult rela-
tionships and positive role models.
(Shear et al, 2005; The Education
Trust, 2005; Brooks-Gunn et al, 1993)
For this report, our research team
surveyed the voluminous research
literature, analyzed the most promi-
nent studies, and drew deeply on
Mass Insight’s own Building Blocks
effective-practice research
(www.buildingblocks.org), which we
have conducted since 2001. (For the
full analysis, see the Supplemental
Report.)
2.1 How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
Understanding the DNA we must replicate at scale
Part 2 examines:
2.1 How High-Performing, High-
Poverty Schools Ignite
Learning Under Adverse
Conditions
Understanding the DNA we must
replicate at scale
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing
Schools Serve Mostly Poor
Children
But: so do some successful schools,
proving that school quality can
overcome zip code
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm”
Impact on Learning
Understanding the deficits is a pre-
requisite to designing the solutions
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve
Their Results: The Readiness
Model
Nine interlocking elements of
schools that serve challenged
students well
2.5 Applying the Lessons
of HPHP Schools
Change begins with the courage
to break patterns
P A R T 2
24
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model
25
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
We were persuaded by the research of
three points:
1
The ecology of high-poverty
schools is inherently much more
unpredictable, variable, and irregular
than that of low-poverty schools. This
turbulence is foundational: lying below
symptoms like poor teaching and stu-
dent misbehavior, it reflects the vastly
disparate backgrounds and prepared-
ness of students; personal and family
crises; the churn of students and staff
entering and exiting individual
schools; and the shortage of family and
community supports. Students and
staff in high-poverty schools face more
curveballs in a week than their col-
leagues in low-poverty schools see in
a year. Accounting for this turbulence
in academic and organizational design,
as well as in operations and training,
is a prerequisite to successful schools.
2
Our most common approaches do
not help, and in fact sometimes
do harm. Not only is our traditional
model of public education largely
unable to cope with unpredictability
and turbulence that disrupts its
reliance on grade-by-grade advance-
ment, but in addition, common tech-
niques of teaching, testing, and disci-
plining frequently “introduce
additional stressors and adversities
that place [poor] students at even
greater risk of academic failure.”
(Borman & Rachuba, 2001)
3
It seems clear that what we are
observing in the phenomenon of
HPHP schools is the evolution of a
new species. Largely through on-the-
scene improvisation and innovation,
HPHP schools have morphed into
highly adaptable organizations whose
staff are expert at igniting learning for
each child in spite of the surrounding
turbulence. They mitigate the adverse
conditions of poverty and overcome
the unpredictable changes and crises
that sink other high-poverty schools,
not by making the traditional model of
education work better; instead, they
are, in essence, reinventing what
schools do.
When students enroll in one of these
schools, they are often several grade
levels behind. As Paul Tough (2006)
observed: “Usually they have missed
out on many of the millions of every-
day intellectual and emotional stimuli
that their better-off peers have been
exposed to since birth. They are, edu-
cationally speaking, in deep trouble.
The schools reject the notion that all
that these struggling students need are
high expectations; they do need those,
of course, but they also need specific
types and amounts of instruction, both
in academics and attitude, to compen-
sate for everything they did not receive
in their first decade of life.”
To advance each student’s learning,
regardless of background and ability,
HPHP schools have largely abandoned
the Old-World model of education
itself, supplanting the “one-conveyor-
belt-for-all” thinking with a New-World
model placing each student at the center
of a set of coordinated services (Figure
2A) – a model very similar to the prac-
tices Michael Fullan and his co-authors
describe in their provocative book,
Breakthrough (2006).
HPHP schools are still a nascent and
evolving species – almost always the
product of local adaptation and inno-
vation. Our national challenge (and
opportunity) is to apply their success-
ful practices systematically to turn-
around and intervention efforts in
multiple schools, districts, and circum-
stances. Parts 3 and 4 discuss how that
might be accomplished.
But first, Part 2 continues by examin-
ing the patterns of school proficiency
and poverty, explaining why poverty is
playing an increasingly significant role
in American education, and summa-
rizing a “perfect storm” of poverty-
induced challenges that face our high-
poverty schools – and very actively
shape how high-performing, high-
poverty schools have responded. In
Part 2.4, we introduce the HPHP
Readiness Model, which describes nine
elements that comprise HPHP school-
ing. Finally in Part 2.5, we conclude
with implications of HPHP schooling
for effective school turnaround.
It seems clear that what we are observing in the phenome-
non of HPHP schools is the evolution of a new species.
2.1
FIGURE 2A
2.5 Applying the Lessons
T
he most compelling case for a new
model of high-poverty schooling
lies in the achievement numbers. As a
result of NCLB, it is now possible to
track the achievement of students at
every school in every state. The pat-
terns are sobering – and illuminating.
The research team studied state by state
scatterplots, like those on the facing page,
showing school achievement vs. poverty
at the eighth and fourth grade levels (high
school data is not yet readily available).
The patterns of the eight states displayed
here are strongly representative of the
patterns found in other states, and across
other test subjects and grade levels. In
addition to the overall patterns shown
here, we reviewed similar data for high-
minority versus low-minority schools.
Here’s what the data show.
Proficiency drops steadily as school
poverty rises: This pattern is by no
means a surprise, but it remains dis-
heartening to see just how strong the
correlation is between poverty and
chronic under-performance: The same
pattern appears in state after state,
implying deep, systemic deficiencies
rather than occasional management
breakdowns. Schools that fail, year after
year, almost always reflect this profi-
ciency-poverty linkage, which is why
this report focuses on interventions
capable of breaking the cycle. Note that
the poverty drag on proficiency begins
right away: Schools comprised of just
10 or 20 percent poor students trail
schools with negligible poverty, and
that pattern continues along the x-axis
as the percentage of school poverty
mounts. The bottom line: Poverty
erodes proficiency and poor students
are underserved in virtually all schools,
although our recognition of dysfunc-
tion and breakdown is generally
reserved for our most urban and high-
est-poverty schools and districts.
School performance varies signifi-
cantly at every income level, and
extensively among high-poverty
schools: In most states, the proficiency
of schools becomes increasingly scat-
tered as school poverty rises: the range
of high performance and low perform-
ance among high-poverty schools tends
to be significantly greater than among
low-poverty schools. This variability
exists among both high-minority and
low-minority schools and among both
urban and non-urban schools. Note the
dramatic variability of performance
among schools over 50 percent pover-
ty: a large number with appalling per-
formance and a handful of schools per-
forming above the state median.
High-poverty schools that overcome
poverty are scarce: No single, one-year
snapshot can determine an HPHP
school, but we can draw nevertheless
two conclusions from these data: There
are very few HPHP schools and they
are likely to mitigate, but not erase, the
effects of poverty. Look at the subset of
schools that are likely to include HPHP
schools: those schools in the lightly
shaded box within each plot. These are
schools with at least 50 percent poor
students who exceeded their state’s
proficiency median for eighth grade
math in 2005. (Each state has a differ-
ent proficiency median, which is why
the height of the box varies – and why
state-to-state achievement comparisons
cannot be done with these data.) They
are performing far above the high-
poverty norm, and in some cases near-
ly as well as schools serving much
more affluent student populations.
Some schools beat the odds, proving it
can be done and triggering the central
HPHP question: How do they do it?
To completely unpack that question,
we need to go a step further with our
examination of poverty’s impact on
learning. In the next section, Part 2.3,
we will examine the complexity of the
challenge that all high-poverty schools
face – and that only HPHP schools
manage to mitigate.
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor Children
But: so do some successful schools, proving that school quality can overcome zip code
26
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Interpreting the Scatterplots (Figure 2B)
Each dot represents one school. All public schools serving the eighth grade in
each of eight sample states are shown.
It is important to note that each state establishes its own achievement standards
and assessment system; therefore, the proficiency scores of one state cannot be
directly compared to that of another state.
School poverty, on the other hand, is defined the same across all states as the per-
cent of students eligible to receive free or reduced price lunch. Schools whose
school poverty data were not reported or lost appear as “data noise” along the
left axis.
The shaded boxes in the top right of each plot highlight the high poverty schools
that were performing above their state’s median on this math test. See further
discussion of these schools in the paragraphs above.
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
School Quality Can Meet High-Poverty Challenges – and Does, Though Rarely
In Higher Poverty Schools: Lower Achievement, but Greater Variability, Suggesting Opportunity for Improvement
Each dot plots an individual school’s percent proficiency (eighth grade math in 2005) against the percent of students with lunch eligibility.
The shaded box indicates the relatively small number of schools with lunch eligibility over 50% and math proficiency over the state median.
Massachusetts
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=456)
California
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
Maryland
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=277)
Florida
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=785)
Michigan
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=910)
Illinois
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=1362)
Washington
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=495)
Ohio
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=930)
(n=1829)
27
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
2.5 Applying the Lessons
FIGURE 2B
D
a
t
a
a
r
e
f
r
o
m
t
h
e
N
a
t
i
o
n
a
l
L
o
n
g
i
t
u
d
i
n
a
l
S
c
h
o
o
l
-
L
e
v
e
l
S
t
a
t
e
A
s
s
e
s
s
m
e
n
t
S
c
o
r
e
D
a
t
a
b
a
s
e
(
N
L
S
L
S
A
S
D
)
2
0
0
6
.
2.2
28
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
C
learly the patterns of proficiency
and poverty demand a new
approach. If understanding the prob-
lem is half the solution, then dissect-
ing poverty’s role in exactly why
schools fail establishes a checklist of
design conditions from which solu-
tions and innovations can be forged.
Anatomy of a storm: what poverty
research tells us. The term “perfect
storm” was coined in 1991 to describe
the phenomenon of three major weather
systems combining in the Atlantic to
produce a storm of devastating propor-
tion. Similarly, poverty’s force comes in
three mutually-reinforcing forms: indi-
vidual and family risk factors, communi-
ty and environment effects, and resource
inequality. Each compounds the others,
increasing the risks and obstacles for
poor students in high-poverty schools in
high-poverty neighborhoods. The pover-
ty-related effects are substantial and
measurable even before kindergarten,
underscoring the importance of effective
early intervention.
Drawing on an extensive review of the
literature on poverty, we identified and
analyzed the risk factors with the great-
est implications for student learning
within each of three poverty “arenas.”
Brief summaries are provided on the
facing page and much more detail is
available in the Supplemental Report.
Gathering force: child poverty on
the rise. Poverty’s perfect storm is
building in strength and, as a society, we
are in a high-stakes race to find solu-
tions. Space does not allow us to include
detailed statistics on poverty trends in
America, but they are shocking. Already
35 percent of all students attend high-
poverty schools, including over two-
thirds of all minority students. (Orfield
& Lee, 2005) The figures are on the rise
across the board: Child poverty in the
U.S., already higher than in any other
developed country, increased by more
than 11 percent between 2000 and 2005.
(NCCP, 2006) The LEP (Limited
English Proficiency) child population
more than doubled from 1990 to 2000
from 5.1 to 10.6 million. (Fix and Passel,
2003) Within 25 years, the U.S. will
have more minority students than non-
minority (MBDA, 1999) with an equiva-
lent sharp rise in student poverty.
The opportunity: turning risk factors
into design elements. Understanding
how poverty affects students and their
learning helps to explain why existing
mild interventions in chronically
under-performing, high-poverty
schools have not produced much
improvement in student performance.
“Schools do not achieve high perform-
ance by doing one or two things dif-
ferently. They must do a number of
things differently, and all at the same
time, to begin to achieve the critical
mass that will make a difference in
student outcomes – in other words,
high-poverty schools that achieve
gains in student performance engage
in systemic change.” (CPE/Caliber
Associates, 2005)
That change is rooted in a broad cam-
paign to counter poverty-induced
deficits. Figure 2C demonstrates the
“field of play.” The three forms of
poverty effects we identified for this
study are each shown with their respec-
tive impact on the set of key learning
factors described by Walberg (1984).
In the next section, Part 2.4, we intro-
duce our HPHP Readiness Model,
which describes the nine elements we
believe are most crucial to igniting
learning under adverse conditions.
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning
Understanding the deficits is a prerequisite to designing the solutions
Poverty Effects Have Moderate to Substantial Impact upon Key Learning Factors FIGURE 2C
Individual & family
risk factors
Community &
environment effects Resource inequality Key Learning Factors
Student Aptitude
Ability or prior achievement Substantial Moderate Moderate
Development by age or maturation Substantial Moderate Some
Motivation or self-concept Substantial Moderate Moderate
Instruction
The amount of time students are engaged Moderate Substantial Substantial
The quality of instruction Substantial Substantial
Environment
The home Substantial
The classroom social groups Substantial Some
Peer groups outside of school Moderate Substantial
Use of out-of-school time Substantial Substantial Some
2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
Adapted from Walberg (1984) and other sources (see Supplemental Report)
29
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
2.5 Applying the Lessons
Poverty’s Force Comes in Three Mutually-Reinforcing Forms
Note: These three forms of poverty impact receive much more detailed analysis in the Supplemental Report.
Individual and family risk factors
The factors in this arena, ranging from health and brain
development and family economic hardship to parenting
style and student motivation, are particularly interrelated.
The children of poverty are not as prepared as the non-poor
to enter the classroom, and before kindergarten, already test
lower in cognitive skills. They come from families that face
grave economic scenarios, and endure both physical and
psychological disadvantages that limit their ability to thrive.
The need to focus on basic health and safety concerns can
overshadow development of higher order thinking skills, and
parent and familial modeling often fail to encourage children
to focus on school. Students of poverty can be susceptible
to poor self-image, or attempt to live up to stereotypic
behaviors that thwart goal setting and the desire to succeed.
One factor compounds another and, as students who
are not at risk continue to develop and progress
on a higher trajectory, students of poverty fall even
further behind.
The effect of community and environment
Compositional effects, such as community and school
context, also have a significant impact on a child’s
experience of education, and his or her performance
in the classroom. Living in poor neighborhoods increases
the odds of student involvement in gangs, of children
developing behavioral problems, dropping out of school,
committing a crime, and becoming pregnant as a teenager.
Even the most conscientious parents can lose their kids
to the street. (Berliner, 2006)
Non-poor students attending high-poverty schools fall
behind more frequently than poor students attending
low-poverty schools. (Kennedy et al, cited in Lippman
et al, 1996, p35) Conversely, research shows that children
who grow up in poverty (and thus carry the same cognitive
lags and ingrained effects of disadvantage) but transfer
to middle-class suburbs and schools show rapid gains
in behavioral measures and academic achievement.
(Anyon, 2005a)
Resource inequity
The distribution of resources between poor and non-poor
schools, and between urban, suburban, and rural schools,
has been a source of controversy at both the local and
national level for years. Research confirms that poor, urban
students bear the brunt of inadequate financial resources.
The inequality in teaching resources is particularly
powerful. Teachers in poorer schools are significantly
less likely to have majored in the subject area they are
teaching, to have passed tests of basic skills and to be
highly qualified. Resource inequity is also much more
likely to fuel the “revolving door” of teacher turnover.
Retention and quality problems reinforce each other to the
extent that in “schools where more than 90 percent of the
students are poor – where excellent teachers are needed
the most – just one percent of teachers are in the highest
quartile.” (Peske & Haycock, 2006)
2.3
30
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
W
e were meeting with leaders
from a partner district of Mass
Insight’s, working through the four
dimensions of effective reform practice
we’d identified through years of
research in Massachusetts (www.build-
ingblocks.org). “All of that makes
every kind of sense,” said one curricu-
lum director. “But tell me how this one
school of ours is supposed to even
think about all of that when on
Monday this week, they got 20 new
ELL students from Vietnam, Tuesday
they had two unscheduled fire drills,
and Wednesday there was a knife-fight
in the parking lot?”
Disadvantage, turbulence, and unpre-
dictability are part and parcel of many
high-poverty communities and a per-
manent condition of the vast majority
of high-poverty schools. Yet some
rare, high-performing, high-poverty
(HPHP) schools manage to organize
themselves to counter the perfect
storm of disadvantage that accompa-
nies many of their students in the
door each morning.
Here is what emerged from our analy-
sis: HPHP schools do not try to solve
the problem of poverty, nor do they
use it as an excuse for lower achieve-
ment. They do respond with innova-
tive strategies that acknowledge and
address the daily disturbances caused
by student mobility, learning deficits,
disruptive behavior, neighborhood
crises, and a host of other poverty-
related circumstances. They start with
the premise that their students can
learn at a high standard, and then
they do whatever is necessary to
remove barriers to learning as well as
create new paths for students to pur-
sue achievement.
The strategies they use to do these
things are summarized in the fol-
lowing pages. It is worth stating up
front that these methods are sub-
stantially different from those famil-
iar in the Old-World model of edu-
cation found in most public schools
today. The nine elements we have
identified as hallmarks of high-per-
forming, high-poverty schools, in
fact, diverge in important ways from
the many lists of “effective-school
elements” available today.
The Readiness Triangle
The New-World model of HPHP
schooling is a dynamic system that
enables schools to:
• Acknowledge and foster students’
Readiness to Learn,
• Elevate and focus staff’s Readiness
to Teach, and
• Exercise more Readiness to Act in
dramatically different ways than is
typically possible in public schools.
These three essential and interlocking
dimensions of HPHP schools are
described in the HPHP Readiness
Model on the facing page, and the
sections that follow this one. Most
readers will immediately find familiar
territory in the Readiness to Teach leg
of the triangle, and in fact, that area is
where the vast majority of education
reform has focused. The elements that
make up Readiness to Learn and
Readiness to Act have had their share
of attention too, but often as part of
reform efforts designed to circumvent
the regular public school system (such
as charter schools, or special in-dis-
trict school clusters with unusual
operating conditions).
On the whole, most HPHP research
has concentrated with a fair degree of
single-mindedness on strategies we
have placed in Readiness to Teach. It
is all important, vital work: aligning
curricula to higher standards, improv-
ing instruction, using data effectively,
providing targeted extra help to stu-
dents who need it. By itself, however,
this set of strategies is not enough to
meet the challenges that educators –
and students – face in high-poverty
schools. Or, for that matter, to turn
around a failing high-poverty school.
Taken together, the Readiness to Teach
strategies represent what’s widely been
known as “whole-school reform.” It’s
clear that the concept of whole school
reform has played a critical role in
emphasizing the importance of inte-
gration – of comprehensive strategies
instead of reform projects. But in gen-
eral, our collective definition of
“whole” has not been whole enough.
On the next pages, we explore the
three Readiness elements and their
associated elements in greater detail.
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness Model
Nine interlocking elements of schools that serve challenged students well
The nine elements we have identified as hallmarks of
HPHP schools diverge in important ways from the many
lists of “effective-school elements” available today.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
31
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Why “Readiness”?
The converging arrows at the center of the HPHP Readiness Model are the symbol for the
“New-World” model of schooling we introduced earlier in Part 2. New-World schooling, we
suggest, represents a departure from the linear, teaching-driven model of the 20th century
and a leap toward a more student-centered, learning-driven model for this century.
Think of the Old-World model as a factory conveyer belt that students and schools try,
with varying degrees of effectiveness, to keep up with. Its essence lies in what’s being
taught. Think of the new-world model as something more like a modern hospital: a
whole system of skills, processes, and technologies organized to analyze, diagnose, and
serve. Its essence lies in what’s being learned.
The delivery of good healthcare is all about readiness. The impact of the service depends
entirely on the quality of the people providing it and the training they’re given, the tools
at their disposal, the latitude they have to make appropriate decisions, their ability to
form and re-form into teams to provide the highest-capacity response, and (of course) the
readiness of the patient to embrace and implement the cure.
Schools, and especially high-poverty schools, are no different in the New-World model.
What happens in classrooms between teacher and student is the most critical moment in
the delivery of the service. But the quality of that moment depends entirely on the readi-
ness of the system and the people who are part of it to teach, learn, and act effectively
and in accordance with the mission.
FIGURE 2D
2.5 Applying the Lessons
High-Performance, High-Poverty Education: The HPHP Readiness Model 2.4
32
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Learn
At HPHP schools, whatever stands in
the way of learning is fair game to be
addressed. Reorienting the focus from
what’s being taught in schools to
what’s being learned, HPHP schools
proactively address the challenges
accompanying their students as they
walk in the schoolhouse door: from
something as basic as finding an
impoverished child socks or a coat, to
assisting where possible with trans-
portation or health services and attack-
ing the significant cognitive, social,
cultural, and psychological barriers to
learning that many students of poverty
tend to experience. Good learners
must develop “underlying persever-
ance, strong will, and positive disposi-
tion.” (Borman & Rachuba, 2001) At
the same time, “staff in many [old-
world] schools are products of a train-
ing model that ignores the importance
of child development…. In fact, the
whole school structure is not set up to
support development.” (Comer, 2002)
Readiness to Learn is the dimension
on which the HPHP schools differ
most appreciably from other schools.
While all high-performing schools pay
attention to relationships and environ-
ment, the lengths to which HPHP
schools go to address these concerns
for their student populations set them
well apart. Those efforts focus on the
three elements shown to the right.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Learn
Spray Painting Safety
Granger (WA) High School principal Richard Esparza began his principal-
ship with a frontal assault on gang-related graffiti. A storage hut behind
the school was a prime target and every day Esparza would drive to the
hut, take out the spray paint he kept in his car for just this purpose, and
repaint the door, which had been tagged during the night. “I can’t have
gangs announcing that they control the school,” he said. (The Education
Trust, 2005b)
Engagement Pays Dividends
In Norfolk, VA schools, teachers took the unit on Mali, home of many of
the students’ ancestors, “out of the shadows of the final week of school
and infused it throughout the school year,” using dance, literature, his-
tory, song, and other engaging, cross-disciplinary activities. Researchers
reported, “It is hardly an accident that these students also displayed
astonishing improvements in their performance on state social studies
tests.” (Reeves, 2003)
1. Safety, Discipline, & Engagement
“A calm and orderly environment [is] a prerequisite for learn-
ing, reducing the stress and distractions for students and
teachers, and creating norms and confidence to enable deeper
staff and instructional changes to occur.” (Orr, 2005) This
sense of safety is the first rung on the ladder, particularly in
schools and neighborhoods where crime and chaos are part of
everyday life. Clear codes of behavior and well-defined but
flexible routines must be applied consistently and transparent-
ly to students, parents, and staff.
At the same time, HPHP schools also seek ways to engage their
students as fully as possible in their learning, using robust,
well-rounded curricula, thematic and project-based teaching,
collaborative learning, and field trips. While a precise,
laser-like focus on reading, writing, and math forms a vital
core of the HPHP approach (see the Personalization of
Instruction section under Readiness to Teach), researchers also
highlight “explicit involvement of the subjects that are fre-
quently and systematically disregarded in traditional accounta-
bility systems – music, art, physical education, world lan-
guages, technology, career education… Data reveal that the
involvement of these seemingly peripheral subjects in academ-
ic achievement is neither serendipitous nor insignificant.”
(Reeves, 2003) The engagement created in this way produces a
virtuous cycle on which the rest of the entire school model
depends: where students are first engaged and inspired, then
motivated and learning, and finally positive contributors them-
selves to a safe, orderly, and supportive environment.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
33
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Establishing Expectations
Granger (WA) High School had a high dropout rate. When the principal arrived he
organized 50 teams of adults from the school and community to visit the 400 homes
of every student in the district. To those teachers who didn’t want to do home visits,
Esparza says he responded, “You are a great teacher. We have a difference in philoso-
phy. I’d be happy to write you a recommendation.” The school’s dropout rate has
improved markedly since then. (EdTrust, 2005)
The School as Family
University Park Campus School, an outstanding performer in one of the most crime-
ridden parts of Worcester, MA, is small to begin with, but is also organized to fur-
ther strengthen student-teacher relationships. Its grade seven-to-twelve structure
allows students to grow with the school for six years, students are looped with the
same teacher for a minimum of two years, and staff eat lunch side by side with stu-
dents. Students acknowledge that they work harder and behave well largely
because, as one student remarked, “the teachers are like family” whom they are
reluctant to disappoint. (www.buildingblocks.org, UPCS strategy)
3. Close Student-Adult Relationships
First and foremost, HPHP schools focus on establishing numerous and intensive rela-
tionships between students and adults. In fact, the ability of teachers to forge rela-
tionships with children in poverty is cited by some researchers as the key factor in
high-performing schools. (CPE/Caliber Associates, 2005; Haberman, 1999) The move
toward small learning communities is partly intended to enable such relationships.
Indeed the most significant positive change reported by students and staff in the
extensive evaluation of the Gates Foundation small high schools initiative was an
improvement in interpersonal relations. (AIR/SRI, 2005) Students reported feeling
better known and supported by staff, and said their teachers had higher expecta-
tions for them due to increased knowledge of the students’ capabilities.
Schools achieve this sense of connection, and maximize contact and continuity
through a number of specific practices, including looping of teachers with students
for multiple years, the adoption of “early start” grade six or seven through twelve
schools, home visits, and intensive advisory systems. As the principal of the widely
studied University Park Campus School in Worcester, MA, told us: “It’s all about per-
sonalization – how many adults in the building touch each child.”
2. Action Against Adversity
HPHP schools make themselves proficient at addressing poverty effects head-on.
Research shows that “school-based initiatives that actively shield disadvantaged
children from the risks and adversities within their homes, schools, and communi-
ties are more likely to foster successful academic outcomes than are several other
school-based efforts.” (Borman & Rachuba, 2001)
This kind of advocacy is undertaken for needs ranging from the physical and eco-
nomic to the psycho-social. The schools address a broad range of health and human
service needs, offering breakfast, eye exams, and parent training. They connect with
a broad range of partners and social service providers to address these needs. HPHP
schools even provide explicit guidance and guidelines for the development of behav-
ior and values that have been shown to support learning: teaching how to look
someone in the eye while listening, how to work in teams, how to advocate appro-
priately for oneself. As one HPHP researcher noted, “the essential ingredients are a
willingness to examine a new way of thinking, an organizational readiness to fill in
the gaps in protective processes through use of effective instructional programs and
involvement of parent and community partners, and a way of assessing student fac-
tors related to resilience.” (Nettles & Robinson, 1998)
2.5 Applying the Lessons
The School as Gang Replacement
The required enrichment Saturday School at Codman Academy Charter School in
Boston, taught by community members, has explicit benefits, but also a hidden agen-
da: to root Codman students firmly in the school culture. Head of School Meg
Campbell explains, “We’re competing against a lot of negative pressures these kids
have in their lives – crime, drugs, gangs. So in a way, we’re trying to make Codman be
the gang.“ (www.buildingblocks.org, Codman strategy)
Enhancing Student Resilience
Lowell Middlesex Charter School, which serves a population of high school drop-outs
aged 15-21 in Lowell, MA, ensures that all of the full-time faculty have experience
and/or formal training in human services, to enhance their understanding of their stu-
dents’ challenges. They also offer what they call “psycho-educational courses”
designed to directly confront their students’ needs. These include: life skills, non-violent
conflict resolution, parenting, and men’s and women’s groups. (www.buildingblocks.org,
LMACS strategy)
2.4
34
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Teach
This leg of the Readiness Model encom-
passes most of the work of school reform
over the past 15 to 20 years, at least in
terms of scale and investment. Higher
expectations and curriculum standards,
building capacity to teach to those stan-
dards, using data effectively to drive
instruction, and developing interventions
for students who need special help –
these are the core elements of standards-
based reform. They represent not only
the main ideas driving school improve-
ment processes nationwide, but also the
primary (and often exclusive) focus of
the vast majority of the effective-practice
research we reviewed for this report.
HPHP schools address the length and
breadth of these now-common, stan-
dards-based reform practices. However, it
is clear from our research that HPHP
schools approach the Readiness to Teach
dimension with more intensity than other
schools. At HPHP schools, these strate-
gies are not implemented as discrete proj-
ects, but embedded in the schools’ DNA.
This is particularly true in the expressions
of Readiness to Teach that we highlight
on these pages: their ability to generate
shared responsibility for achievement
among every adult in the school; the pre-
cision with which they use frequent
assessment to personalize instruction;
and the priority they give to the develop-
ment of a professional, collaborative
teaching culture.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Teach
Schools Where “Teaching” Means “Learning”
[In the HPHP schools profiled in the book It’s Being Done,] they use the
verb “to teach” properly. That is, they do not say what many teachers
around the country say: “I taught it, but the kids didn’t get it.”
Although common, this formulation actually makes no sense. If I were
to say “I taught my child to ride a bike,” you would expect that my
child could ride a bike. She might be a bit shaky, but she should be
able to pedal and balance at the same time. If she can’t do that, you
would expect me to say something like, “I tried to teach my child to
ride a bike.” I won’t say that no one in any of the “It’s Being Done”
schools ever uses the verb “teach” improperly, but for the most part, if
teachers say that they taught something, that means their students
have learned it. (Passage quoted from Chenoweth, 2007)
4. Shared Responsibility for Achievement
Virtually every “schools that work” report we reviewed for this
project began its discussion of essential reform elements with
the importance of “establishing a culture of high expecta-
tions.” We deliberately chose not to use this phrase, which has
been over-used, mis-used and (sadly) often used simply as a
rhetorical device. Sometimes it is so broad as to become
meaningless; at other times it acts as shorthand for expecta-
tions of student achievement and teacher performance that
are out of all proportion with the inadequate support, training,
and inputs provided to those individuals.
What we saw emerging from the HPHP research can more accu-
rately be described as an explicitly shared responsibility for
achievement. This commitment is intense and conveys a sense of
ownership, more than bar-setting. It is inclusive, involving all stu-
dents and all adults in the building (including custodians and
nurses, for example, in school-wide professional development), as
well as parents (sometimes involving home-school contracts), and
often community members. It is highly focused on learning and
student behaviors that directly affect learning. The 90-90-90
schools analysis of researcher Douglas Reeves, for instance,
declared that “first and most importantly, the 90/90/90 schools
have a laser-like focus on student achievement.” (Reeves, 2003;
“90-90-90” refers to schools that score in the 90th percentile, are
90 percent minority, and are 90% free and reduced-price lunch.)
These responsibilities also included accountability for students
and for teachers, but approached in a flexible way that accounts
for the unsettled nature of high-poverty communities. The HPHP
principal’s response to a student who says “I got no sleep. My
dad got taken to jail last night” was: “ I’m sorry, study some
more and we will give you the opportunity to retake the test.”
(The Education Trust, 2005b) In the same way, teachers at
another HPHP school, according to Haberman (1999), “demon-
strate a strong willingness as well as an expectation that they
as teachers should be held accountable for their children’s
learning.” They do not let their students use limitations in life
experience or language problems as an excuse; neither do they
use them as a way of avoiding responsibility as teachers.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
35
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Standing PD on its Head
At Brighton High School in Boston, professional development has been redefined in a
way that has revolutionized the teaching culture at the school. Using (and adapting)
Boston’s Collaborative Coaching and Learning (CCL) model, Brighton replaced top-
down, department-directed PD with an “inquiry team” system that assembles teachers
across and within curriculum areas to examine data-driven, achievement-gap priorities
that they themselves identify. Brighton expanded the CCL model by extending it across
all curriculum areas, allocating a full-time coach, and budget funds for “CCL subs” to
free up teachers for the inquiry teams. (www.buildingblocks.org, Brighton strategy)
6. Professional Teaching Culture
The role of teachers in HPHP schools is highly collaborative, focused on improving
instruction, diagnosing student learning challenges, and helping each other improve
their practice. At its best, this role is a highly professional one – that of an expert
working within a team to coordinate a variety of resources and capabilities to solve
problems and achieve results. (The hospital metaphor for “new-world” schooling
that we described at the outset of Part 2.4 is relevant here.) To continue to add
value to the work of the team, each “expert” must continue to learn as well.
Instead of suffering the stresses and challenges of high-poverty schools in isolation,
teachers in HPHP schools work together incessantly and naturally. The HPHP effec-
tive practice literature abounds in professional learning communities, common plan-
ning time, collaborative professional development, common lesson study, and group
reviews of student work. The emphasis within the HPHP new-world model on form-
ative assessment and adaptation of instruction provides additional imperatives for
working together, in order to pool expertise and capacity for problem-solving. The
most effective schools make time for collaboration very frequently, every week or
even every day. Mostly, the time is carved out of administrative meeting time and
professional development allocations.
HPHP teachers also see themselves as lifelong learners about instruction and learn-
ing. School leaders reinforce this focus through their professional development
offerings. “Professional development at high-performing schools differs distinctively
from the norm. It is directly linked to changing instructional practice in order to
improve student achievement. It is often team-based and school-wide, and it
reflects a continual process of improvement.” (CPE/Caliber Associates, 2005)
Increasingly, it is also embedded into ongoing work on data analysis and instruc-
tional development, so that it takes place on site, when and where teachers need it
to address the work they’re doing.
5. Personalization of Instruction
Much more so than their peers, HPHP schools are organized to personalize each
student’s road to academic achievement. This is the practice that most directly
fuels the “new-world” approach they use to reach high performance. When we
saw it in action in the HPHP schools we researched directly, we recognized that we
were seeing a “new-world” for public education, one that has been described well
by Michael Fullan and his co-authors in Breakthrough (2006).
Many schools emphasize data-driven instruction or differentiated instruction. But
what HPHP schools do is something much more individually-oriented and much
more precise. The HPHP schools organize instruction around a short feedback loop
of formative assessment, adapted instruction, further formative assessment, and
further adapted instruction. The evidence from HPHP effective-practice research on
this strategy is overwhelming: Chenoweth’s recent case studies (2007), the
CPE/Caliber Associates research review (2005), Marzano’s meta-analysis of
research on student achievement (2000), and most individual studies cite this kind
of feedback-based instruction as having profound impact on student achievement.
Its implementation in the HPHP schools we studied was intentional and specific. (For
more detail, see the HPHP research in the Supplemental Report.) Core elements include:
• Formative assessments are frequent – very frequent. In some cases, form-
ative assessments (those given to help diagnose problem areas, more than to
generate a grade) are given as often as weekly or bi-weekly.
• Analysis and feedback is immediate. The assessments are often brief (for
weekly tests, 4-5 questions), so that teachers or coaches can analyze the results
within days or hours.
• Instruction is adapted quickly to address the identified gaps or prob-
lems. High-performing schools use a range of ways to apply the results of the
diagnostic data: for example, performance “walls” to strategize for individual
students, small-group classroom learning, and individual tutoring.
• Teachers are provided with the time and flexibility to address the
issues. HPHP schools have not only increased instructional time, but also recon-
figure it to construct sometimes dramatically different daily schedules (long
blocks, extended days, ”re-teach or enrich” time slots) to suit the needs of their
students and this personalized instruction.
As an audit member at one HPHP school noted of a particularly successful school,
“They teach, they test, they teach, they test.” (Kannapel & Clements, 2005) When
assessment is properly integrated into instruction and understood to be a tool, stu-
dents see it as part and parcel of learning and even (as part of a generation raised
on the instant feedback of video and computer games) thrive on the instant feed-
back and opportunity to see their own progress.
2.5 Applying the Lessons
2.4
36
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Act
Rarely does reality on the ground align
with theory as well as in this dimension
of HPHP schools. James Thompson
(1967) revolutionized organizational
theory by showing that organizations
facing “the expectation of uncertainty”
– as virtually every urban high-poverty
school does – “must resort to a differ-
ent sort of logic.” Thompson prescribed
a highly responsive, flexible organiza-
tion in which a variety of methods are
available, “but the selection, combina-
tion, and order of application” are
determined by constant assessment
and feedback.” Savvy, timely adjust-
ment of this kind is exactly what we
find in HPHP schools where educators
deftly respond to all manner of crisis.
Agility in the face of turbulence is part
of what we call Readiness to Act. This
agility is part of an insistence among
HPHP schools on organizing and
deploying every resource at their dispos-
al entrepreneurially and strategically. At
traditional public schools, bureaucratic
imperatives frequently impede action
that is truly best for students. In HPHP
schools, operating conditions altered
either by regulation (e.g., charters) or by
fiat (maverick principals) allow deci-
sions to be focused on student needs,
and incentives to become re-integrated
with the “children first” mission.
Open Posting Advantage
Principal Michael Fung at Charlestown (MA) High School used fine print
within the Boston teachers’ contract to achieve open-posting (i.e., the
ability to disregard seniority and recruit the best candidate from inside or
outside the system) for certain teaching positions, such as those involving
stipends and not requiring regular certification. Fung had to get faculty
approval, involve a screening committee, and proactively head-hunt can-
didates. But he credits open posting as a major contributor to his school’s
impressive improvements. He offers new teachers a two-year contract
(allowing them a chance to learn in the first year), but also hyper-man-
ages them to ensure that they absorb best practice and the school’s
ethos. (www.buildingblocks.org, Charlestown strategy)
7. Resource Authority
HPHP schools need broad, local authority over core resources
– people, time, money, and program – in order to continually
tailor instruction for individual students, maneuver against
daily turbulence, and improve their staff. Most public schools
currently do not have the authority to make such decisions –
or if they do, countervailing incentives (such as fear of collec-
tive bargaining issues) undermine their interest in doing so.
HPHP schools do have that authority (as charter schools, or
special district schools with charter-like conditions), or else
they manage to manipulate very unusual combinations of cir-
cumstances (outstanding, entrepreneurial school leadership, or
unique partnerships with universities or other outside forces)
to act as if they had such freedom.
HPHP schools’ resource authority shows up across the full
gamut of school operations: the daily schedule, often the annu-
al school calendar, the way teachers collaborate with each
other and participate in school decision-making, the allocation
of the school’s budget, the very nature of instruction. It also
shows up in the extensive care that school leaders put into
choosing staff members who are best-suited to the model and
their mission. Research overwhelmingly confirms that “teach-
ing quality is the most dominant factor in determining student
success.” (Reeves, 2003) But most schools serving high-poverty
student populations do not have control over teaching and (to
some extent) administrative staff. HPHP schools almost uni-
formly say that recruiting excellent staff members is the most
important thing they do. The charters and the charter-likes have
that unquestioned authority; the regular public schools that are
both high-performing and high-poverty tend to be led by prin-
cipals who will stand for nothing less.
In some cases, HPHP schools have the freedom to offer teach-
ers incentives that are currently rare or non-existent in more
traditional high-poverty school settings: financial incentives,
differentiated and performance-based compensation, more
flexible working conditions, and perhaps the greatest incen-
tive of all – the opportunity to work with highly regarded col-
leagues on an important mission in an effective way.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Act
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
37
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
A Virtuous Cycle
Rather than living within typical resource allocation limits, the MATCH Charter School in
Boston has moved to an atypical “resource-raising” approach – expanding adult support
and raising additional financial resources. They developed their MATCH Corps of recent
college graduates to fulfill the need for intensive tutoring. They entered into partnerships
with local universities and nearby high schools. They also looked to a range of public
financing options (such as leveraging Federal Tax Credits to secure funding for a new
construction), and drew additional funds from private sector companies and private phi-
lanthropies. Promotion of their successes initiates a “virtuous cycle” that leads to further
interest and funding. (www.buildingblocks.org; MATCH strategy)
Converting Excuses into Challenges
Sterling Middle School in Quincy, MA used to have a reputation as a tough school, and
was considered dysfunctional by many of its own faculty members. Then the faculty and
staff stepped closer to perceived obstacles to confront them as problems that could be
solved. The paradigm shift, fueled by Principal Earl Metzler’s “no excuses” mantra, was
from a passive “We can’t because ...” to an active: “We can, by ...,” and the enemy was
no longer the district, the budget, the parents, or the students. The key to success was in
identifying areas where they could make a difference and in incorporating externally
mandated challenges [like the state standards assessments] into internal mechanisms
for improvement. (www.buildingblocks.org, Sterling strategy)
9. Agility in the Face of Turbulence
Part 2.3 of this report looked at the factors contributing to turbulence for the stu-
dent populations of HPHP schools. In turn, these pressures generate a constant
unsettledness that is fundamental to the ecology of high-poverty schools and a fac-
tor that principals and teachers must overcome – not through rigid standards and
control, but through flexibility and persuasion; the ability to adapt, improvise, and
triage on the fly; and the skill to build a resilient organization and culture that
prides itself on high performance despite the turbulence. Not an impossible chal-
lenge, as the HPHP schools demonstrate – just different from the old-world model
of conveyer-belt curriculum for all. It takes this agility, together with Resource
Authority and Resource Ingenuity, for a school to have any hope of supporting their
students’ readiness to learn and their teachers’ readiness to teach – because every
day will be filled with circumstances and events conspiring to disrupt.
But “turbulence” applies to more than the constant turmoil in high-poverty communi-
ties. Orr et al (2005) have taken a parallel look at the challenges that face principals in
urban low-performing schools, most of which are also high-poverty. They paint a picture
of turbulence at the institutional level, characterizing urban districts as loosely struc-
tured, with unclear expectations and uneven service to school leaders. Principals of
urban schools are heavily engaged in the coordination of non-instructional supports,
and spend more time than their suburban peers managing scarce resources and medi-
ating frustrations. Principal leadership in their words encompasses “an ever-changing
balance of skills, experience [and] intuition.”The HPHP research concurs, citing over
and over the importance of leaders being “flexible” and “inventive” in actively reshap-
ing and incorporating districtwide projects and special initiatives for disadvantaged stu-
dents into their own strategies for maximizing performance, rather than acquiescing to
the guidelines and requirements of individual programs. (Orr et al, 2005)
Affirming the Mission
Benwood Initiative schools worked closely with Chattanooga (TN)’s mayor, who provid-
ed a $5,000 bonus to any classroom teacher whose test scores grew more than 15 per-
cent more than the expected growth.... He also arranged for high-performing Benwood
teachers to get low-interest mortgages. (Chenoweth, 2007)
8. Resource Ingenuity
Ingenuity is the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful. Our researchers
can’t identify a single HPHP school or study that fails to underscore that HPHP princi-
pals (and staff) are masters at finding hidden and untapped resources. These high-
poverty schools have almost bottomless needs and may receive barely adequate allo-
cation of public resources, but HPHP leaders are tireless at finding the people, skills,
funds, time, or equipment needed to accomplish what they feel needs to happen. No
one escapes their attention: state agencies, businesses, churches, museums, parents,
neighbors, social service providers, even student volunteers.
School by school, this is nitty-gritty stuff. Some representative examples we encoun-
tered include: reading periods in which every adult in the building is a reading coach;
parent coordinators to organize after-school volunteers; church groups maintaining
safe passage through dangerous neighborhoods; social workers embedded in teach-
ing teams; computer funds redirected to hire additional teachers; free matinees at
area cultural events; and schoolwide teams organized to visit every student’s home.
2.5 Applying the Lessons 2.5 Applying the Lessons
2.4
38
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
I
n this concluding section of Part 2,
we place the lessons of HPHP
schools in the context of the turn-
around challenge.
High-performing, high-poverty
schools are an innovation of incalcula-
ble value. Much studied, they provide
essential insight into what it takes to
ignite learning in high-poverty schools.
Lacking an effective and replicable
school turnaround model anywhere in
the country, individual HPHP schools
are our trailblazers – the vanguard that
extinguishes the debate about unteach-
able kids, demonstrates best practices,
and sets a benchmark against which
reform efforts can be measured.
Because they are so important to keep
in mind as we build a model for turn-
around, the major points from Part 2
are worth reiterating here:
1
The ecology of high-poverty
schools is inherently much more
unpredictable, variable, and irregular
than that of low-poverty schools.
Accounting for the constant unsettled-
ness as well as the wide range of stu-
dent challenges and learning deficits
induced by poverty is a prerequisite to
successful schools.
2
Our most common approaches do
not help, and in fact sometimes
do harm. Our traditional curriculum-,
grade-, and age-based “conveyor belt”
is ill-equipped to handle unpredictabil-
ity and frequently introduces “addi-
tional stressors and adversities that
place [poor] students at even greater
risk of academic failure.” (Borman &
Rachuba, 2001)
3
It seems clear that what we are
witnessing in the phenomenon of
HPHP schools is the evolution of a
new species. HPHP schools have mor-
phed into highly adaptable organiza-
tions whose staff are expert at igniting
learning for each child in spite of the
surrounding turbulence; in essence,
they are reinventing what schools do.
4
The “new-model” of HPHP
schooling evokes the sense of a
team rallying to each student. Adults,
programs, and resources encircle the
student, ready to analyze, diagnose,
and serve his or her needs in a flexible
and ongoing way.
5
Income-vs.-performance data
reveal that school proficiency
drops steadily as school poverty rises.
Just as important: proficiency varies
significantly at every income level, and
extensively among high-poverty
schools, underlining the vital role
school quality plays.
6
Dissecting poverty’s role in exactly
why schools fail establishes a par-
tial checklist of design conditions
from which solutions and innovations
can be forged. Poverty’s “perfect storm”
is comprised of three mutually-reinforc-
ing forms: individual and family risk
factors, community and environment
effects, and resource inequality.
7
The methods used to combat these
factors are summarized in the
HPHP Readiness Model, a system of
nine elements that enable schools to:
• Acknowledge and foster students’
Readiness to Learn,
• Elevate and focus staff’s Readiness
to Teach, and
• Exercise more Readiness to Act in
dramatically different ways than is
typically possible in public schools.
Reframing Our Thinking:
A Precursor to Real Reform
HPHP schools break convention in
two pragmatic yet significant ways:
• They are replacing the traditional
old-world, conveyor-belt model
with a new-world model with each
child at the center and designed to
counter poverty’s perfect storm; and
• They discard many centralized and
bureaucratic management methods
in favor of a highly adaptable
Readiness to Act, much better suit-
ed to the constant unsettledness that
marks high-poverty schooling and
to targeting precious core resources
on real gains in student learning.
What will it take for our education
thinking and our education institu-
tions to catch up to these departures?
First, we must reframe our under-
standing of the high-poverty school.
The time is right to acknowledge (per-
haps even celebrate) the current con-
fluence of research in education, child
poverty, cognitive development, and
psychological resiliency. If “facts are
friendly” and “knowledge is power,”
the new insights emerging from
research place solid new under-
2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP Schools
Change begins with the courage to break patterns
2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
Lacking an effective and replicable school turnaround
model anywhere in the country, individual HPHP schools
are our trailblazers.
39
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
pinnings and possibility under HPHP
practice and the turnaround of under-
performing high-poverty schools.
Second, we must reframe our under-
standing of HPHP schools and the
lessons they offer. There has been a
strong tendency in past HPHP effec-
tive-schools research to set the char-
acteristics of high-poverty school set-
tings aside, and to focus on what
might be called the “classic” stan-
dards-based education reform cate-
gories of high expectations, curricula,
teaching methods, assessment tools,
and strong leadership. Even in several
of the studies we found most useful in
shaping the HPHP Readiness Model
(see Figure 2E), you will see a great
deal of attention focused on these
Readiness to Teach strategies, almost
to the exclusion of the other two
dimensions in the Readiness Model.
That’s understandable, since most
effective-practice research has gener-
ally followed the most commonly
applied reform strategies – and most
of those strategies have revolved
around Readiness to Teach-style
reforms. The research, in other words,
has followed the path of reform. Yet
all three Readiness elements are pow-
erful themes among principals and
teachers in HPHP schools and in the
significant new research on child
poverty, cognitive development, miti-
gation of at-risk factors, and resilien-
cy. In effect, we’ve been missing cru-
cial elements in what educators in
these schools have been telling us.
Third, we must reframe our
approach to education reform itself.
The rest of this report is predicated on
the assumption that what HPHP
schools are doing today can be repli-
cated. The HPHP Readiness Model is
not only a template for igniting learn-
ing in poor students but also a vehicle
for fundamental change. However,
change will take rethinking our
approach to education reform. To that
vital task, we turn next.
2.5 Applying the Lessons
Major Effective-Practice Research Informs and Supports the HPHP Readiness Model
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Readiness to LEARN
Safety, Discipline, & Engagement G G G G G G G G G G
Action Against Adversity G G G G G G
Close Student-Adult Relationships G G G G G G G G G G
Readiness to TEACH
Shared Responsibility for Achievement G G G G G G G G G G G
Personalization of Instruction G G G G G G G G G G G G G
Professional Teaching Culture G G G G G G G G G G G G G
Readiness to ACT
Resource Authority G G G G G G G G
Resource Ingenuity G G G G G G G G
Agility in the Face of Turbulence G G G
Strong support = G
Some support = G
Note: For complete references and information on these sources, see Appendix B.
FIGURE 2E
2.5
T
he high-performing, high-poverty
schools described in Part 2 pro-
vide school intervention strategists
with a proof-point, a benchmark, and
a vision. They demonstrate what’s
possible, how far highly disadvan-
taged kids can go, and what it looks
like to get them there.
The rest, to paraphrase education
writer Karin Chenoweth (see box),
is engineering.
That makes the task in front of us
sound deceptively easy. Engineering,
after all, is an historical American
trademark. We designed and built
democracy as a form of government,
invented peanut butter, the suburb,
and the nuclear bomb, carved out the
Panama Canal and put a man on the
moon. Surely we can replicate the
strategies of successful urban schools.
But so far, after three decades or more
of effort – some of it involving billions
of dollars of federal aid – the results of
our various attempts to apply effec-
tive-practice research to improve
struggling schools are meager at best.
“Why do good ideas about teaching
and learning have so little impact on
U.S. educational practice?” Harvard
researcher Richard Elmore asked that
question in 1996, at the outset of his
milestone essay, “Getting to Scale with
Good Educational Practice.” He could
well ask the same question, with added
impatience, today.
For this project, we spent 18 months
seeking to answer Elmore’s question
with respect to state- and district-
driven interventions in failing schools.
Our complete analysis is included in
this report as Appendix A, but it boils
down to the observations opposite:
3.1 What Success Requires:
Changing the Odds for Turnaround Schools
Moving beyond marginal to fundamental change
Part 3 examines:
3.1 What Success Requires:
Changing the Odds for
Turnaround Schools
Moving beyond marginal to fun-
damental change
3.2 The First C: Conditions that
Enable Effective Turnaround
Reform depends on the context
in which it’s applied
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to
Conduct Effective Turnaround
Urgently needed: broader, deeper
turnaround capacity at every cor-
ner of the system
3.4 The Third C: Clustering
for Support
It’s not just about autonomy.
Failing schools need strong net-
work support
P A R T 3
3.1 What Success Requires 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support
“Not a Theoretical Challenge, but an Engineering One”
“After visiting all the [HPHP] schools profiled in this book, I began to feel as if the folks
in these schools can be likened to the Wright brothers, who proved once and for all
that manned flight was possible. Once Orville and Wilbur demonstrated how to answer
the challenges of drag and gravity, getting from their experimental plane in Kitty Hawk
to the Boeing 747 was no longer a theoretical challenge but an engineering one. In
the same way, the schools profiled here demonstrate that the job of educating kids to
high levels – even kids traditionally considered ‘hard to teach’ – is theoretically possi-
ble. The challenges these schools have overcome include the ideas that poverty and
discrimination are insuperable barriers to academic achievement; that today’s kids are
so damaged by television, video games and hip-hop music that they are impervious to
books and scholarship; that good, qualified teachers simply won’t work in difficult cir-
cumstances; and that existing teachers and principals are incapable of improvement.
The theoretical arguments pile on, seemingly insurmountable.
“Except that in the case of the schools profiled here, they are proved wrong. When you
overcome drag and gravity with enough thrust and lift, you get flight; when you over-
come poverty and discrimination with enough thoughtful instruction, careful organiza-
tion, and what can only be recognized as the kind of pig-headed optimism displayed
by the Wright brothers, you get learning. The schools profiled here are not perfect, any
more than the Wright brothers’ plane was perfect. But they have tackled the theoreti-
cal challenges one by one and proved that those challenges can be conquered.”
– Karin Chenoweth, It’s Being Done (2007)
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Inadequate Design: Lack of ambition, comprehensiveness, integration,
and network support
Marginal change yields marginal results. The strategies of most school inter-
vention efforts have been chronically ill-matched with the need. The vast
majority of what passes for intervention in failing schools can be understood as light
renovation – the school-reform equivalent of wallpapering and new siding. What’s
needed is much more fundamental than repair work on an existing structure: we need
instead a thorough rethinking of how the house serves the people who live in it. That
much is clear from our study of HPHP schools (see Figure 2E). It’s a big issue for school
communities, which tend to think and operate in terms of projects, not strategies.
School intervention strategies generally stop well short of the comprehen-
siveness of change required. Our review of the research on state- and district-driv-
en intervention in low-performing schools prompted us to group intervention initia-
tives in three categories. Most efforts (by far) focus on program change – essentially,
providing a range of help to improve the quality of instruction within the current
model of the school. Some also build in people change – installing a new principal or
replacing the staff, but rarely as part of a complete turnaround strategy. Very few go
further and attempt to change the context of operating conditions and incentives in
which all of the work (including the reform effort) takes place. Yet it is precisely this
conditions context that tends to undercut the impact of reform, particularly in under-
performing schools. (See Figure 3C, page 45.)
School intervention tends toward silver bullets instead of fully integrated
strategies. A strong principal; a smaller learning community; a longer school day.
Individual elements of turnaround may be critically important, but each by itself is
nearly always insufficient to produce major, systemic change – i.e., change that sur-
vives even after the strong principal leaves or the longer school day shrinks.
Intervention tends to focus on individual schools, without the intensive out-
side support that can be obtained through a cluster or network. Schools fail in
part because their central support network (the district) has failed them. Supremely
gifted principals may turn around a school, but turnaround at scale requires intensive
support from a new network, organized within or across district lines.
Inadequate Incentive Change: Current efforts do too little to change the
status quo and are marked more by compliance than buy-in
School intervention has failed to use carrots and sticks effectively to gener-
ate commitment to change. This failure has ramifications at every level in the sys-
tem: policymakers, district leaders, principals, teachers, parents, students. Intervention
represents an opportunity for leverage to be applied to change behavior, which as
Fullan (among other researchers) points out, can then lead to changed beliefs. But
that leverage – and the consequent sense of urgency – does not take place because
state accountability systems have been weak or unclear in establishing firm timelines
and consequences for underperformance. Neither have most intervention strategies
understood the vital importance of “carrots” (such as increased latitude over deci-
sion-making, professional norms for compensation and collaboration, and participa-
tion in groundbreaking reform) in enlisting buy-in for turnaround.
Inadequate Capacity: Failing schools get in-service training instead of the
all-encompassing people strategy and strong external partners they need
School intervention chronically under-values the importance of recruiting and
placing people in the right jobs. The reasons why are understandable. Changing pro-
gram strategies and offering in-service training is safe territory, compared to the com-
plexity and controversy inherent in a total human resource strategy. Most intervention
initiatives include provisions for professional development, but most often, that is as far
as it goes. The choices, changes, and comprehensive “people strategies” that might
come from an honest appraisal of current personnel, management, and HR practices
including compensation and incentive strategies are set aside for another day.
Turnaround requires special skills from school leaders and external partners,
and the resource base in both categories is glaringly weak. Turnaround is only
now becoming appreciated as a special discipline in education. Training for special-
ized school leaders in turnaround management is in its infancy. The lack of a strong
base of outside turnaround partners clearly stems from lack of public investment in
this critical resource. What little demand there is has been driven by private grants.
Inadequate Political Will: Lack of constituency, lack of turnaround skills,
and uncertain outcomes reduce the likelihood of a strong state response
School intervention has suffered from episodic, confusing policy design, con-
sistent under-funding, and indecisive political support. NCLB, ironically, has not
helped. Its five restructuring options include one “wild-card” alternative that has
been used as a limited-change escape from the other, more dramatic options. The
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions are moving so many schools into corrective
action and restructuring categories that states have begun reducing their commit-
ment to intervention. Because failing schools have no political constituency, financial-
ly pressed state governments have found it difficult to launch and sustain the kind of
intervention effort that might make a difference. And finally, responsibility for manag-
ing intervention has fallen to state education agencies that are already under-
resourced and over-extended and, generally, are politically sensitive agencies ill-suited
to crafting powerful, imaginative turnaround strategy.
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Current Intervention Strategies: Four Inadequacies that Must Be Addressed
3.1
How can the now-emerging field of
school intervention address the short-
comings described on the previous
page, and in the “map” of the inter-
vention-design landscape on the fac-
ing page? Together, they summarize a
set of public policy and school reform
strategies that appear to have missed
the mark altogether on both the
nature of the intervention required by
failing schools, and the scale of the
intervention indicated by the magni-
tude of the problem.
And yet: the turnaround challenge, we
believe, is an addressable public policy
problem. Moreover, as we argued in
Part 1, we believe that turnaround of
failing schools represents an opportu-
nity to bring about fundamental
change in education on a broad basis.
That is the focus of the remainder of
this report: defining the difference
between intervention as it has (most-
ly) been done to date, and a more
complete, ambitious form of interven-
tion we call integrated, comprehen-
sive turnaround design – or, “true
turnaround” for short.
The graphic below summarizes our
approach.
• First, it is staked to our analysis of
the HPHP schools in Part 2 and
the Readiness Model for high-
poverty schools that resulted from
that analysis.
• Second, it focuses (in Part 3) on the
elements of turnaround design we
believe are critical to its success at
the ground level: Conditions,
Capacity, and Clustering, the three
‘C’s of turnaround design.
• Third, it presents our view (in Part
4) of how these elements can be
enabled at scale, through the cre-
ation of turnaround zones with
special operating conditions and
supports, and a coordinated frame-
work of state, district, and outside
partner support.
None of this is simple to accomplish.
We are fully aware, having been
deeply involved in Massachusetts edu-
cation policymaking for ten years, of
the complex political dynamics that
can make the organization, launch,
and successful implementation of
such a public policy initiative a daunt-
ing challenge. But we have also seen
success come to Massachusetts, first-
hand, from a sustained, statewide
commitment to real reform among
government, business, community,
and education leaders. Part 4 begins
with a discussion of these dynamics
and the need for states to build a lead-
ership constituency for failing schools.
But first, in Part 3, we elaborate on
the three ‘C’s.
What Success Requires
(continued)
42
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
For More Analysis of…
• Current intervention strategies in gener-
al: Appendix A provides an in-depth exami-
nation of what’s been tried, organized into
the three categories introduced in Figure 3B:
Program Change, People Change, and
Condition Change. Appendix A also provides
an analysis of No Child Left Behind and its
impact on turnaround design.
• State and district intervention initiatives
of particular interest: The Supplemental
Report offers profiles of ten representative
state intervention efforts and four school dis-
trict programs of special note – Chicago,
Miami-Dade, New York City, and Philadelphia.
3.1 What Success Requires 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support
Engineering the Framework for Turnaround: Key Steps
FIGURE 3A
This chart plots three current forms of
school intervention on a graph indicating
the comprehensiveness of each form
against its scale.
• Program Change initiatives have represent-
ed the vast majority of intervention initiatives,
including the federal government’s massive
Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program
and the New American Schools (NAS) models.
This form of intervention provides help in a
vast array of ways – including whole-school
modeling – but stops short of changing the
system in which the work is undertaken, or
the people who are undertaking it.
• People Change initiatives imply a judgment
that turnaround of failing schools involves
more than improving programs; it must include
some change in the people implementing the
reform as well. Some school districts, notably
Washington DC and San Francisco, have experi-
mented with total staff reconstitution: firing
everyone and building a new staff. Virginia is
experimenting with a Turnaround Specialists
program that replaces principals in failing
schools with other school leaders who have
proven track records of effectiveness. These ini-
tiatives go farther than the Program Change
models, but still stop short of addressing barri-
ers in the operating conditions that prevent
reform from fulfilling its potential.
• Conditions Change initiatives provide authority
to turnaround leaders to make choices regarding
programs and key resources including staff,
schedule, and budget. They attempt to reconnect
incentive structures to the school’s educational
mission (through, for example, professional
norms for compensation and collaboration).
Comprehensive turnaround, we believe, inte-
grates all three of these forms of change. A
handful of major districts have begun to experi-
ment with forms of intervention that try to
address all three. The reforms are too new to
have produced definitive results. Turn to
Appendix A and the Supplement for a more thor-
ough treatment of this analysis and profiles of
some of those intervention experiments.
43
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 3B
Current Interventions: Some Scale, but Little True Comprehensiveness
3.1
44
Changing Conditions: Establishing
the operating conditions and new
incentives necessary for school-level
decisions to be made more on the
basis of what’s best for students and
achievement than on the needs of
adults. That means flexible authority
over critical resources – people, time,
money, and program – and profes-
sional incentives that actively encour-
age people to do their best work.
S
upremely skillful principals with
adequate resources pursuing com-
monly-held, research-based reforms
have at least some chance of improv-
ing a low-performing school. But
their success appears to come despite
the context of governance, decision-
making systems, and operating condi-
tions in which they do their work. As
our own seven years of effective-prac-
tice research and our analysis of simi-
lar studies show, principals who suc-
ceed in high-poverty, high-challenge
schools tend to be strategy mavericks
and resource entrepreneurs. They
extract from the system what’s valu-
able to their school, they find ways
around the most dysfunctional obsta-
cles, and they enlist their staff into
willingly coming along with them.
It should not have to be that way, and
it cannot if we are to meet the chal-
lenge of failing schools at the scale of
the need. The challenges presented by
high-poverty schools are too great,
and the supply of supremely skillful
principals is simply too small. Hence
the first of the three ‘C’s of effective
turnaround at scale: Establishing the
changing conditions.
By “conditions,” we don’t mean work-
ing conditions in the classic sense of
the phrase: temperature in the hall-
ways, rowdy students, number of kids
in a class. We mean the large set of
systemic operating conditions that
actively shape how everyone – adults
and students alike – behave in the
school. This set of conditions is driv-
en primarily by two forces: authority
to make choices (particularly regard-
ing the key resources of people, time,
money, and program); and the nature
of the incentive structure.
Authority to Make Choices
One thread that runs through the
research on effective schools and
high-performing high-poverty schools
is the central importance of allocating
a school’s resources in ways that maxi-
mize student learning. Four kinds of
resources stand out as most critical:
1
People: Abundant research sup-
ports the primacy of good teaching
in determining student achieve-
ment. (Hattie, 2003; Rowan,
Correnti, & Miller, 2002; Sanders,
Wright, & Horn, 1997) Schools
seeking to raise student achieve-
ment dramatically put the right
people in the right positions to do
their most effective work, and then
enable that performance with oper-
ating conditions and incentives
(see below) that support it.
Turnaround school leaders must
have the ability to shape the staff in
their schools, without regard to
seniority or other contract bargain-
ing restrictions.
Time: Schools that are effective
with previously low-performing
students typically use time in sub-
stantially different ways from the
norm. At the elementary level, they
increase the time students spend in
core academic instruction (many
studies, with Kannapel & Clements
2005 a recent example). At the high
school level, HPHP schools are
exceedingly deliberate about the
use of instructional time – arrang-
ing available time to help “catch
up” students who arrive behind
(Education Trust, 2005) and in
some cases rewriting the entire
weekly and yearly school calendar.
(Mass Insight, 2001-5) Effective
schools also rework teachers’ time
to allow more monitoring, data-
analysis, planning, and professional
development.
Money: Most intervention program
leaders are handcuffed by their lack
of control over school budgets,
which in turn undercuts their abili-
ty to implement the most impor-
tant elements of their turnaround
plan. The charter schools among
the HPHP schools we studied have
the necessary budget authority;
principals at other HPHP schools
tend to be mavericks with district
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3.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective Turnaround
Reform depends on the context in which it’s applied
1
It is important to recognize that to some degree, these four resources are fungible. That is, they should not be regarded as separate resource “silos” to be treated separately from each other, but as different articulations of available
resources that skillful school and district leaders allocate according to their most important strategies.
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.1 What Success Requires
policy and “resource entrepre-
neurs,” as discussed in Part 2,
in order to gain at least a measure
of flexibility.
Program: Turnaround leaders
need sufficient authority to shape
their school’s teaching approaches
and related services around the
mission and their local circum-
stances – within a framework of
support and direction provided to
them by network partners (which
may include their district).
Much of this “resource authority”
may seem to pertain mostly to untra-
ditional schools – schools organized
to conduct their work somewhat or
completely outside of normal public
school district structures. And this is,
in many ways, the point: the nature of
school turnaround work requires that
we learn from these outside-the-system
approaches and develop better ways of
applying them inside the system. (See
Figure 3C.) Without the ability to
select and place staff, structure time,
and allocate funds, it becomes
extraordinarily difficult for schools to
succeed, especially in a turnaround
context. Much authoritative research
supports the importance of authority
over resources. In RAND’s research
on comprehensive school reform, for
example, schools that were given the
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Applying Outside-the-System Approaches,
Focused Inside the System
FIGURE 3C
Building the Turnaround Model:
In order to enable school-level reform that incorporates the three “readiness” dimensions of
high-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – either
within or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibit
reform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a framework
of strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.
3.2
46
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
freedom to implement their models
were more likely to be successful.
(Berends et al, 2002) RAND came to
similar conclusions in its evaluation of
Edison Schools, which also has
achieved greater success when allowed
the autonomy to implement its pro-
gram. (Gill et al, 2005) Studies of suc-
cessful charter schools have pointed to
freedom and flexibility as critical to the
schools’ success. “In effective charter
schools,” one concluded, “in each case
the school program reflects the school’s
freedom to experiment, to be creative
in terms of organization, scheduling,
curriculum, and instruction.” (U.S.
Department of Education, 2004)
Though these examples emphasize
school-level autonomy, it is important
to note that the concept of “authority
to make choices” does not necessarily
mean untrammeled school-level flexi-
bility over all aspects of school opera-
tions. It may well be sensible, for
example, for a district to deploy a
research-based reading curriculum in
all of its chronically low-performing
schools, rather than allowing each
school to select its own approach. And
it may also be sensible for policymak-
ers to make school-level authority con-
tingent on capacity; e.g., requiring
school-level leaders to earn authority
by showing their ability to lead well.
Simply granting unlimited powers to
incapable school-level actors in such a
context is not a winning turnaround
strategy. But even where school-level
authority is not appropriate or desirable,
someone still needs authority over
resources in order to effect successful
turnaround. Someone needs the power
to allocate people, time, and money in a
way that supports the turnaround effort.
Incentives to Take Action
By “incentives,” we mean all of the
forces that shape behavior within a
school. Too often, incentives run in
exactly the wrong direction inside
chronically low-performing schools.
The incentive challenge is in fact evi-
dent at all levels of the system, from
those shaping superintendent decision-
making to those that define the daily
work of individual teachers and
administrators – and the engagement
of students in their own learning, as
was discussed in Part 2.
First, turnaround leaders at all levels
need incentives to act decisively in
support of fundamental change.
Over the past two decades, local lead-
ers have shown a marked preference
for less dramatic strategies even when
there is little or no evidence that such
a strategy will improve the education
its neediest students receive. (Brady,
2003; McRobbie, 1998; Wong & Shen,
2003) This preference is predictable:
dramatic strategies are by definition
more likely to upset strong interests,
necessitate policy changes, require the
reallocation of funding and people,
and otherwise disrupt the status quo.
Without countervailing incentives to
take bold action, district (and school)
leaders can scarcely be expected to do
so, though there always will be excep-
tions. As Brady (2003) found: “While
39 states have the authority to take
strong actions, and while these same
39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably
improved for years, we still find
strong interventions extremely rare.”
It is tempting to imagine that NCLB
has created such countervailing incen-
tives, but the evidence suggests other-
wise. Though NCLB requires districts
to “restructure” schools after five years
of failing to make Adequate Yearly
Progress, most restructuring appears
to be an extension of more incremen-
tal reform strategies common in the
earlier stages of NCLB intervention.
NCLB delineates four dramatic
options: reopening as a charter school,
contracting with an external manage-
ment provider, replacing relevant staff,
and state takeover. But it also includes
a fifth “other” option, which is the
route most districts are taking. Often,
“other” means using incremental
strategies such as new curriculum pro-
grams or staff development. Very few
districts seem to be employing NCLB’s
more dramatic restructuring options.
(DiBiase, 2005) Until and unless the
restructuring provisions of NCLB are
rewritten, if state policy leaders want
districts to have strong countervailing
incentives to take bold action, they
will have to create them. (See Part 4.2
for more on NCLB’s impact on turn-
around design.)
Incentives That Support Reform
Second, turnaround leaders and edu-
cators in turnaround schools need
powerful incentives to act in ways
that boost student performance dra-
matically. Current incentives produce
personal and organizational behavior
that tends to undercut performance by
Changing Conditions
(continued)
Dramatic strategies are by definition more likely to upset strong
interests, necessitate policy changes, require the reallocation
of funding and people, and otherwise disrupt the status quo.
3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.1 What Success Requires
47
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
students – particularly disadvantaged
students attending dysfunctional
schools. It would seem reasonable, for
example, that students in the lowest
performing schools should be taught
by the most able teachers. But under
current incentive and compensation
structures, it would be irrational to
expect the most capable teachers and
administrators to gravitate to the most
dysfunctional schools. New incentives
– differential pay, low-interest mort-
gages, loan-forgiveness, leadership
roles – must be developed if we are to
match the neediest students with the
teachers and leaders most capable of
helping them.
There are several different kinds of
incentives that policymakers can
mobilize to support school turn-
arounds, including:
Resource incentives: Policymakers
can offer additional funding for dis-
tricts or schools willing to under-
take turnaround strategies that are
most likely to work, rather then
pursuing less promising strategies.
Positioning incentives: Too
often, systems stigmatize schools
that are identified for improve-
ment. Instead, policymakers can
seek to create an environment in
which being designated a “turn-
around school” is valued due to
the attention, resources, condi-
tion changes, and promise that
attach to the status.
Accountability incentives:
Increasingly, No Child Left Behind
and state accountability systems
are insisting on more dramatic
interventions in under-performing
schools, providing ample motiva-
tion to proactive school and dis-
trict leaders – including both man-
agement and unions – to find solu-
tions or risk loss of control, budget
authority, and membership. While
these systems are imperfect in vari-
ous ways, policymakers can use
them as levers to induce action at
the district and school level.
Parent and community
incentives: Parents and communi-
ty members can mobilize in sup-
port of these efforts or detract from
them depending upon how they
become organized relative to the
change. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005;
Arkin and Kowal, 2005; Kowal and
Arkin, 2005) If change-oriented
policymakers and system leaders
can harness that mobilization in
support of viable turnaround
strategies, these incentives can run
in the right direction. Alternately,
if opponents of change are more
effective at capitalizing on this
force, then the incentives will con-
tinue to work against change as
they so often do.
Condition change may be the most
difficult and contentious of the three
‘C’s we propose as vital ingredients
for effective turnaround. It confronts
established interests in the form of
bureaucratic state and district con-
straints, teacher unions and, some-
times, parent and professional associ-
ations. But altered operating condi-
tions and incentive structures are
hallmarks of the HPHP schools, and
district/union collaborating around
turnaround zones in New York,
Chicago, Miami, and elsewhere show
that it can be done. Turnaround
efforts that continuously require
decision-making staked to the best
interests of children, instead of
adults, will be on the right track.
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How to Establish the Enabling Conditions:
Create a Turnaround Zone
They go by different names: Improvement Zone (Miami-Dade). Empowerment
Zone (New York City). Opportunity Zone (Houston). Superintendent’s Schools
(Boston). Renaissance 2010 or “Ren-Ten” schools (Chicago). But they all reflect
the same idea: create special, protected space to provide the changing condi-
tions that research and common sense suggest are necessary for effective turn-
around of under-performing schools. Create, in other words, a turnaround zone.
There is no one model for a turnaround zone. Each of the experiments under-
way in the urban districts listed above is different from the others. But their
goals are the same: to remove common barriers to reform, propel fundamental
(as opposed to incremental) change, reconnect incentives with the schools’ edu-
cational mission, provide a focus for increased support from the district and
from outside partners, and – last but not least – to replace stigmatizing labels
with a strongly positive identity. Turnaround zones are efforts to actualize the
Readiness to Act leg of the HPHP Readiness school model, and to enable school
leaders to expand their staff’s Readiness to Teach.
Districts have led the way in creating such zones. (See Appendix A and the
Supplemental Report for our analysis.) But states now have the opportunity to
learn from the district experiments and create statewide zones that bring the
changing conditions to every district and school undertaking turnaround. That is
one of the foundation ideas in our proposed Turnaround Framework, which is
described in Part 5.
3.2
48
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Building Capacity: Enhancing
schools’ ability to recruit, train,
assign, and support people with the
right skills for the right jobs; and
building, in particular, new capacity
among internal school leadership
teams and external turnaround part-
ners in the specialized skills of school
turnaround management.
T
urnaround is, at its core, a peo-
ple strategy. No matter how good
a new curriculum is, or how solid the
data analysis is, or how imaginatively
the school day is organized, or how
new the technology is – no matter
about all of that – schooling is funda-
mentally a human enterprise. High-
performing, high-poverty schools give
their highest priority to recruiting the
best staff possible and enabling them
to do their best work. Failing schools,
on the other hand, are a painfully
clear reflection of public education’s
general failure to understand and
adopt professional human resource
management systems and strategies.
In the realm of capacity-building,
effective turnaround requires:
• A fundamental rethinking of
internal HR approaches – includ-
ing recruitment, induction, devel-
opment, allocation, and evaluation
– in order to enable people current-
ly in the system to perform at the
highest levels and to attract highly
dedicated, highly skilled newcomers
to the mission. This is true not just
at the level of the classroom
teacher; it’s just as true at every
level in the system of supports for
that teacher, including principals
and coaches, district and school
managers of turnaround efforts,
and framers and implementers of
turnaround policy at the state level.
• A fundamental rethinking of how
external capacity is applied – how
schools, districts, and states work
with outside partners, who have an
important role to play that would
not be supported by the nature and
structure of most current school/dis-
trict/provider relationships.
• A clear understanding of turn-
around management as a disci-
pline with a distinct skill set; the
inadequacy of current turnaround
management capacity everywhere
in the system; and the state’s
responsibility to address that gap.
• Finally: the provision of sufficient
funding and resources. The vast
majority of any investment that
states and districts make in turn-
around will go to building the
capacity required to implement the
strategies comprehensively. Partial
implementation because of insuffi-
cient funding will produce, pre-
dictably, a dimmer result.
Revitalizing Internal HR
Leaders of outside-the-system schools
such as charters and charter-like
schools say that perhaps the most
important authority they have – the
definer of what’s different in their
schools from the traditional model –
is the ability to shape their school staff
into the high-performance team that
schooling in high-poverty environ-
ments requires. (Mass Insight for the
NewSchools Venture Fund, 2007)
Principals of regular, in-district public
schools generally lack the same kind
of authority – a crippling blow to any
serious turnaround effort. But as the
research presented in Part 2 and the
Supplemental Report shows, princi-
pals leading high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools find ways to
exercise that authority, even when
they have to work around contractual
requirements and longstanding oper-
ating habits. “Effective leaders used all
available discretion and opportunity
to hire the ‘right’ people,” researchers
in Massachusetts found, “and maxi-
mized staff effectiveness by placing
them in the right roles. This some-
times meant pushing people out of
their comfort zones.” (UMass
Donahue Institute, 2007)
This is the intersection of the first two
of our three ‘C’s of effective turn-
around, Changing Conditions and
Building Capacity. The objection to
providing school and district leaders
with more authority over hiring, fir-
ing, placement, responsibilities, and
evaluation is usually that it will lead to
unfair practices or to the school’s
“managers” taking advantage of its
“workers.” In fact, the HPHP schools
demonstrate exactly the opposite
effects. A central finding of the UMass
Donahue Institute study cited above,
which studied matched pairs of high-
and low-performing schools in the
same urban district, is fairly typical:
“Teachers in higher performing
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround
Urgently needed: broader, deeper turnaround capacity at every corner of the system
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
49
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
schools frequently characterized their
principals as demanding, but also as
extremely supportive of teachers who
are trying to meet those demands.
There was a motivational aspect to
principals’ support – a sense that they
share a common commitment – and
this often equated to high morale and
energized staff within higher perform-
ing schools.” Effective HR manage-
ment is vastly more difficult than it
should be in most public schools
today. (The Education Partnership,
2005-7) Changing the operating con-
ditions to allow leaders to lead is the
first step towards assembling the
ground-level capacity required to turn
around a failing school.
Redefining External Partnerships
At a meeting of Massachusetts’ lead-
ing school improvement service
providers a couple of years ago, Mass
Insight and about twenty other organ-
izations were asked to pin cards
describing our initiatives onto sepa-
rate posters representing the state’s
largest school districts. This innocent
exercise produced a fascinating (and
discouraging) result. Many posters
looked like pincushions, and many
providers – including Mass Insight –
were taken aback at the number of
other providers who were hard at
work in their best partner districts.
None of us had any real idea how
much “providing” was going on, and
nowhere was there any degree of
coordination among partners working
in the same district.
It is little wonder that teachers
famously say, as various streams of
reform and partner organizations
float overhead, “duck and cover – this
too shall pass.” Where school culture
is weakest, in chronically under-per-
forming schools, this syndrome is
deeply felt. In order for turnaround
schools to have a chance at success,
their relationship with outside part-
ners needs significant restructuring –
and the pool and capacity of potential
turnaround partners needs to be
widened and deepened considerably.
That is the central idea behind
Figure 3D: the reorganization of
the current, highly fragmented
school/partner model into a new one,
for turnaround schools, that builds
on the “systems-integrator” approach
now being used successfully in many
other sectors including business and
healthcare. In this model, lead turn-
around partners take on the respon-
sibility of integrating other providers
into a coherent whole. The current
model assumes that someone in the
school or district will accomplish this
integration, but that appears to be
more the exception than the rule.
In the “Old-World” model of school/provider partnerships still prevalent today, multiple part-
ners work independently in a fragmented, confusing web of disconnected support. In the
“New-World” model most appropriate for turnaround, a lead turnaround partner acts as
systems integrator and coordinates the providers. The “New-World” model illustrated here
also reflects the greater capacity required for turnaround throughout the system: particularly
at the school, but also at the district (through a turnaround zone organized to serve a clus-
ter of schools), partner, and state levels.
FIGURE 3D
3.3
50
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Lead partners can maximize the
value that all outside providers bring
to the task of turnaround.
The same logic applies to turnaround
schools’ need to build strong connec-
tions with social services – the other
large-scale public investment in disad-
vantaged communities, which too
often takes place without much if any
integration with the schools. Through
sheer determination and the “resource
ingenuity” element of our HPHP
Readiness school model, effective
principals in high-poverty settings
already pursue these connections. The
key is lowering the bar so that these
connections happen without requir-
ing exceptional leadership.
The final point to make regarding
turnaround partners is connected to
the need for turnaround capacity-
building throughout the system.
There is exceedingly little capacity,
currently, in the supply of outside
turnaround partners. Most states
seeking to apply outside expertise to
under-performing schools end up hir-
ing recently retired educators as indi-
vidual consultants, who then most
often perform their responsibilities
with very little training or coordina-
tion with their fellow consultants, or,
for that matter, results. There is an
important time consideration for
states in considering how they might
expand provider capacity for turn-
around – in effect, playing a role on
the demand-side to stimulate the
development of higher-capacity turn-
around organizations. Just as NCLB
triggered an enormous (and some-
what chaotic) expansion of the
provider network for Supplemental
Education Services on behalf of
under-performing students, so may it,
soon, trigger dramatic expansion of
turnaround assistance for under-per-
forming schools. That expansion,
inevitably, will also be somewhat
unmanaged and chaotic. But states
can maximize provider effectiveness
through intentional, highly developed
collaborations with outside partners
and districts and an explicit strategy
to expand provider capacity. Some
districts – notably New York and
Chicago – are already showing the
way in working with foundations and
local organizations to expand outside
partner capacity. It is not a role that
states are familiar with, for the most
part. But it is a vital one.
Building Turnaround
Management Capacity
Decades of research on schools has
firmly established the central impor-
tance of school leadership quality,
accounting by one prominent estimate
for 25% of differences in student
learning. (Waters et al, 2003) The
importance of leadership appears even
greater in a school requiring dramatic
improvement. American Institutes for
Research and SRI International’s eval-
uation of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation’s high-school reform ini-
tiative, for example, found that leader-
ship was one of the key determinants
of successful reform in high schools.
(AIR/SRI, 2005) According to a cross-
industry literature review of “turn-
arounds,” about 70 percent of success-
ful turnarounds involve changes in top
management. (Hoffman, 1989)
Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround
(continued)
3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
Contract Manager
Consulting Partner
States and Districts May Contract
with Two Forms of Lead Turnaround Partner
• Assumes control over all aspects of school management
(overall design, curriculum, HR, staff development,
budgeting, scheduling, assessment, back-office services)
on a contract basis with the district or the state.
• Usually multiple-year contract, renewable on attainment
of performance benchmarks.
• Control remains with school district, but within
turnaround framework and conditions/reform
elements required by the state.
• Partner is deeply immersed in all aspects of developing
and collaboratively executing the turnaround plan.
• Partner and district are jointly held accountable
for fidelity to the plan and attainment of
performance benchmarks.
For more on governance issues in turnaround schools, see page 81 and related material in Part 5.
Note: With its “Performance,” “Contract,” and “Charter” schools, Chicago provides good exam-
ples of these different forms of providers and district/provider relationships. Some providers there,
like the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago, have begun filling
both kinds of roles in different schools. See the Supplemental Report for more information.
51
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Turnaround requires more than just
good leadership; it requires leadership
that is adept at the particular challenge
of turnaround. A wide range of research
suggests that leaders who will be
effective in efforts to achieve dramatic
improvement are likely to have
characteristics that are very different
from those of typical school leaders and
take actions that diverge significantly
from those required in more stable lead-
ership situations. (Kowal and Hassel,
2005; Arkin and Kowal, 2005; see box)
Though the research is fairly clear on
this point, policy and practice have yet
to apply it on any kind of scale. Some
states, major school districts, founda-
tions, universities, and non-profit
organizations have put new energy into
recruiting and training new principals
for urban schools. But very few pro-
grams are specifically preparing leaders
for the challenge of school turnaround.
The Virginia School Turnaround
Specialist Program, created by the edu-
cation and business schools at the
University of Virginia at the behest of
then-governor Mark Warner, is one
exception. States making a commit-
ment to turnaround will need to
address this capacity gap at the state
level, because few districts have the
resources necessary to do it themselves.
Finding the Money for Turnaround
Reforms significant enough to generate
dramatic improvement in chronically
low-performing schools will in most
cases require substantial investment of
financial resources. To the degree possi-
ble, system leaders will want to find this
investment by reallocating existing
resources first. As Harvard researcher
Richard Elmore (2002) argued: “The
evidence is now substantial that there is
considerable money available in most
district budgets to finance large-scale
improvement efforts that use profes-
sional development effectively. The
money is there. The problem is that it’s
already spent on other things and it has
to be reallocated to focus on student
achievement… Adding money to a sys-
tem that doesn’t know how to manage
its own resources effectively means that
the new money will be spent the same
way as the old money.” Miami-Dade
pursued this strategy in funding its 39-
school Improvement Zone in its first
year (2004-2005), finding reportedly
close to $1 million per school from
existing line items in the budget (see
the profile in the Supplemental Report).
A reallocation-first strategy also exerts
discipline on system and school lead-
ers to focus initially on the highest-
value-added changes. This kind of
focus is one of the hallmarks of suc-
cessful turnarounds across industries.
That said: the costs of school turn-
around (including money for new
staff, incentive and responsibility-
based compensation, new program
materials, outside partner services and
support, and especially additional time
in the school day or year) range from
$250,000 to a million dollars per
school, per year over three years, with
declining investment in subsequent
years. (See the “Sample Turnaround
Costs” box in Part 5.) On strictly
financial terms, these investments are
more than justifiable. It’s probable that
successful turnaround, viewed as a
percentage increase of overall school
spending, would more than pay for
itself in terms of savings on social serv-
ices and the increased productivity of
successfully maturing students. We
don’t know this for sure only because
it hasn’t yet been done.
How Effective School Turnaround Leaders Work
For their useful report, Turnarounds with New Leaders and Staff (Learning Point Associates,
2005), Kowal and Hassel distilled findings from more than a dozen different sources to
produce a set of desired attributes for effective turnaround leaders in school settings.
Such leaders, they suggest, tend to pursue common actions including the following:
Major Actions
• Concentrate on a few changes with big, fast payoffs
• Implement practices proven to work with previously low-performing students
without seeking permission for deviations from district policies
Support Steps
• Communicate a positive vision of future school results
• Collect and personally analyze school and student performance data
• Make an action plan based on data
• Help staff personally see and feel the problems students face
• Get key influencers within district and school to support major changes
• Measure and report progress frequently and publicly
• Gather staff team often and require all involved in decision-making to disclose and
discuss their own results in open-air meetings
• Funnel more time and money into tactics that get results; halt unsuccessful tactics
• Require all staff to change – not optional
• Silence change naysayers indirectly by showing speedy successes
• Act in relentless pursuit of goals rather than touting progress as ultimate success
3.3
52
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Clustering for Support: Organizing
turnaround for effectiveness and
efficiency in school clusters by need,
type, or region. Educators engaged
in turnaround need particularly
strong support networks, located
either within their district or (in
low-capacity districts) across district
lines. These mini-district clusters,
created in conjunction with district
leaders and turnaround partners,
provide specialized support to
schools engaging in turnaround
under special operating conditions
established by the state.
S
chools need networks. They need
them for reasons of both efficiency
and effectiveness. Regular public
schools, of course, have been organized
into district networks for better than a
hundred years. Even notoriously inde-
pendent charter schools have begun to
organize networks of like-minded
schools, and charter management
organizations are creating new schools
in clusters – witness KIPP Academies’
recent announcement of its goal to
open a total of 42 schools in Houston.
Failing schools have been failed by
their networks. By NCLB’s definition,
schools in restructuring have failed to
meet their goals for at least six years.
The presence of failing schools in a
district does not necessarily mean that
the district is incapable. (Boston, the
Broad Prize winner for urban school
district effectiveness in 2006, has
more than two dozen schools in
which more than half of the students
have failed either English/Language
Arts or math over multiple years.)
But something needs to change, fairly
dramatically, in order for schools that
have been failing for six years to turn
around. In our three ‘C’s model, we
have argued that the operating condi-
tions need to change, and that various
capacity challenges need to be
addressed. We are convinced that
another, equally important part of the
answer lies in a third C: clustering for
support. In other words: intentionally
organizing for school turnaround at
the network level.
Clustering for Efficiency
As Irving Hamer, the educator who
created the 39-school Improvement
Zone in Miami-Dade under
Superintendent Rudy Crew, has con-
tinually reminded us in his role as an
advisor on this project, turnaround “is
past the time for onesies and twosies.”
The number of schools in need is too
great – and the advantages of cluster-
ing are too compelling.
Virtually all of the most far-reaching
district turnaround efforts underway
today are using some sort of cluster
approach. (See Attachment A and the
Supplemental Report for profiles of
the initiatives in Miami-Dade, New
York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.) The
clustering is often tied together with
each district’s “portfolio” of interven-
tion strategies, involving different
forms of school management: one
turnaround cluster being organized by
the teachers’ union, other clusters
being managed by universities or
other intermediary organization, and
other clusters managed by a turn-
around office within the district itself.
State intervention efforts, on the other
hand, appear to have largely refrained
from clustering. Many states offer
staff and leadership development pro-
grams to selected high-need districts
and schools; many provide guidance
and change coaches to schools in
Restructuring or Corrective Action.
But few take a more managed
approach to creating networks of
schools along strategic lines: vertically
(focusing on successful transitions for
students from their elementary
through their high school years), or
horizontally (by type – for example,
urban middle schools or alternative
high schools for at-risk students and
dropouts). Organization of the work
can take several forms, as shown in
Figure 3E:
• Cluster Example 1: across a larger
number of districts, each of which
has just one or two chronically
under-performing schools, or
where the state wants to encourage
implementation of particular
school models and approaches –
for example, grade 6-12 academies.
3.4 The Third C: Clustering for Support
It’s not just about autonomy. Failing schools need intensive network support.
Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent,
deliberate blending of “loose” and “tight” in
implementation and design.
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
3.4 Clustering for Support 3.3 Building Capacity 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
53
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
How Different Clusters Support the Work of Turnaround Differently
Clusters are small (5- to 20-school) reform
networks organized with intention around a
common attribute: school type, student need,
reform approach, geography, or feeder pat-
terns. The cluster organizer (which could be a dis-
trict or a turnaround partner) adjusts its support
in part around the nature of that attribute.
This graphic presents three possible clusters. They
can be loosely grouped as “horizontal” (schools
by type) or “vertical” (schools by feeder patterns).
• Cluster 1 (horizontal) could serve a set of
specialty schools – grade 6-12 academies, mid-
dle college schools, Montessori elementaries –
across several districts
• Cluster 2 (horizontal) could serve middle
schools in three continguous, small-city
school districts
• Cluster 3 (vertical) could represent a special
turnaround “carve-out” or zone within a large
urban district, serving schools at all K-12 levels
and potentially following district feeder patterns
We could find no research that points to an opti-
mum size for school clusters. New York City caps its
school cohorts at 25. In the words of one advisor
to this project: they should be large enough to be
an enterprise, and small enough to be successful.
FIGURE 3E
3.4
54
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
• Cluster Example 2: two to four
districts, organized and supported
by the state, where combined turn-
around work makes sense because
of geographic proximity or because
the work focuses on schools that
share particular attributes.
• Cluster Example 3: within single
districts conducting turnaround on
behalf of a cohort of under-per-
forming schools (or multiple
cohorts, in districts pursuing a
portfolio of different approaches
with different governance and/or
management structures).
Clustering for Effectiveness
Effective turnaround at scale requires
a transparent, deliberate blending of
“loose” and “tight” in implementa-
tion and design. The loose/tight
dynamic has come under some study
in recent years, most notably in a
report funded by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and prepared by
leaders from the foundation,
NewSchools Venture Fund, and the
Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based
non-profit. (Colby et al, 2005)
“Loose” refers to latitude in manage-
ment or design, with decisions being
made out in the field; “tight” in this
context means more centralized con-
trol. Questions of looseness and
tightness can be applied across the
full range of school management and
design dimensions (see Figure 3F) –
as, in fact, they always are by districts
on behalf of their schools, in quite
often a fairly constant source of orga-
nizational tension.
The loose/tight dynamic deserves
much deeper study, as it is a linchpin
of reform across clusters of schools.
There is no one right “blend” that will
serve every circumstance; higher-
capacity schools and districts deserve
and sometimes even get broader lati-
tude (or looseness) to make their own
decisions, while clusters of some
kinds of schools – new 6-12 acade-
mies, for example – might insist on
tighter control while implementing a
new model.
Applying the loose/tight dynamic in
the turnaround context presents an
immediate contradiction in terms.
The changes in operating conditions
outlined earlier in this report are nec-
essary to allow the people closest to
the work to have a strong say in how
it is done. The HPHP schools vividly
demonstrate the importance of
school-based decision-making author-
ity and school-wide commitment to
reform. But leaving all decision-mak-
ing authority up to the schools – as in
the charter model – makes little sense
in a turnaround context. Turnaround
requires a careful balance that doesn’t
undercut the power of site-based deci-
sion-making but provides strong sup-
port, backed by shared authority, for
the work from the cluster-network
provider and the state.
Clustering for Support: Organizing the Change
(continued)
“Loose” vs. “Tight” Across Eight Dimensions of School Management and Design
The essential question is: which functions are best left to the site and which are best organized by the network? Edmonton, Oakland, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, among others, are all conducting
experiments on this question. There is no one best answer – more likely, different answers for different contexts – but for schools undergoing turnaround, the difference between a loose, blended, and generally
tightly managed cluster might look like this, in extremely simplified form.
Overall Design
& Approach Curriculum
Recruiting/
Hiring
Staff
Development /
Evaluation Budgeting Scheduling
Performance
Assessment
Back-Office
Services
Loose cluster School School Cluster/ School School School School School School
Blended cluster Shared Shared Cluster/ School Shared School School Shared Shared
Tight cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Shared Shared Shared Shared Shared
3.4 Clustering for Support 3.3 Building Capacity 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
FIGURE 3F
"What's gone around has come around. After a decade or so spent
largely on setting academic standards against which to hold
schools accountable, states are themselves being held accountable
for helping schools figure out how to meet them.
“The result is a huge leadership challenge."
– Jeff Archer, "Leading the Learning,"
Education Week, 2006
4.1 Organizing at the State Level
For Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools
Towards a framework that offers good support for good design
H
ow can states most effectively
organize a school turnaround
initiative that reflects everything we
have learned about what works – and
what doesn’t?
That is the central question of this
report, and the focus of Part 4.
The graphic for the proposed “New-
World” turnaround framework that
has emerged from our research, shown
at right, is where we will end up. On
the way there, we will discuss elements
in the framework that have less to do
with the business of turnaround (that’s
addressed by the three ‘C’s) in Part 3,
and more to do with the business of
planning, launching, and managing a
statewide initiative campaign.
For that is what’s needed to tackle the
challenge posed by failing schools: an
initiative that looks less like compli-
ance with state and federal accounta-
bility mandates, and more like an
inclusive, high-visibility, entrepre-
neurial partnership aimed at solving
an urgent public dilemma.
The Current Landscape
of State-Led Initiatives
Profiles of ten representative state
intervention efforts appear in the
Supplement to this report. In each state
initiative, there are elements of prom-
ise. But none of the states we looked at
(which have all been at the forefront of
this issue, in one way or another) had
been able to marshal the broad leader-
ship commitment, sustained public
investment, and comprehensiveness of
strategy required to bring about effec-
tive turnaround at the scale of the need.
Generally, with some caveats for
progress being made in some states,
current state intervention initiatives
appear to lack:
• Sufficient intensity, comprehensive-
ness, and sustainability. We saw lit-
tle state engagement in changing
operating conditions within turn-
around schools; little attention to
helping schools develop an overall
people strategy, as opposed to provid-
ing limited forms of staff develop-
ment; little clustering of schools with
similar attributes or turnaround
strategies; insufficient engagement in
building, statewide, capacity for turn-
around management both inside
schools and districts and among
turnaround partners; and only limit-
ed connections between school-level
turnaround efforts and parallel efforts to
improve struggling districts.
• Incentives powerful enough to
drive major change. We saw few
states establishing clear, aggressive
performance targets for restructur-
ing schools that carried equally clear
terminal consequences; and far too
little emphasis on positive incen-
tives that can motivate buy-in to
more fundamental kinds of reform.
• Strong public and private sector
commitment to turnaround. We
saw individuals (the occasional gov-
ernor, commissioner, or state board
chair) or state policymaking bodies
taking the lead in advocating for
turnaround, but not many signals of
the kind of public/private consensus
that has produced real impact in
other areas of school reform, such
as higher standards. In a few states,
courts are playing a role in focusing
attention to the issue, but business,
community groups, and universities
have for the most part not been
deeply engaged.
• Willingness to think outside of
the box regarding management
of the initiative. With a couple of
exceptions, school intervention
Part 4 examines:
4.1 Organizing at the State Level
for Turnaround of Under-
performing Schools
Towards a framework that provides
adequate support for good design
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact
on School Intervention
NCLB has forced the issue,
but has not catalyzed an
adequate response
4.3 Proactive Policymaking
Is Not Enough
A state turnaround initiative
requires entrepreneurial manage-
ment and broad coalition-building
P A R T 4
56
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
initiatives primarily have been
organized and operated through
the most traditional channel, mean-
ing the accountability or technical
service wing of the state education
agency. Virginia and Alabama are
two states that have tried (in very
different ways; see Supplemental
Report) to address the turnaround
challenge with a different kind of
management approach.
The Way Forward
Much of this is understandable, given
the nascent nature of accountability-
driven school turnaround. It is only in
the past couple of years that under-
performing schools have begun hit-
ting No Child Left Behind’s most
extreme categories – Corrective
Action or Restructuring. But there is a
growing recognition in the states we
studied that 2007 and 2008 are water-
shed years for state responsiveness on
this issue. The dimensions and com-
plexity of the challenge are clear
enough, and so now is the urgency as
more and more schools move into
each state’s category for the most dra-
matic forms of intervention.
Can it be done? We are convinced that
it can – if states approach the chal-
lenge with commitment and inven-
tiveness. The framework we present
in this section of the report encom-
passes, at the tactical level, the three
‘C’s discussed in Part 3. But it also
includes two other elements we
believe are fundamental to success:
• Statewide and community coali-
tion-building: Creating a con-
stituency and leadership consensus
for turnaround that is strong
enough to sustain the effort and
retain a focus on what works for
students, more so than adults.
• Freedom and authority to manage
the initiative creatively: Providing
the same degree of operating
authority to the statewide manage-
ment of the initiative that the
framework insists school turn-
around leaders need – perhaps
through the creation of new kind
of coordinating agency.
These elements are explored in Part
4.3 and in the proposed framework
that follows. First, in Part 4.2, we dis-
cuss the state policymaking context in
which this – or any – kind of turn-
around framework would be imple-
mented, one shaped more than any-
thing else by the impact of No Child
Left Behind.
Can it be done? We are convinced that it can – if states
approach the challenge with commitment and inventiveness.
The proposed framework, presented in Part 5, incorporates the three
‘C’s of effective turnaround and two additional elements: the building
of statewide and community coalitions necessary to sustain support;
and providing for effective coordination of the initiative.
57
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Preview of the Proposed
State Framework for School Turnaround
FIGURE 4A
4.1
58
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
T
he federal No Child Left Behind
Act has brought accountability to
public education, as its framers
hoped. A critical element of that new
emphasis on accountability is the
law’s provisions for schools that fail to
meet their achievement targets. The
urgency produced by solid, unar-
guable performance data identifying
struggling schools, coupled with a set
of mandated, escalating intervention
strategies, was supposed to usher in a
new “no-excuses” era of state-driven
turnaround in our most chronically
under-performing schools.
That’s not the way it has turned out.
At least: not yet.
NCLB’s unfulfilled impact on school
turnaround is a classic example of
unintended consequences. Three
aspects of the law, in particular, have
produced responses at the state and
local levels that are different from
what supporters of the legislation
were undoubtedly envisioning. They
relate to the timing and sequencing of
NCLB’s consequences for underper-
formance; the nature of the interven-
tion options presented by the law; and
the scale of the schools heading
through the accountability pipeline.
(A fourth aspect – the lack of targeted
funding for the more intensive forms
of intervention – has more to do with
politics and budget-making than with
policy design, and may improve with
NCLB’s forthcoming reauthorization.
Seven Years to Action
Figure 4B shows the sequence and
timeline for the steps required of
under-performing schools under
NCLB. The steps provide for a gradu-
ally escalating series of measures
designed to improve struggling
schools, serve currently enrolled stu-
dents with additional help, and offer
them the opportunity to switch to a
different (presumably better) school.
Some aspects of the steps in years 3-5 of
the series have come under scrutiny for
failing to produce desired results,
including the Supplemental Educational
Services programs and the school
choice provisions. But our principal
focus here is on the “final step” –
NCLB’s provisions for schools that have
failed to improve despite the interven-
tions set in place by interim steps.
On paper, the escalating conse-
quences for under-performing schools
might seem logical and appropriate.
In practice, though, a chronically fail-
ing middle school could pass two
complete generations of students
through grades 6-8 before NCLB’s
most intensive forms of intervention
are introduced. While those students
are muddling their way through their
years at the school – developing nei-
ther the skills nor the knowledge
required to succeed in high school –
the school undergoes, in most states,
an extensive series of reviews and
light-touch forms of planning assis-
tance that have little significant
impact. The “Call to Action” chart on
page 7 provides a vivid portrait of
policy “fiddling” while student
achievement lags.
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School Intervention
NCLB has forced the issue, but has not catalyzed an adequate response
The NCLB Intervention Timeline: Seven Years to Intensive Intervention FIGURE 4B
Years Not Improvement Status
Making AYP Under NCLB Action To Be Taken
1 None None
2 None After second year of not making AYP, school
is identified as “In Need of Improvement”
3 In Need of School choice for enrolled students
Improvement (Year One) Develop and implement improvement plan
4 In Need of Continue choice
Improvement (Year Two) Supplemental educational services (SES)
to low-income children
Develop and implement improvement plan
5 In Need of Continue choice
Corrective Action Continue SES
Implement corrective action plan (may include
replacing school staff, instituting new curriculum,
extending the school year or day, bringing in
outside experts)
6 Planning for Continue choice
Restructuring Continue SES
Develop a 2-year restructuring plan
(see in box on next page)
7 Restructuring Continue choice
Continue SES
Implement restructuring plan
Adapted from Center on Education Policy (2006) and the Commission on No Child Left Behind
(Aspen Institute, 2007)
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
59
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This is the first installment in our Intervention Taxonomy, designed to help clarify school-intervention’s
terms and to place NCLB’s five Restructuring options within the context of our analysis.
We have assigned labels to each option and ordered them differently from their appearance in the law
(in order to match the analysis coming in Taxonomy 2). These “Same School” options (see the folder
tabs at extreme right) all share one thing: everything else may change – governance, management,
teachers, programs – but the student population at the school essentially remains the same. There is
another option, though, being undertaken by some districts – most notably Chicago, under its
Renaissance 2010 initiative. That “New Start” option is to simply close under-performing schools, dis-
tribute their students, and literally start over from scratch (usually as a charter, contract, or special in-
district school).
NCLB’s Five Restructuring Options Extend from Incremental to Major Change
TAXONOMY 1
FIGURE 4C
For a brief explanation of the NCLB
Restructuring options, see box on the following page.
4.2
60
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The “Other” Restructuring
Category: Taking the Easy Way Out
The box on this page spells out the
five options for restructuring that
NCLB requires of schools entering
their sixth consecutive year of under-
performance (defined as not making
Adequate Yearly Progress, their annu-
al achievement target). The options
also appear on the Intervention
Taxonomy 1 and 2 charts on pages 59
and 61. Three of the options involve
management change; the school
would be turned into a charter school,
or taken over by the state, or assigned
to an independent contractor. One
option, widely referred to as reconsti-
tution, calls for the replacement of
school staff and (potentially) leader-
ship; and the fifth option provides for
the implementation of “any other
major restructuring of the school’s
governance arrangement that makes
fundamental reforms.”
This fifth option, which we call
Revision on our Taxonomy charts,
has achieved a degree of notoriety
over the past several years as more
and more schools have moved
through NCLB’s intervention steps. A
host of policy studies produced by the
Center for Education Policy and other
groups has shown the extreme
propensity of schools in restructuring
(or their district leaders) to choose
this “wild card” option – the least
intrusive, by far, among the five. Out
of 200 Chicago public schools that
had entered the restructuring plan-
ning phase in 2005, for example, 195
chose this option. (See Figure 4D.) In
California, 76% of schools in restruc-
turing in 2005 had chosen the option
(see Taxonomy 2, facing page).
The fifth NCLB option, many
researchers suggest, has been used
essentially to extend the reliance upon
incremental strategies common in the
earlier stages of NCLB intervention –
new curricular programs or additional
staff development. (DiBiase, 2005;
CEP, 2006) What is intended under
the law to be a fundamental restruc-
turing of a school’s operations, man-
agement, and approach to teaching
and learning, in other words, has
most often stayed comfortably within
the realm of incremental reform. We
examine these strategies more closely
in Appendix A.
NCLB’s Mixed Impact
(continued)
A host of policy studies … has shown the extreme
propensity of schools in restructuring (or their district
leaders) to choose this “wild card” option – the least
intrusive, by far, among the five.
Restructuring Options Under NCLB
Schools in restructuring under No Child Left Behind (see sequence, page 58) must
undertake one or more of the following forms of intervention:
Charter Conversion: Reopen the school as a public charter school
Reconstitution: Replace “all or most of the school staff (which may include the prin-
cipal) who are relevant to the failure to make adequate yearly progress”
Contract Management: Contract with “an outside entity, such as a private manage-
ment company, with a demonstrated record of effectiveness, to operate the school”
State Management: Turn the “operation of the school over to the state educational
agency, if permitted under State law and agreed to by the State”
Revision: Engage in another form of major restructuring that involves fundamental
reforms, such as significant changes in the school’s staffing and governance
Some states have limited the options available to their public schools, for example by ruling out state takeover.
Initial labels are ours.
Schools in Restructuring Choose
Incremental Over Fundamental Reform
Chicago Schools in Restructuring, 2005
5 Schools
choosing chartering,
reconstituting,
or contracting
Source: Chicago Public Schools
In the fall of 2005, there were approximately 200 schools
in Chicago in NCLB-mandated planning for restructuring
or in restructuring itself. The state allows only four of the
five NCLB options for restructuring: chartering, reconsti-
tuting staff and principal, contracting, and the fifth “any
other major restructuring” category. Illinois does not
allow for a school to be turned over to the state. Of
those schools, none chose to charter, 1 replaced the staff
and principal, 4 replaced only the principal, none chose
to contract, and 195 chose “other major restructuring.”
195 Schools choosing
“any other major
restructuring”
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
FIGURE 4D
61
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This chart, adapted from one that appears in the Winter 2007 issue of Education Next (“The Easy
Way Out,” S. Mead), demonstrates educators’ and local policymakers’ propensity to choose the
“path of least resistence” among the five NCLB Restructuring options, using data from 533 schools
in California and Michigan. The vast majority conduct Revision work (NCLB’s “any other major
restructuring” choice), focusing on program change. Very few adopt any of the choices that involve
changes in management or governance, or that fundamentally alter operating conditions (authority
over staff, time, and money). California data 2005-6 and Michigan data 2004-5 are from the Center
on Education Policy 2005 , as cited in Mead.
Schools’ Response to NCLB’s Options: The Less Change, the Better
TAXONOMY 2
FIGURE 4E
4.2
62
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Scale Problem: Too Many
Schools in the Pipeline
NCLB has had another unintended
effect on turnaround design, particu-
larly in states that already had devel-
oped intervention efforts as part of
their own standards and school
accountability systems. To begin with,
NCLB’s mandates (and the federal
government’s unwillingness to be
flexible about compliance, in the years
after the law was passed) created
another layer of regulations, labels,
timelines, and consequences for
underperformance in states that had
already created their own system.
Trying to ascertain exactly what each
state is doing in the area of school
restructuring is a challenging exercise
in itself; some states appear to have
created parallel school accountability
plans (one of their own design, one
designed for compliance with NCLB),
while others have tried to merge the
two, with sometimes conflicting
results. One California policymaker
last year counted five separate
accountability systems in place at
once in that state, creating confusion
at every level.
But, even more discouraging: in some
states, NCLB has propelled so many
schools through the accountability
pipeline that policymakers – wary of
promising a level of intervention far
beyond what their current budgets
could possibly support – have begun
watering down restructuring plans,
severely curtailing the degree and
duration of state intervention support.
(See Figure 4F, opposite.) California is
perhaps the most visible example of
this trend; its extensive, thoroughly-
considered intervention plan of sever-
al years ago has more recently (in the
face of the now more than 700 schools
statewide facing restructuring)
become a pale imitation of its former
self. (See the Supplemental Report for
more information on California and
other states.)
NCLB, one could argue, cannot be
held to blame for the rising tide of
schools entering restructuring – that
would be akin to holding the weight-
scale responsible for the ten pounds
gained over the holidays. But large
numbers of schools are moving
through that accountability pipeline
because they are not making AYP on
behalf of a student subgroup –
English Language Learners (ELL), for
example, or Special Education stu-
dents or one or more demographic
groups. While these schools clearly
can use some help in serving the stu-
dent subgroups in question, in some
states they may be overloading the
accountability and intervention sys-
tem, with the result that the truly dys-
functional, under-performing schools
don’t receive the more fundamental
restructuring help they need.
NCLB’s Mixed Impact
(continued)
In some states, NCLB has propelled so many schools
through the accountability pipeline that policymakers…
have begun watering down restructuring plans.
From the Front Lines of State Intervention:
At the start of the 2006-2007 school year, Arizona identified sixty-four schools that were deemed “failing to meet academic standards.”
This figure represents an approximately six-fold increase in the number of schools in the restructuring phase in Arizona. As these schools
begin to undertake restructuring activities, the effectiveness and viability of Arizona’s team-based and aggressive approach to centralizing
school restructuring power will face an increasingly difficult capacity test….
During the 2005-2006 school year, 401 schools in California were in either the planning or implementation stages of restructuring.
Entering the 2006-2007 school year, this number jumped by approximately 75 percent, to 701 schools. In response to the challenges of
scale, California has changed course dramatically, adopting an approach to NCLB restructuring that focuses heavily on local control of
school turnaround efforts. In fact, California does not require approval of restructuring plans and primarily provides technical assistance
to local education agencies regarding the procedural considerations of devising a restructuring plan….
The growing issue of scale has caused Hawaii education officials to begin re-evaluating its privatized approach to restructuring schools.
Projected increases in the number of schools entering restructuring have caused concern over increases to already expensive private
restructuring programs. One official indicated her belief that the system was slowly moving toward a scenario in which all Hawaii schools
would enter the restructuring phase….
Note: These are excerpts from state profiles included in the Supplementary Report. See that report for more.
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
63
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
From upper-right to lower-left: the mag-
nitude of the turnaround challenge is
forcing states to weaken the anticipat-
ed state role. This chart places selected
state plans for restructuring, based on pub-
licly available information, within a nine-cell
grid. State plans that are in the lower left
cell specify a minimal state role, both in
terms of restructuring design (the Y axis)
and in terms of involvement in implementa-
tion (the X axis). State plans that are in the
upper right cell, on the other hand, call for a
much more significant state role.
States’ original restructuring plans for
under-performing schools were in many
cases more “interventionist” than they have
become in recent years – since the passage
of NCLB and the burgeoning number of
schools entering the restructuring pipeline.
That migration towards a limited state role
is reflected by the arrows in this chart,
showing states that appear to have moved
from the center and upper right down
towards the lower left.
Two caveats. The chart is somewhat subjec-
tive, as many state plans call for a range of
intervention options and roles that could
place them in multiple cells; we have placed
these states as accurately as we could, as of
the winter of 2006-7. Secondly: this chart
depicts state plans for restructuring, and in
many cases there is some distance between
the plans and the subsequent follow-
through. States were selected because they
appeared to be broadly representative of
various types of approaches to restructuring,
discussed in Appendix A of the report and in
detail in the Supplementary Report.
NCLB’s Impact on State Planning for Intervention:
Diminished State Roles in Design and Implementation
FIGURE 4F
4.2
64
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not Enough
A state turnaround initiative requires entrepreneurial management and broad coalition-building
4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
S
tate leaders eager to create a more
effective initiative to turn around
failing schools will find, as we did,
guidance on what turnaround might
look like at the ground level, based in
part on the strategies of high-per-
forming, high-poverty schools. And
they’ll find an emerging research base
on the impact – or more accurately,
the lack of impact – of most state
intervention efforts to date on chroni-
cally under-performing schools.
They won’t find much guidance at all
on two aspects of the work we view
as critical to the success of any seri-
ous state-led effort to turn around
failing schools:
• The need to free up state govern-
ment’s management of the turn-
around initiative from typical
public-agency constraints; and
• The need to build coalitions of
leadership support for turnaround
at the state and local levels.
The first is required to provide the
state (and districts) with the same
operating flexibility to manage school
turnaround as that which schools
need in order to implement it success-
fully on the ground. The second is
required in order to create a con-
stituency for turnaround that is
strong enough to upset the status quo
– and sustain sizable and continuing
state investment.
Freeing Up State Government to
Lead Turnaround Effectively
Policymakers often chafe (often jus-
tifiably) when business principles are
applied to the affairs of state. So do
public school educators. Discussions
quickly devolve into arguments
about why producing successful stu-
dents is different from producing
successful widgets.
At the classroom level, the differences
may be important. But at the level of
managing and implementing change at
scale, the differences remain relevant
only if one assumes that education can-
not conduct its business any differently
from the ways it always has. Business
has learned, far better than education,
how change happens and what pre-
vents it from happening. When a fail-
ing IBM sought to reinvent its business
model in the 1970s, it did so by identi-
fying change agents and separating
them from the structures and culture
that had brought the company to its
knees. The unit that produced the IBM
PC was a “skunkworks” lab based in
Boca Raton – far from company head-
quarters in Armonk, NY. The business
literature, from Tom Peters (In Search
of Excellence, 1988) to Jim Collins
(From Good to Great, 2001), is rife with
examples of companies that under-
stood how to successfully incubate fun-
damental change. Public policymaking
and the implementation of new policy,
for the most part, have been slow to
incorporate these lessons.
State education agencies are the
default managers for any turnaround
initiative. But they are in many ways
ill-suited to conduct a dramatic-
change strategy by using their cus-
tomary structures and approaches –
just as IBM was ill-suited to redevelop
its own business model from within.
Restraints over hiring, salaries, and
authority in state agencies, coupled
with similar restraints over how work
is conducted in schools, have con-
spired to make it difficult for educa-
tion policy and practice to duplicate
business’s occasional success at rein-
venting itself.
What would a different model look
like? There is precedent in the
approach that some states have taken
in creating public-private, semi-
autonomous authorities to undertake
important public initiatives, including
infrastructure improvements and
transportation management. A turn-
around “authority” might well be con-
nected with a state education agency
and its commissioner – but be granted
sufficient operating flexibility to be
able to work effectively with turn-
around schools implementing funda-
mental change strategies. It would not
become a bureaucracy itself, with a
large staff of service providers, but
would take on the role of coordinating
the central state functions in turn-
around as defined in the proposed
framework that begins on page 69:
particularly, establishing and imple-
menting the condition-changing crite-
ria for turnaround design, and sup-
porting the development of turnaround
leadership capacity among educators
and turnaround partner organizations.
Like school leaders working on the ground, turnaround’s
statewide implementers need to be freed to do their
best work.
65
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
As with the thinking behind the exist-
ing public authorities, an agency to
coordinate a state turnaround initia-
tive should be able to recruit the very
best leadership possible, and provide
them with the tools and latitude nec-
essary to complete an important pub-
lic-service priority. The directors of
state initiatives we spoke with while
producing this report tended to feel
that their hands were somewhat tied
behind their back. Like school leaders
working on the ground, turnaround’s
statewide implementers need to be
freed to do their best work.
Building Leadership Coalitions
of Turnaround Support
Beyond questions of state turnaround
management is the matter of leader-
ship commitment, at both the state
and local levels. Failing schools have
no natural constituency. They tend to
be situated in higher-poverty neigh-
borhoods and communities that have
fallen into a continuous cycle of low
expectations. Low test scores do not,
as they might in more affluent com-
munities, spark activism from parents.
There is little ground-level demand for
state or district intervention in strug-
gling schools. What demand there is,
comes from state policymakers moni-
toring the economic and racial
achievement gap; non-profit and com-
munity leaders seeking to
Building Leadership Consensus for Turnaround
FIGURE 4G
Inventing a Constituency: Turnaround of failing schools has no natural set of supporters. The support required to
initiate and sustain strong state investment in intervention must be generated by statewide and local leaders who
are willing to take a stand. There are many convincing arguments for it, on grounds of equal opportunity, civil rights,
and social and economic need – all of them addressed in this report.
4.3
66
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
Proactive Policymaking
(continued)
revitalize communities through
improved public education; and busi-
ness leaders concerned about local
economies, skill levels in their recruit-
ment pools, or the social costs of
dropouts and unemployable high
school graduates.
There is logical precedent here; these
potential supporters are the same coali-
tion partners that, in many states
(Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland,
Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, and
Florida, to name just a few) champi-
oned the cause of standards-based
reform, even before the federal govern-
ment got into the act with No Child
Left Behind. In Massachusetts, business
leadership along with rare bipartisan
consensus in the state’s legislative and
executive branches led to the
Commonwealth’s successful imple-
mentation of an ambitious high school
graduation requirement in 2003. The
effort received a vital boost from the
state’s urban superintendents, whose
public support for the requirement and
for higher-standards reform (organized
in part by Mass Insight’s Great Schools
Campaign) provided the “air cover”
that policymakers needed to maintain
their commitment during the years of
controversy before the requirement was
implemented – and since.
1
Figure 4G shows the roster of potential
actors in a statewide coalition to advo-
cate for turnaround of failing schools.
Proponents of a more proactive turn-
around initiative need to consider the
agendas and likely roles of each one.
• Mission-driven supporters:
Selected foundations, non-profits,
and business leaders; some educa-
tion leaders, including policymak-
ers and practitioners. These are the
key instigators required to even get
a coalition off the ground.
Urban superintendents’ public support for Massachusetts’
graduation requirement provided the “air cover” that
policymakers needed to maintain their commitment
during the years of controversy before the requirement
was implemented – and since.
Preparing a “Manifesto” for Turnaround
Drawn and adapted from “How to Start an Insurrection,”
in Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel (2000).
1. Convincingly demonstrate the inevitability of the cause: Here’s why
turnaround is necessary, right now.
2. Speak to timeless human needs and aspirations: Here’s why you should
care about failing schools and the students they serve.
3. Draw clear implications for action: Here’s where the need suggests that
we start.
4. Elicit support: Here’s how you can contribute.
5. Search for “data bombs”: Find memorable local statistics on failing
schools that are strong enough to illustrate the need, and simple enough
to enter the language.
6. Find simple phrases and powerful analogies: Create “handles” for peo-
ple to learn to use as shorthand for the effort.
7. Stay constructive: Don’t rehearse past intervention failures unnecessarily.
8. Provide broad recommendations only: Don’t become trapped by a single,
do-or-die course of action.
9. Keep your manifesto short: The more concise, the better.
10. Make the manifesto opportunity-focused: Where’s the big win to focus
energy and resources on first?
11. Sometimes you need a stick: Identifying a bad outcome from status-quo
approaches can provide urgency and incentive.
1
The initiative was then called the Campaign for Higher Standards; it became the Great Schools Campaign after the first decade and phase of Massachusetts’ standards-based reform drive was
completed in 2003-4. See www.massinsight.org for more information.
FIGURE 4H
67
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
• Conditional supporters: Statewide
political leaders including the gov-
ernor, state board chair, chief state
school officer, and legislative lead-
ers; and local leaders, depending on
whether and how their communi-
ties would benefit (or not) under a
proposed state turnaround initia-
tive. Support from this group
requires a merging of multiple self-
interested agendas.
• Potential opponents: The most
obvious candidates here are local
school boards and teacher unions,
both caught up in concerns about
losing authority. But in fact, major
school districts such as Chicago,
Miami-Dade, Philadelphia, and
Boston have demonstrated the fea-
sibility of partnering with their
union locals (with support from
school boards) over turnaround
initiatives focused on their most
struggling schools. Massachusetts’
Commonwealth Pilot Schools ini-
tiative (see Appendix A) was
designed in large part to encourage
local collaboration around a major-
change turnaround strategy, and
was modeled on a ten-year-old
agreement between the Boston
Public Schools and the district’s
American Federation of Teachers
union affiliate.
As for other potential opponents:
Some legislators in communities with-
out failing schools may oppose dedi-
cating state funding for turnaround,
knowing that none of that funding will
ever show up in their communities.
Perhaps most importantly, legislators
and advocates for other investment
targets (within the realm of education
reform or not) will oppose sizable
increases in public funding for under-
performing schools, usually on the
grounds that the state money they’re
already receiving is being ill-spent.
How to Start an Insurrection
Insurrection is an incendiary term not
often heard in public policy circles.
But in his influential book, Leading the
Revolution, researcher and business
strategist Gary Hamel (2000) provides
a blueprint for engineering dramatic
change that turnaround advocates
would do well to review. The “mani-
festo” he describes (see box) as a
launchpad for “starting an insurrec-
tion” within a corporation could serve
just as well as an 11-point guide for
building the case for turnaround.
Other relevant advice for coalition-
builders and statewide turnaround
strategists from his book, which is
based on research into business turn-
arounds and grassroots movements:
• Win small, win early, win often.
In turnaround terms: Don’t try to
address every failing school at
once. Choose to work intensively
with a manageable group of
schools, districts, and clusters;
establish some success first, and
then expand from there.
• Co-opt and neutralize. In the con-
text of turnaround, this is true at
the tactical level, in schools, and at
the strategic and policy levels as
well. At both levels, in general,
turnaround cannot succeed and
endure without broad engagement
and buy-in. “Researchers agree that
reform only works if those most
directly involved in it (teachers,
school staff, school leaders, parents,
and students) buy into it.
Researchers… go so far as to say
‘No Buy-in, No Reform.’” (Cohen
and Ginsburg, 2001) The key to
gaining buy-in at both levels is
establishing, at the outset, consen-
sus that in these bottom-five-per-
cent schools, the status quo has not
worked and urgently needs to be
changed. Important elements in the
proposed turnaround framework
beginning on page 70 address this
issue of buy-in.
• Find a translator. The work of
turnaround is extraordinarily com-
plex. Yet its basic principles – and
the needs among failing schools
that drive them – must be made
clearly and memorably to decision-
makers and practitioners alike.
Hamel describes the need for a
“translator” to serve as a bridge
between the strategists who are
immersed in the work and every-
one else.
Coalition-building, as should be clear
from the discussion above, needs to
happen at two levels – statewide and
community. Statewide leadership con-
sensus can bring about productive pol-
icymaking and investment, but suc-
cessful, sustained implementation on
the ground requires support from edu-
cators, municipal leaders, parents, and
students. How the state can catalyze
that support, while requiring a level of
change that upsets the status quo, is
the balancing act that lies at the center
of the state turnaround policy frame-
work that follows.
Win small, win early, win often. In turnaround terms:
Don’t try to address every failing school at once.
4.3
“There are some things we know and a host of unanswered
questions, but this is the laboratory of the future."
– Michael Fullan, Leadership and Sustainability, 2005
Plan for Action
Recommendations for Policymakers,
Educators, and Turnaround Advocates
School Turnaround: a dramatic and comprehensive intervention
in a low-performing school that produces significant gains
in student achievement within two academic years.
Turnaround must also ready the school for the lengthier,
subsequent process of transitioning into a truly high-performing organization.
A
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A Framework for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
T
his suggested framework for a state initiative to turn around chronically
under-performing schools draws from the findings and conclusions reached
by Mass Insight’s researchers for this report, and from vetting with educators, poli-
cymakers, and reform experts nationwide. Its guiding assumptions rest on evi-
dence from research on school interventions and effective education practice over
the past ten years. The ten elements in the framework represent both a summary
of this report’s findings and a synthesis, applied to the challenge every state cur-
rently faces in addressing chronically under-performing schools.
The framework rests in part on the conclusion to our analysis of NCLB’s restruc-
turing options, presented in the final chart in our Intervention Taxonomy series
on page 75. The research suggests avenues for turnaround that NCLB does not, at
present, clearly and actively support. In particular: the turnaround strategy we
label “Superintendent’s Schools” in this chart reflects the thinking behind the
statewide turnaround zone and school clusters in the proposed framework.
There is no single state that has assembled, funded, and begun to implement a turn-
around strategy incorporating all of the elements of this framework. Aspects have
been drawn from several state intervention efforts – chiefly Massachusetts and some-
what from Florida, Maryland, and several of the other states profiled in the
Supplemental Report – and from districts with pioneering intervention programs
underway, including Chicago, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia.
The political landscape, social/economic circumstances, and education reform
experience and structures of every state will make development of this kind of ini-
tiative uniquely challenging. The proposed framework is an ambitious one. But
we believe that commitment, organization, and inventiveness on this scale is what
the research clearly suggests is required for any state that is serious about turning
around its most under-performing schools. The framework is intended – like the
entire report – to jumpstart informed discussion and action around the vital
importance of school turnaround, the opportunity it represents to bring about
fundamental change, and the need to pursue it with a fully integrated, compre-
hensive, well-supported strategy.
Part 5 presents our recommended framework for a state initiative to
turn around the most chronically under-performing public schools.
Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive
turnaround involve?
SYSTEM REDESIGN: Changing the Whole School
1. Turnaround is a dramatic, multi-dimensional change process at a chronically under-per-
forming school.
2. Successful school turnaround produces significant gains in student achievement over
a compressed time frame, as the first of a two-phase restructuring process.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies: How can the state catalyze effective
turnaround at scale?
CHANGING CONDITIONS: The Authority to Act
3. Effective turnaround relies on widely-recognized program reform elements, but it
depends equally on the conditions into which those reform elements are applied.
BUILDING CAPACITY: People Before Programs
4. Maximizing leadership and staff capacity is the most important element in turnaround suc-
cess – and the state’s most important role.
5. Fragmented, episodic assistance from outside partners must be replaced by a new par-
adigm of aligned, integrated support.
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT: Organizing the Change
6. Effective turnaround solutions focus on producing change at the school and classroom
level, organized in clusters of schools by need, design, or region.
7. Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent, deliberate blending of “loose”
and “tight” in implementation and design.
8. For scale, efficiency, capacity-building, and effectiveness, states should differentiate
their involvement in turnaround by the degree of local capacity.
Organizing the State Role: What is required to enable an
effective, state-led turnaround initiative?
STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS: The Necessary Leadership Consensus
9. Because under-performing schools have no natural constituency, advocates for turn-
around must proactively build leadership support at the state and community levels.
EFFECTIVE STATEWIDE COORDINATION: A Different Kind of Agency to Address
a Different Kind of Challenge
10. The state must free itself to be able to undertake this work.
P A R T 5
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role
SYSTEM REDESIGN:
Changing the Whole School
1
Turnaround is a dramatic, multi-dimensional change
process at a chronically under-performing school.
Turnaround is understood to be distinct from school
improvement because it: a) focuses only on the most consistently
under-performing schools – essentially the bottom five percent;
and b) involves system-transforming change that is propelled
by an imperative – the school must significantly improve
its academic outcomes or it will be redefined or removed.
Interventions focused on one particular strategy – staff develop-
ment, a new curriculum, a reconstituted teaching staff – are
unlikely to produce the desired result. Turnaround is the inte-
grated, comprehensive combination of fundamental changes in
program, people, conditions, and (sometimes, but not necessari-
ly) management and governance required to interrupt the status
quo and put a school on a new track towards high performance.
Because most chronically under-performing schools serve high-
poverty, high-challenge student populations, turnaround involves
much more than “fixing” organizational dysfunction; it requires
intensive tuning of strategy and culture to address learning
deficits, behavioral challenges, and the effects of environmental
deprivation. This is (in part) turnaround’s larger role: providing
exemplar strategies for the significantly increasing numbers of
high-poverty schools projected over the next ten years.
What This Might Look Like:
Governor, commissioner, and/or state board of education chair
ask for summary report on impact of state intervention programs
to date, and on the pace of schools entering the failing cate-
gories under NCLB/state accountability.
Simultaneously: state prepares a new turnaround initiative,
incorporating strategies drawn from The Turnaround Challenge
and other sources. High-performing, high-poverty schools and
promising turnaround exemplars in the state are identified as
“proof points.”
Basic elements of the initiative are vetted with stakeholders,
collaborators, key decision-makers, potential outside funders
(see #10 on page 86 for more).
Results of the study are announced, together with the initiative;
state’s commitment to turning around failing schools is reaf-
firmed; focus is placed on moving beyond marginal intervention
to much more dramatic changes that will turn failing schools into
models for reform statewide.
Emphasis: on positive change, rather than negative labeling.
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Turnaround is the integrated, comprehensive combination of fundamental changes in program, people,
conditions, and (sometimes, but not necessarily) management and governance required to interrupt the
status quo and put a school on a new track towards high performance.
Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive turnaround involve?
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
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Successful school turnaround produces significant
improvement in student achievement over a compressed
time frame (no more than two years) and, in high schools,
significant gains in attendance and graduation rates as well.
Turnaround of these lowest of the low-performing schools can be
seen as a two-phase process, each phase requiring different
(though complementary) elements and skill sets. Phase one estab-
lishes the conditions necessary for fundamental reform to take
root – in particular, providing for sufficient authority to allocate
critical resources (people, time, money) to support a turnaround
plan staked to the research-based practices of high-performing,
high-poverty (HPHP) schools. It provides for placing people with
the right skills in the most critical positions: leadership with
expertise in school turnaround and teachers drawn to working in
high-challenge (but high-reward) environments, all as part of an
innovative, highly collaborative reform initiative and a dynamic
school design. Reaching district performance averages in this first
phase – within two years – is a reasonable goal. Phase two com-
prises the hard work of steady improvement, sustaining incre-
mental growth over time and transitioning into a truly high-per-
forming organization.
What This Might Look Like:
State turnaround initiative sets a specific, ambitious, but
reasonable and understandable goal for significant achievement
gains within two years (i.e.: meeting district averages).
Following the two-year turnaround period, the school is
returned to normal state/federal accountability requirements
and timelines.
State initiative requires schools meeting certain, fairly extreme
under-performance criteria to become turnaround schools
(i.e.: schools with undeniably, indefensibly poor achievement
records over multiple years). The initiative invites less severely
under-performing schools to volunteer into the program as a
means of “pre-emptive turnaround.” (See #8 on page 82.)
State initiative requires districts, working with turnaround
partners, to submit a turnaround plan meeting certain criteria
(see #3, next page). Plans that fail to meet the criteria are
denied; those schools are declared chronically under-performing
and are subject to management and governance change as
directed by the state.
Emphasis: This is the last chance, over two years, for current
managers (district, teachers union) – with assistance from the
state and an external turnaround partner – to show they can
produce significant results.
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Turnaround can be seen as a two-phase
process, each phase requiring different (though
complementary) elements and skill sets.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework
The Three ‘C’ Strategies: How can the state
catalyze effective turnaround at scale?
CHANGING CONDITIONS:
The Authority to Act
3
Effective turnaround relies on widely-recognized program
reform elements (curricular improvement and alignment
with standards, teacher capacity-building, effective leader-
ship, focused use of performance data, etc.), but it depends equal-
ly on the conditions into which those reform elements are applied –
mainly, gaining authority over critical resources and levers for
improved achievement. The state can play a crucial role in
enabling these conditions in turnaround schools.
• People: Flexibility to put people with the right skills in the
best position to do their most effective work – to make per-
sonnel decisions based on the needs of the school, its stu-
dents, and its performance goals, and not on the needs of
adults. This flexibility includes control over recruiting, hiring,
placement, development, responsibilities, supervision, evalua-
tion, and removal for chronic under-performance.
• Time: The authority and money required to expand time on
learning for students – in conjunction with other reforms.
More time, by itself, is not a silver bullet, but it appears to be a
critically important supporting element in schools that success-
fully serve disadvantaged students. This expansion includes an
extended school day and an extended school year. Additional
time is similarly required for staff – for adequate professional
development and for common planning. Control over schedul-
ing (double-block periods, special enrichment/remediation
periods, or more far-reaching options) is critical as well.
• Money: Authority to analyze current resources and allocate
them to budget lines that directly support the turnaround
plan. Turnaround design must include a willingness to make
difficult choices between competing priorities. There must be
recognition, in addition, that comprehensive turnaround is
expensive. In particular, additional time and additional (often
higher-capacity) staff cost money. Estimates for the cost of
successful turnaround run from $250,000 to $1 million annu-
ally for three years (see box, page 79).
• Program: Authority to adapt and implement research-based
strategies shown to be effective with the high-poverty, high-
challenge students who attend most chronically under-per-
forming schools. Leaders at HPHP schools and turnaround
exemplars say this flexibility over program approaches is
important for several reasons: matching services with student
needs and local circumstances, prioritizing scarce resources
and time, and building staff buy-in around a vision for the
school. Turnaround school leaders need program flexibility
within a larger framework of district-wide consistency (where
student migration between schools is an issue), structure (cer-
tain required, research-based elements of turnaround design)
and support (because some program elements – for example,
formative assessments – are more efficiently developed across
a network of schools rather than by individual school teams).
Gaining flexible control over the application of resources – and
using that control – can be controversial. That is why most turn-
around and improvement reform models avoid the issues sur-
rounding changing the conditions and focus simply on changing
programs and providing help (i.e., planning assistance, training,
and all forms of coaching). Chronically under-performing
schools under NCLB in fact represent an opportunity for policy-
makers, educators, and partners to move towards more transfor-
mative reform – i.e., models and policy frameworks that address
the conditions in which instructional reform is applied. Some
school districts (New York, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Philadelphia)
already have moved in this direction.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
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5
To ensure broad access to conditions supportive of effective
turnaround, however, state governments and education agencies
will need to play the crucial role. They can do so by establishing
(as Arizona, Florida, and Massachusetts have done) criteria for
turnaround design and implementation, and requiring districts –
and outside providers – to shape their turnaround work accord-
ingly. Superintendents routinely ask for the authority to inter-
vene in struggling schools with powers like those granted to
charter school managers. By creating a statewide turnaround
space with rigorous design criteria (such as Massachusetts’ first
“enabling condition” – granting principals authority over staff
without regard to seniority), state governments can clear aside
roadblocks to reform and produce an intervention zone that
education leaders actively want to join, instead of avoid.
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative codifies, in regulations, protected space for
local “turnaround zones” that a) set requirements for schools
implementing turnaround; b) provide assistance, models, and
contract language for districts and unions to use in creating
necessary waivers to collective bargaining rules; and c) provide
other forms of assistance for turnaround as detailed elsewhere
in this framework.
Turnaround requirements define the elements identified by the
state as essential for effective, comprehensive turnaround. They
specify important changes in operating conditions, including flexi-
ble authority for turnaround leaders over critical resources: people,
time, money, and program. They may also specify other elements
deemed vital to the turnaround process, i.e., additional time for
learning and common planning time for teachers. (See box for one
real-world example – Massachusetts’ ten changing conditions.)
Emphasis: state-required criteria make successful turnaround plau-
sible; local implementation control enables all-important buy-in.
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Condition-Changing State Policy: An Example
These ten requirements form the basis of Massachusetts’ new turnaround policy, passed in October 2006.
Schools entering “Priority” status in the state (following four years of failure to make AYP) must submit
restructuring plans that incorporate these ten “enabling conditions.” Because of insufficient state alloca-
tion for the initiative in FY2008 ($12 million, a third of the DOE’s request), the state will only be able to
partially implement the plan. But the approach and language can serve as a potential model for other
states – as might Massachusetts’ “Commonwealth Pilot” experiment, described on pages 106-7.
1) The school’s principal has authority to select and assign staff to positions in the school without regard
to seniority;
2) The school’s principal has control over financial resources necessary to successfully implement the
school improvement plan;
3) The school is implementing curricula that are aligned to state frameworks in core academic subjects;
4) The school implements systematically a program of interim assessments (4-6 times per year) in English
language arts and mathematics that are aligned to school curriculum and state frameworks;
5) The school has a system to provide detailed tracking and analysis of assessment results and uses
those results to inform curriculum, instruction and individual interventions;
6) The school schedule for student learning provides adequate time on a daily and weekly basis for the deliv-
ery of instruction and provision of individualized support as needed in English language arts and math,
which for students not yet proficient is presumed to be at least 90 minutes per day in each subject;
7) The school provides daily after-school tutoring and homework help for students who need
supplemental instruction and focused work on skill development;
8) The school has a least two full-time subject-area coaches, one each for English language arts/reading
and for mathematics, who are responsible to provide faculty at the school with consistent classroom
observation and feedback on the quality and effectiveness of curriculum delivery, instructional
practice, and data use;
9) School administrators periodically evaluate faculty, including direct evaluation of applicable content
knowledge and annual evaluation of overall performance tied in part to solid growth in student
learning and commitment to the school’s culture, educational model, and improvement strategy;
10) The weekly and annual work schedule for teachers provides adequate time for regular, frequent, depart-
ment and/or grade-level faculty meetings to discuss individual student progress, curriculum issues,
instructional practice, and school-wide improvement efforts. As a general rule no less than one hour per
week shall be dedicated to leadership-directed, collaborative work, and no fewer than 5 days per year,
or hours equivalent thereto, when teachers are not responsible for supervising or teaching students,
shall be dedicated to professional development and planning activities directed by school leaders.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Education
FIGURE 5A
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
TAXONOMY 3
Turnaround Zones Offer Superintendents the Restructuring Option They Have Lacked
FIGURE 5B
This third installment in the report’s Intervention Taxonomy presents our view of a more
complete set of turnaround options than simply the current five presented by NCLB. Two
options (Revision and Reconstitution) may spark substantial movement in some respects,
but the research shows insubstantial outcomes. Charter Conversion, State Management,
and Contract Management tend to incorporate program change, people change, and con-
ditions change – and also require management or governance change. The
“Superintendent’s Schools” option provides for comprehensive system change – including
changes in operating conditions and incentives – initiated by the district (i.e., without
management or governance change). This option is unproven, but would appear to support
the characteristics widely found in high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP) schools. The fold-
ers on the right indicate that these options can be pursued in two ways: by transforming
existing schools or through a close-and-reopen “fresh start” strategy.
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5
A Framework (continued)
BUILDING CAPACITY:
People Before Programs
4
Maximizing leadership and staff capacity is the most
important element in success – and the state’s most
important role. The task is multi-dimensional: creating
conditions that enable people to do their best work; leading
recruiting, preparation, and licensure processes to ensure a high-
quality pipeline of educators at all levels; and investing in contin-
uous skill-building in high-impact areas of reform and high-need
positions in the schools. Developing the highly skilled principals
and teachers needed in turnaround schools adds another dimen-
sion to this crucial state role. Most importantly: turnaround
requires an infusion of specialized new leadership capacity. The
emerging research on high-performing, high-poverty schools
and promising turnaround schools confirms the central impor-
tance of very strong leadership as probably the most critical fac-
tor in their relative success. Leading the process of turnaround
clearly requires a special skill set in education (as it does in other
fields). Most school districts, except for perhaps the largest 100
or so, do not have the resources themselves to develop high-
capacity school leadership – much less a specialized subset of
principals with expertise in turnaround – so it must be a respon-
sibility of the state, working with outside partners including
higher education, foundations, and non-profits (such as New
Leaders for New Schools). The state must also address the need
for capacity development among high-impact positions in
schools (e.g., coaches, lead teachers, and performance assessment
specialists); among outside providers of turnaround and related
services; and among local policymakers including school board
members. This is not to imply a vast increase in state education
agency bureaucracy; the key is to build on the contracting and
partnering that SEAs are already doing, focusing on expanding
capacity throughout the entire system and on using outside part-
ners more effectively than is currently the case (see #5 on page 78).
State-driven turnaround work needs to convey a sense of inno-
vation, providing compelling career options for more entre-
preneurially-minded educators. The effectiveness and long-
term sustainability of turnaround depends on transformation of
the incentive structures that govern behavior in public schools.
At the district, school, and student levels, during and long after
turnaround work is completed, the incentives and operating
conditions must drive a continuous focus on improved student
achievement. To be successful, turnaround initiatives must draw
high-capacity educators and partners and must elicit the best
work possible from staff who continue on at the school. Positive
incentives for different stakeholders in the system include
changes in working conditions, opportunities for leadership,
increased autonomy, and increased compensation. Sanction-
oriented incentives include prospective loss of governing control,
revenue, or “headcount” (including, from the point of view of
local union leaders, potential loss of union membership).
Most school districts... do not have the
resources themselves to develop high-capacity
school leadership – much less a specialized
subset of principals with expertise in turnaround
– so it must be a responsibility of the state.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative’s requirements for turnaround design allow turn-
around leaders much greater authority to shape school staff,
through recruitment, hiring, firing, placement, development, and
differentiated compensation.
State turnaround initiative is promoted nationally and in-state to
position it as a cutting-edge reform effort and to attract high-
capacity recruits.
State provides intensive training, with non-profit/university part-
ners, in turnaround management for current and aspiring princi-
pals and school leadership teams.
State connects turnaround initiative to related state programs in
curriculum mapping, data analysis, remediation, staff and leader-
ship development, and social service connections, giving schools
in turnaround zones highest priority.
State initiative specifically supports the development of higher-
capacity external turnaround partners to support districts’ turn-
around planning and to provide intensive, integrated services in
direct support of the turnaround plans (see #5, next page).
Emphasis: turnaround zone schools as magnets for mission-driv-
en, highly capable individuals.
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The three ‘C’s represent the state’s primary roles in shaping school turnaround and enabling it at
the ground level. For more, see numbers 3 through 8 of the Framework description on these pages.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 5C
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Building the Framework:
The Three ‘C’ Levers of Fundamental Change
5
5
Fragmented, episodic assistance from outside partners
must be replaced by a new paradigm of aligned, integrat-
ed support. By the time a school reaches NCLB’s restruc-
turing stage, it has probably hosted literally dozens of separate
reform programs and partners, with little or no integration hap-
pening to form a coherent whole. That is due partly to funding
streams that operate in separate “silos”; partly to schools’ (and
districts’) habit of pursuing projects instead of sustained, inte-
grated reform; and partly to organizational dysfunction. There
most often is no one within a school’s leadership structure whose
job is to align its myriad partners – except the principal, who
lacks the time to do so effectively.
The state must not only support the capacity of outside
providers to assist with turnaround (or lead the process); it must
create the structures and policies necessary to ensure that single
providers act as systems integrators, coordinating the roles and
contributions of other collaborating partners (see the graphic on
page 85). Turnaround partners can include non-profit and for-
profit organizations, professional associations, and colleges and
universities. In addition, an important role of any partner serv-
ing the “systems integrator” role in turnaround schools is estab-
lishing strong connections with social service providers and
agencies, which tend to play strong, visible roles in the commu-
nities served by chronically under-performing schools.
These social services help provide important counterweights to
the effects of poverty on families and children through home vis-
iting, workforce training, high-quality child care and early edu-
cation, after-school programs, substance abuse treatment, com-
munity policing, and homelessness prevention strategies. All of
these supports, following the high-performing, high-poverty
(HPHP) Readiness model we developed in Part 2 of this report,
are part of the set of services that enable high-poverty students to
be ready to learn. While they cannot realistically all be managed
through one lead partner organization, their work can play a
critical role in high-poverty school success. Lead turnaround
partners and school leaders need the latitude and the opportuni-
ty to work with them effectively.
What This Might Look Like:
State creates an RFP for turnaround assistance from lead turn-
around partners, i.e., organizations that would act as the integra-
tor for other partners in supporting the creation and implementa-
tion of a turnaround plan, on behalf of schools or school clusters.
Idea is to galvanize the creation of such partner organizations,
filling the capacity gap that exists right now.
State turnaround regulations require districts to work with state-
approved lead turnaround partners in developing and executing
their plans.
State initiative supports capacity-building and practice-sharing
among turnaround partner organizations.
Emphasis: This isn’t a radical new idea by any means. It’s simply the
turnaround corollary of contractual relationships schools and dis-
tricts already have with outside providers (e.g., textbook publishers).
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
By the time a school reaches NCLB’s
restructuring stage, it has probably hosted
literally dozens of separate reform programs
and partners, with little or no integration
happening to form a coherent whole.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Support Personnel
Support personnel configuration would vary by school need, and include full- or part-time people
with skills central to the turnaround mission, such as a turnaround leader, math coach, data ana-
lyst, or social-service program leader. Large schools, obviously, would require more support staff
than smaller schools. (The table is based on a school with 500 students.) In general, comprehen-
sive high schools will be more expensive propositions than middle schools, which will in turn be
more expensive than elementary schools – because of size and the complexity of the turnaround
work involved. Some specialists may be employed by the district, but some would be on-the-
ground practitioners from the lead turnaround partner. Note: the totals here reflect estimates for
the costs of turnaround, without specifying the state and district (or private) share of those costs.
States should assume average district per-pupil spending in these schools at a minimum, and
might well require districts to provide an annually rising share of the additional costs.
Incentive and Responsibility-Based Compensation
Turnaround schools will need to pay for the turnaround expertise of their principals and leader-
ship team, as well as to attract high quality teaching and support staff; compensate for extra
responsibilities; and change incentive structures at the school. We have assumed extra compen-
sation at an average of $3,000 per faculty member (including the principal), but not necessarily
that it is distributed evenly.
Lead Turnaround Partner, Professional Development, and Curriculum
Additional support for the work of the lead turnaround partner, professional development
(school-based and across districts to build turnaround management capacity), diagnostic assess-
ment and data analysis expertise, teaching and social service skills, as well as related curriculum
and program costs, would be provided on a percentage basis staked to student enrollment. For
the purposes of this example, an average of $200,000 per school has been allotted.
Funding for Extended Time
In addition, schools would receive funding separately to pay for extended time, one of the
cornerstones of HPHP performance. Assuming 30 elementary, 15 middle, and 5 high schools
in the mix of 50 schools in this imagined state example, the addition of one hour per day, and
37 operating weeks per year to the school calendar, the cost of this extra time would total
$14.4 million ($5.4/elementaries, $5.4/middle schools, $3.6/high schools).
Turnaround Agency Operations
The cost of the state’s turnaround coordinating agency includes all costs of the administering of
the work, including staff and operating costs, administering state policy, creating the turn-
around models, supporting the turnaround partners, shaping the development of turnaround
leadership, and providing for program evaluation. (For more on the state turnaround initiative
administration, see Part 4.)
Sources of Revenue for Turnaround
Many states, compelled by NCLB, are directing some funds to school intervention initiatives. Our
researchers universally heard complaints that funding for the work was insufficient. The costs
outlined here, multiplied across the many dozens and in some cases, hundreds of schools enter-
ing Restructuring, add up to a sizable annual investment. States can look to foundation help for
innovation and pilot model-building, but the scale-up can only happen through sustained com-
mitment of public dollars. Federal reauthorization of NCLB may produce a substantial portion of
the required investment. States will need to justify the remainder on the grounds that money
invested here will be matched (as research has shown) many times over by savings in social
service costs down the road; the need to build a high-skill workforce to remain nationally and
globally competitive; and as a civil rights obligation to provide an adequate education to all
children, regardless of income or race.
The cost of school turnaround will vary by school, based on size and its own particular needs.
Experience to date with turnaround initiatives suggests costs in the range of $250,000 to a mil-
lion dollars per school per year over the first three years, in order to implement a turnaround
effort incorporating the strategies discussed in this report. As an illustrative example, an effec-
tive state initiative serving 50 persistently under-performing schools in turnaround “zones” is
likely to include costs such as those in the following table.
Sample Turnaround Costs: $50 Million for 50 Schools in Turnaround Zones
3.0 FTEs of support personnel (up to five or more specialists) $270,000 $13,500,000
Incentive and responsibility-based compensation 120,000 average for E/M/H 6,000,000
Lead turnaround partner assistance; staff & leadership
development; curriculum materials and related 200,000 10,000,000
Funding for extended time (one hour/day) 288,000 average for E/M/H 14,400,000
Average school total 878,000 43,900,000
Coordinating turnaround agency staff, research/design,
operations, partner support, program evaluation 5,000,000
Total annual costs for 50 schools $48,900,000
Estimated Average
Cost per School
Estimated Annual Cost for
50-School Turnaround Initiative
Estimated Annual Costs of Turnaround
FIGURE 5D
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These costs reflect the following assumptions and factors:
5
A Framework (continued)
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT:
Organizing the Change
6
Effective turnaround solutions focus on producing change
at the school level – and through it to the level of class-
room instruction. That is where reform is shown to be
meaningful and productive – or not. In the absence of a relentless
school-level focus, it is too easy for “deck-chair-rearranging” syn-
drome to set in: reorganization that for all of its good intentions,
fails to exert much impact in classrooms or, ultimately, on learning.
However, turnaround work is best organized in clusters of
schools, working in partnership with school districts and
partners, in order to meet the scale of the need. While turn-
around solutions need to focus on instituting change at the
school level, a number of factors – the number of schools
requiring assistance; resource-efficiency; replication of success-
ful models; and establishment of effective K-12 pathways
through school-level feeder patterns – indicate the value and
importance of designing and implementing turnaround work in
clusters of schools. (In these ways, clusters have all of the same
advantages as school districts. They should be large enough to
be an enterprise, to paraphrase researcher and project advisor
Rick Hess, but small enough to succeed – and to avoid issues
that can arise as bureaucracies grow.)
Clustered turnaround work can be approached vertically (focusing
on successful transitions for students from their elementary through
their high school years), or horizontally (by type – for example,
urban middle schools or alternative high schools for at-risk students
and dropouts). Organization of the work can take several forms:
• Within single districts conducting turnaround on behalf of a
cohort of under-performing schools (or multiple cohorts, in
districts pursuing a portfolio of different approaches with dif-
ferent governance and/or management structures)
• Across two to four districts, organized and supported by the
state, where combined turnaround work makes sense because
of geographic proximity or because the work focuses on
schools that share particular attributes
• Across a larger number of districts, each of which has just one
or two chronically under-performing schools, or where the
state wants to encourage implementation of particular school
models and approaches – for example, grade 6-12 academies.
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative, working together with district leaders, organizes
turnaround schools into clusters as described above.
Clusters of turnaround schools implement their turnaround
strategies under the operating conditions and other criteria set
by the state for the statewide turnaround zone.
Clusters are served by lead turnaround partners assigned by the
state (or recruited by districts), who integrate and align the serv-
ices of other outside providers in the implementation of the plan.
Clusters might also include higher-performing, volunteer schools that
match the profile of the schools needing assistance, thereby provid-
ing models and change-colleagues for the turnaround schools.
Emphasis: Individual school turnaround successes are heroic.
Turnaorund success across multiple schools is strategic – and
necessary.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Individual school turnaround successes are
heroic. Turnaorund success across multiple
schools is strategic –and necessary.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
7
Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent,
deliberate blending of “loose” and “tight” control in
implementation and design. The changes in operating
conditions outlined above are necessary to allow the people clos-
est to the work to have a strong say in how it is done. The HPHP
schools and turnaround exemplars vividly demonstrate the
importance of school-based decision-making authority and
school-wide commitment to reform. But leaving all decision-
making authority up to the schools – as in the charter model –
makes little sense in a turnaround context. In constructing a
turnaround zone like that described in #3, above, states have the
opportunity to mix “loose” (providing latitude) and “tight”
(controlling more systematically within the cluster, often through
the application of leverage) in, for example, the following ways:
• “Loose” in allowing school/district leaders to develop their
own turnaround plans; “tight” in insisting on certain essen-
tial elements and, in some cases, on working with an outside
partner to produce the plan;
• “Loose” in extending to districts an opportunity to use
altered conditions and additional resources to intervene suc-
cessfully in their struggling schools; “tight” in holding them
accountable for performance improvements within two years
and reserving the ultimate authority to install alternate gover-
nance in the school;
• “Loose” in enabling school leaders to shape their staff and
implement turnaround strategy as they see fit; “tight” in
insisting on certain parameters for the work and to organize
some aspects of turnaround centrally – either by the school
district or by a systems-integrating turnaround partner lead-
ing a cluster of schools across district lines.
What This Might Look Like:
State turnaround criteria (see #3 on page 73) empower school
turnaround leaders to make ground-level judgments on design
and overall approach, and in the execution of the turnaround
strategies – but within the framework for turnaround established
by the state.
Districts judged by the state to have sufficient capacity
(in conjunction with a lead turnaround partner) and that have
been able to produce turnaround plans that meet the state’s
criteria may be granted more latitude, with less state oversight,
in implementing the plan. (See #8, next page.)
Emphasis: Turnaround depends on a deliberate blend
of structured, systematic program strategies (“tight”)
and school control and ownership (“loose”).
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
The whole point is to motivate districts
and schools to undertake comprehensive
turnaround themselves. The keys are the
positive incentives in joining the turnaround
zone – and the matching incentive to avoid
the more unappealing alternative of deeper
state management authority.
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A Framework (continued)
8
States should differentiate their support by the degree of
local capacity – and allow districts and schools to volun-
teer into a turnaround zone. Some districts and schools are
better equipped to undertake comprehensive turnaround – along
the lines required by the state’s turnaround plan criteria – than
others. Partly for reasons of scale and limited resources, partly to
raise capacity for turnaround statewide, and partly on the princi-
ple of “loose” where authority has been earned and “tight” where
it has not, states should match the degree of their involvement in
the design and implementation of turnaround in inverse propor-
tion to the degree of local capacity to undertake the work.
Moreover, states can accomplish several aims by opening up the
turnaround zone to volunteer schools and districts ready to
undertake “pre-emptive turnaround.” Superintendents clamor for
the ability to intervene more vigorously in schools before they
have entered the most extreme categories of under-performance
under state and NCLB accountability systems. Schools that are
not yet in the bottom five percent but that are proactively looking
to undertake fundamental change will improve the mix in their
turnaround cluster. Their presence will help underline the posi-
tive positioning states will be seeking to give to the entire initia-
tive, and they could be useful “colleagues” for other schools in the
cluster. The volunteer schools represent an important way for
states to scale up the impact of their turnaround zone, as well.
The state's protected space for turnaround would thus be differ-
entiated in two different ways, as shown in the chart at right: first
by voluntary vs. mandatory participation, and then by manage-
ment authority. “Shared Direction” means that management of
the turnaround would be conducted by district, school, and turn-
around partner personnel (through contracts that can include
whole-school management and charter conversion), but within
the turnaround criteria required by the state. "State-Managed"
means the state would directly subcontract management authori-
ty to a turnaround partner or charter school operator.
The whole point is to motivate districts and schools to undertake
comprehensive turnaround themselves. The keys are the positive
incentives in joining the turnaround zone – and the matching
incentive to avoid the more unappealing alternative of deeper
state management authority.
What This Might Look Like:
See the chart at right. State initiative has two broad categories
for participation: Voluntary and Mandatory.
Voluntary: for schools in NCLB’s “Improvement” or “Corrective
Action” categories that want access to changing conditions of a
state-protected turnaround zone – and can produce a turnaround
plan (potentially with a partner) that meets state criteria. State
would not necessarily provide monitoring beyond regular AYP
processes for these schools, though it might provide guidance and
additional resources and supports.
Mandatory: for schools in Corrective Action or Restructuring
that the state requires to implement turnaround with a lead part-
ner. These schools would receive the full benefit of additional
resources and supports.
State makes every effort to support and enable local management of
turnaround within the turnaround criteria (“Shared Direction” in the
chart); reserves the alternative of management change for schools that
a) cannot produce a plan that meets the state’s criteria or b) produce
an adequate plan but then fail to meet achievement goals and other
benchmarks over two years. State would mandate, at that point, use of
an outside partner for school management under contract or through
charter conversion (perhaps using a close-and-reopen strategy).
Contract period of five years, with annual performance benchmarks.
Emphasis: This initiative provides local leaders with their last,
best shot at turning around failing schools, and gives them the
tools they need to succeed.
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Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
83
This graphic presents, in four steps, how states can use an intensive turnaround strat-
egy focused on the most poorly-performing schools (the bottom 5%, or fewer) to
catalyze proactive local response on behalf of those schools – and the much larger
number of schools that have been identified for state intervention at lesser levels of
intensity. Schools that are mandated to implement the state-defined turnaround
process could do so under Shared Direction, if they and their lead partner can pro-
duce a plan that meets the state's criteria. Schools not yet mandated to implement
the process can opt into it, undertaking "preemptive turnaround" using the benefits
of the state's protected turnaround space. In both cases, state policy has catalyzed a
more proactive local response.
How State Policy Can Activate and Shape a Strong Local Response
FIGURE 5E
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Organizing the State Role:
What is required to enable an effective,
state-led turnaround initiative?
EFFECTIVE STATEWIDE COORDINATION:
A Different Kind of Agency
to Address a Different Kind of Challenge
9
The state must free itself to be able to undertake this
work. A visible agency within the Department of
Education with a high-profile leader, or perhaps better, a
special public/private authority (modeled, for example, on agen-
cies created by some states to take on infrastructure challenges)
would be well-positioned to recruit high-quality managers and
to implement more effectively the various roles the state would
play in organizing turnaround:
• Creating the changes in rules and regulations governing
the work within these schools to bring about the appropri-
ate, enabling condition-set, rather than leaving these some-
times difficult changes to local decision-makers and/or
risking the fracturing of local stakeholder relationships
over their implementation
• Distributing targeted resources as appropriate and ensuring
that local districts are investing at least its average per-pupil
expenditure in these schools
• Investing strategically in capacity development, both inter-
nally in districts and schools and among external providers of
turnaround assistance:
I Supporting the development of educational turnaround
leadership as a discipline with a particular skill set
I Supporting the development of a marketplace of high-
capacity providers to assist districts and schools with turn-
around work, and district efforts to create effective turn-
around support offices of their own
I Creating an improved pipeline of high-capacity, well-pre-
pared educators over the long-term.
• Ensuring the quality of school turnaround plans and the
capacity of the implementation teamby providing models
and monitoring the work
• Building a framework to provide these supports that is
unfettered by the regulatory and bureaucratic weights that
sometimes handicap state government initiatives; that pro-
vides differentiated support based on the assessed needs of
school districts with chronically under-performing schools
and their capacity to undertake successful turnaround; and
that can ensure that the work is scaled sufficiently to meet the
statewide need.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
What This Might Look Like:
Proposal for new coordinating agency is created as core element
in overall turnaround strategy for the state. (See Figure 5F.)
State education agency leaders enlisted as supporters as a way
of garnering the necessary authorities, flexibilities to undertake
the strategy.
Agency is included in legislative package and/or budget line item
as a requirement for increased funding for turnaround.
Emphasis: The state needs the same level of operating flexibility
to coordinate turnaround work as schools need to implement it
effectively on the ground.
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States, districts, and the outside provider community all need new organizational structures
in order for turnaround work to succeed at scale. At the state and district level, turnaround
management must have more operating flexibility than current structures tend to allow.
Among providers, lead turnaround partners should work with schools to integrate the too-often
confusing array of projects, consultants, and related support from the state and community into
a coherent, achievable turnaround strategy.
Building the Framework:
New Structures for States, Districts, and Providers
FIGURE 5F
The state needs the same level of operating
flexibility to coordinate turnaround work as
schools need to implement it effectively on
the ground.
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STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS:
The Necessary Leadership Consensus
10
Tough challenges require tough – and united –
leadership. While some effective turnaround work
may take place in scattered locales, states under
NCLB cannot leave it to accidents of good fortune or geography
to assure the right of every child to receive an adequate educa-
tion. The state can and should play an active role in enabling
scaled-up turnaround of chronically under-performing schools.
The politics here are challenging, because under-performing
schools have no natural constituency; parents and local leaders
generally tend to shy away from the dramatic restructuring of
traditional local schools. Turnaround advocates must therefore
seek to create a statewide leadership coalition in their state –
one that conceivably includes the governor, legislative leaders,
the chief state school officer, state board of education, urban
superintendents, and leaders from the state’s foundation, non-
profit, higher-education, and business communities, as well as
from the media. Such a coalition is necessary in order to produce
the policy changes and sustained funding commitments (see
Figure 5D) necessary for effective turnaround.
Coalition-building at the grassroots level is important as well,
in order to sustain leadership support in the legislature and to
build community connection to, and ownership of, the goal
and process of building a higher-performing local school.
Community buy-in is particularly essential in the second
phase of turnaround – the improvement phase, when new
investments are reduced and change (along with achievement
gain) is more incremental. In cities where long lists of parents
wait for openings in magnet and/or charter schools, they rep-
resent a potentially potent advocacy group for highly visible,
comprehensive turnaround of under-performing schools.
What This Might Look Like:
Lead advocate for comprehensive turnaround of failing schools
(governor, commissioner, state board chair, key legislator, leading
CEO or foundation head) initiates high-level discussions with
potential allies, creates workgroup.
Workgroup assembles turnaround experts; builds a case for
turnaround, using statewide research and strategies from
The Turnaround Challenge.
Workgroup identifies a driver for this turnaround coalition –
an existing statewide organization, foundation, or consortium –
or establishes one. Coalition driver adopts comprehensive turn-
around as a central goal.
Key advocates and decision-makers are identified and enlisted.
Media effort showcases gaps between highest and lowest per-
forming schools (with similar high-poverty demographics) in
the state.
Outreach to key superintendents, school board chairs, and may-
ors in affected districts to secure their support, to statewide
teacher union managers, and to other teacher leaders statewide.
Twin strategies, working with the state education agency and
state board of education, to generate necessary changes in state
regulations on school intervention and enlist state legislature to
support the changes (if necessary).
Intensive lobbying effort during legislative budgeting cycle to
secure adequate funding for turnaround.
Emphasis: Turnaround of failing schools is a civil rights obligation
and economic/social imperative of the state.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
Meeting the Turnaround Challenge: A Framework for Statewide Action
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 5G
The Complete Framework: A comprehensive state initiative depends on every one of the
structures indicated here. Statewide and community leadership coalitions and consensus
(outer ring) are needed to drive the necessary policy changes and targeted public funding.
The centerpiece of the initiative is the establishment of protected space for local turnaround
zones, where the three ‘C’ reforms – changing conditions, building capacity, and clustering
for support – suggested by our “Readiness” triangle-model research into high-performing,
high-poverty schools can gain traction. In order for those reforms to be implemented effec-
tively, each of the primary turnaround agents (the state, the district, and outside providers,
along with the schools themselves) needs to adopt new structures and approaches (repre-
sented by the darkly-colored areas where these agents overlap with the turnaround zones.
States and districts need special sub-agencies dedicated to turnaround; providers need to be
aligned by lead turnaround partners. The schools need fundamentally new approaches,
assisted by all of the agents.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Tough Questions, Revisited
“Can Turnaround Be Successful at Our School?”
A Ten-Point Audit for Policymakers (and Manifesto for Principals)
This set of questions is the school-building-level corollary to the “12 Tough Questions”
that opened this report. It can serve as a short set of indicators for use by policymakers
and turnaround advocates: Are the operating conditions and supports in place that
would allow principals and leadership teams to successfully turn around a failing
school? It could (and should) also be used by principals being asked to undertake
school turnaround: Do I have what I need – and what any turnaround manager would
need – to be successful? If not....
1. Have you and key members of your staff had a leadership role in shaping your
school turnaround plan? Has the planning team benefited significantly from
knowledgeable outside support? Has the process moved swiftly in order to
meet an external deadline, and has it been driven in part by clear guidelines
and criteria set by the state?
2. Is your work supported by a lead turnaround partner that, in your judgment, will
help put your school in the best possible position to meet your student achieve-
ment goals? Does your district, state, community, or partner provide you with
support services tailored to high-poverty settings and to your school’s priorities?
3. Do you and your school's lead turnaround partner have the authority to shape
school staff so as to implement the plan? In the following HR areas, can you
use these (among other) practices drawn from research in high-performance,
high-poverty schools?
• Recruiting, hiring and placement: freedom from seniority rules, bumping
and force-placing; ability to adjust positions to suit student needs
• Removal: discretion to excess teachers who are not performing or are
unwilling to participate fully in the turnaround plan
• Compensation: ability to differentiate through incentives to attract high
quality teachers and/or performance- or responsibility-related pay
4. Do you, your partner, and your leadership team have the authority (and
resources) to adjust your school’s schedule to suit the needs of your students
and instructional approach?
5. Do you and your turnaround leadership team have discretion over budget allo-
cation to support your mission? Is your turnaround plan sufficiently supported
by extra funding and outside resources? Are those resources sufficient to pro-
vide for substantial planning, collaboration, and training time for staff?
6. Do you have the authority to adjust curriculum and programming to suit your
school’s priorities and support the turnaround plan, within a larger framework of
program-related decisions made by your district or cluster/network? Are you free to
make choices and respond to crises with a minimum of compliance-driven oversight?
7. Do you have the authority to shape the way your school works by creating
teacher leadership positions and differentiating responsibilities? Will you and
your leadership team be provided, as part of the turnaround plan, with profes-
sional development to increase your expertise in turnaround management?
8. Do you currently have the technology, systems, and analysis expertise necessary
to implement the frequent formative assessment and feedback that is central
to increasing performance in high-risk populations?
9. Will you be provided, as part of your turnaround status, with the support
of a network of schools involved in similar turnaround initiatives, along with
higher-performing schools that can serve as colleagues and models?
10. Do you feel that you have been provided with unambiguous expectations
and clear measures of accountability to help you bring urgency to the work
of turning around student performance at your school?
A P P E N D I C E S
Appendix A examines:
A.1 School Intervention to Date:
Goals, Strategies, and Impact
Introduction to three categories
of school intervention: Program
Change, People Change, and
System Redesign (including
Conditions Change)
A.2 Why Program Change Falls
Short of Turnaround
Providing help to improve
programs is vital – and
insufficient by itself
A.3 Why People Change Falls
Short of Turnaround
Providing for new leadership
and new staff is also vital
– and also insufficient
A.4 System Redesign:
Program, People – and
Conditions Change
The operating context for
intervention is as important
as the intervention itself
A P P E N D I X A
L
ine up 100 reform-experienced
educators and researchers in
a room, ask them to write down
their own top ten elements of effective
standards-based reform, and odds are
that you’ll see 80% agreement across
their lists.
We haven’t proved that clinically –
but it seems quite plausible from our
exhaustive scan of the effective-prac-
tice and intervention literature.
Adherence to standards and high
expectations; effective mapping of
curricula to those standards; a profes-
sional and collaborative teaching cul-
ture; in-school, job-embedded profes-
sional development; strong school
leadership (individuals and teams);
on-going formative assessment; data-
based decision-making; proactive
intervention for students who need
extra help; productive connections
with social services, parents and com-
munity… There is general consensus
on the importance of these dimen-
sions of effective schools, and an
acknowledgement that within this
palette, actual implementation can
appear in a wide range of colors.
In other words, we know it when we
see it. But getting there – the whole
change management process – is
much more of a mystery.
Change management in education is
chronically under-studied. That’s iron-
ic, for an enterprise that is so focused
on human dynamics and personal
development. Turnaround in other
domains, especially business, is the
object of much careful scrutiny. There
are lessons to be learned from this
work – though with caution, because
of the substantial differences between
the private and the public sectors.
Our Intervention Taxonomy (includ-
ed in Parts 4 and 5) introduced the
three general categories we have
developed for this analysis of school
intervention strategies. They are:
• Program Change: Providing help to
improve programs and performance
within the current set of systems
and conditions. This constitutes the
major portion of school interven-
tion activity to date. This approach
offers consultants, assistance
teams, professional development,
or new curricula and other pro-
gram-related tools to help existing
school personnel improve their
students’ performance, primarily
(though not necessarily) within the
current general model of teaching
and learning employed by the
school.
A.1 School Intervention to Date:
Goals, Strategies, and Impact
We know where we want to go. The journey’s the issue.
“While 39 states have the authority to take strong actions,
and while these same 39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably improved for years, we
still find strong interventions extremely rare.”
– Researcher Ronald Brady
A.1 School Intervention to Date A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
90
• People Change: Reconstitution –
the replacement of leadership and
school staff. The core idea here is
that the caliber of the people
working in the system is the most
important element to success
(which may be the right idea,
except when it also is the only idea
being applied).
• System Redesign: Changing the
conditions and incentives that
shape how work gets done – as
well as allowing for changes in
programming and personnel. This
cumulative category includes the
other two, but also redesigns the
operating conditions in which
staff and leadership implement
programs and reform strategies.
These categories mirror, in general,
the several others that have been
developed and used by other
researchers examining the emerging
track record in school interventions
under NCLB (among others: Brady,
2003; DiBiase, 2005). Brady’s analysis,
conducted for the Fordham
Foundation in the early years of the
law’s implementation, provides a use-
ful grouping of intervention strategies
mandated by NCLB (see box). Our
grouping, described in more detail
over the following pages, emphasizes
interventions’ impact on the daily life
of schools, more than on questions of
governance. We discuss governance
and management more fully in Part 4.
The interventions in the “Mild” and
“Moderate” categories, these and
other reports make clear, are con-
ducted much more frequently than
those in the “Strong” category for
several reasons. There are great
political uncertainties and the risk
of significant political costs associat-
ed with them (witness Maryland’s
effort to take over several under-
performing schools in Baltimore in
2005-6, which was undercut by the
mayor and the state legislature – see
the Supplemental Report for more).
In addition, there are virtually no
“reward” incentives in place to
motivate educators and policymak-
ers to undertake such a risky effort.
As Brady puts it, “While 39 states
have the authority to take strong
actions, and while these same 39
states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably
improved for years, we still find
strong interventions extremely
rare.” (Brady, 2003) DiBiase’s study
follows Brady’s by more than two
years but it does not have impor-
tantly different conclusions. Given
the option to do so, people and
organizations (even those in some
distress) will tend toward less
change, rather than more – with
perhaps predictable results, as we
shall see over the following pages.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Three Flavors
of School Intervention
(From Can Failing Schools Be Fixed?,
by Ronald Brady, Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, 2003)
• Mild:
• Identification
• Planning
• Technical assistance/
External consultant
• Professional development
• Parental involvement
• Tutoring services
• Moderate:
• Add school time (block scheduling,
reducing non-academic core
classes, longer school day, longer
school year)
• Reorganize the school (voluntary)
• Comprehensive School Reform (CSR)
• Change the principal
• Strong:
• Reconstitution (replacing all or most
of a school’s staff and leadership)
• School takeover (state assuming
governance of a school)
• District takeover (state assuming
governance of a district)
• Closing of the school
• Choice (vouchers)
• Major curriculum change
• Outsourcing on a contract basis
• Redirecting, withholding school or
district funds
• Closing failing districts
91
Given the option to do so, people and organizations
(even those in some distress) will tend toward less change,
rather than more – with perhaps predictable results.
A.1
92
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
P
rogram Change is by far the
most common state and district
response to underperformance in
schools. This category encompasses
a range of approaches, but what ties
them together is the idea of external
assistance to incumbent school staff,
with the aim of improving their
performance and/or installing
new education programming –
curricula, instructional approaches,
assessments and the like. Two kinds
of external assistance have been
most prevalent: direct state help
with developing and implementing
a school improvement plan, and
“comprehensive school reform”
using an external model provider.
Direct State Assistance
Researchers have posited that there are
three broad categories in which states
attempt to shape the content of school
improvement efforts. (Lane & Gracia,
2005; Laguarda, 2003) These are:
• Needs assessments
• Improvement planning
• Implementation support.
States have chosen to organize this
kind of intervention work differently.
Massachusetts has had a separate
office conducting district and school
audits (the Office of Educational
Quality and Accountability) that
reports to a separate board (the
Education Management Audit
Council). These reviews or audits are
fashioned after the British inspec-
torate system and are deliberately
designed to reflect or monitor a dis-
trict’s or school’s condition but not to
provide direct assistance. (This system
regularly comes under fire from state
budget-setters and may in fact be
modified this year.) Other states, like
North Carolina or Kentucky, do not
make such distinctions between those
who conduct audits and those who
supply assistance.
However organized, implementation
support represents all of the efforts
that make up a state-approved school
improvement plan. Lane & Gracia
(2003) provide a particularly useful
description and categorization of
these supports. (The following is
directly quoted from them.)
• School-based coaching: Facilitation
of school improvement teams; lead-
ership development and mentoring
administrators; job-embedded pro-
fessional development; including
modeling instruction
• School-based data analysis:
Ongoing support to school
teams/committees related to the
analysis of data planning
• Professional development:
Professional development targeted
towards identified needs (for
example, curriculum development
and standards alignment, class-
room and behavior management,
diversity training, etc.)
• Additional resources:
Some states prioritize federal
programs (e.g. Reading First,
Comprehensive School Reform)
or state-sponsored initiatives
to low-performing schools.
The first type of assistance in this list –
school-based coaching – represents
the most intensive version of this kind
of providing help, since it involves
direct, ongoing, hands-on work at
schools by experienced individuals or
teams. Perhaps the most prominent
example of this approach is
Kentucky’s Highly Skilled Educators
program (HSE), formerly known as
Distinguished Educators (DE). Under
Kentucky’s accountability system,
devised in the early 1990s, schools are
required to achieve a certain level of
improvement toward meeting profi-
ciency. The lowest-performing schools
receive assistance from DEs, now
HSEs, beginning with a Scholastic
Audit of the school. (David et al, 2003)
Evaluators of the HSEs work have
broken HSEs’ work into seven major
categories: professional development,
curriculum alignment, classroom
instruction, test preparation, leader-
ship, school organization and decision
making, and resource procurement.
The most recent available formal eval-
uation (David et al, 2003) concludes
that while the HSE program has an
impact on schools served, that impact
is limited in two important respects
particularly relevant to this analysis.
A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of Turnaround
Providing help to improve programs is vital – and insufficient by itself
“Assigning Highly Skilled Educators for more years in
these schools is unlikely to increase HSE success
unless other conditions change.”
– David et al, 2003
A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.1 School Intervention to Date
93
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This graphic provides an informal, con-
ceptual “map” of school intervention
efforts that we will use over the course
of the analysis in this Appendix. The
map plots the degree to which differ-
ent intervention efforts appear to
incorporate the three “readiness”
dimensions of High-Performing, High-
Poverty schools described in Part 2 –
along with the HPHP schools them-
selves – along the Y axis, against the
scale of these intervention efforts
along the X axis. Interventions in the
upper right quadrant are the goal; they
would represent the promise of both
effectiveness and scale. Interventions in
the other three quadrants, conversely,
either lack scale-ability or, we would
argue, all of the elements required to
be successful. The plotting on the map
is directional only, and is not staked to
numerical values; the intent here is to
illustrate broad ideas, not closely com-
parable data.
Program change initiatives, as shown
in this section, have not demonstrated
effectiveness in significantly improving
performance – particularly in chronical-
ly under-performing schools. While
some prominent programs, especially
the federal government’s $1.5 billion
Comprehensive School Reform (CSR)
program and the New American
Schools (NAS) initiative have certainly
achieved scale, they have not generat-
ed the impact their framers envisioned.
Nor, by and large, have much smaller
program-change initiatives operated by
state education agencies. (See the
Supplemental Report for more informa-
tion on selected state programs.)
Providing Help to Accomplish Program Change:
Interventions with Great Scale but Modest Impact
Figure AA
A.2
94
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
First, on average, HSEs have been
more successful at the elementary
level than at the middle or high school
level. Though the researchers base this
finding on a sample of HSE-assisted
schools that included only one high
school, they do reach some conclu-
sions about the limits of the HSE
strategy in the high school setting.
Working closely with 10-12 teachers
to improve instruction, they argue, is
a plausible challenge for an HSE. By
contrast, working closely with 40-50
teachers (or more) is probably impos-
sible for one person. An added chal-
lenge is the need for an HSE to be a
content expert in the various disci-
plines at the high school or even the
middle school level.
Second, the evaluation finds that
HSEs had less impact at schools with
the lowest capacity – exactly the sort
of chronically under-performing
schools that are the subject of this
analysis. David et al (2003) write:
“The impact of HSEs is considerably
weaker in schools with the most
severe problems with faculty morale,
school leadership, and district support
– which also tend to be those in the
most economically depressed areas.”
In a sobering statement, the authors
conclude, “Assigning HSEs for more
years in these schools is unlikely to
increase HSE success unless other
conditions change” (p. 27).
Importantly, HSEs have had no
authority to change broader condi-
tions. Their role is strictly advisory.
There has been one exception in the
program’s history: for schools labeled
“in crisis,” due to steep declines in test
scores, DEs had the authority to evalu-
ate and recommend dismissal for staff.
According to one of the program’s
architects, however, that power was
never implemented (Connie Lestor
interview, January 2006).
The Supplemental Report profiles a
number of state efforts that fall into
this broad category. States such as
Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Michigan,
Massachusetts, and North Carolina
have geared intervention-support
strategies around regional school
improvement coaches, peer mentors,
school improvement specialists, “solu-
tions teams,” or “School-Wide
Assistance Teams” (also known as
SWAT teams). There has been no rig-
orous, performance-based analysis, at
least that we could identify, of these
programs and similar initiatives in
other states. But our survey uncovered
much dissatisfaction in these states
with the outcomes of these interven-
tions to date. HSEs and programs
modeled after the Kentucky approach,
it appears, can be helpful in schools
with some level of pre-existing capaci-
ty to improve, especially at the ele-
mentary level. Their efficacy at higher
levels of schooling, and in the particu-
lar subset of chronically under-per-
forming schools that we are examin-
ing here, appears to be much less
promising. In these cases, simply pro-
viding expert assistance without the
ability to make more substantial
changes happen falls short of the
magnitude of the task.
Comprehensive School Reform
The other major way states have pro-
vided help to under-performing
schools is by offering funds to enable
schools to adopt “comprehensive
school reform” (CSR) models. The
idea behind CSR is that high-per-
forming schools typically have a clear,
coherent mission and design that
guides all of the schools’ activities. If
schools are failing, they need a new
school design, and they need an exter-
nal partner with expertise in the
design to help them implement it.
CSR achieved prominence in the
1990s under the sponsorship of New
American Schools (NAS), a nonprofit
that provided funding for the develop-
ment and scale-up of research-based
school designs such as Success For All
and Expeditionary Learning/Outward
Bound. CSR received an enormous
boost in the late 1990s when Congress
began appropriating funds for a feder-
al Comprehensive School Program –
over $1.5 billion through FY2006.
Since these funds flow through states
to schools, every state now has a com-
prehensive school reform office that
administers the program and its brand
of program change.
The impact of CSR, however, has been
severely limited, especially on chroni-
cally low-performing schools. Part of
the challenge stemmed from the lack
of research base undergirding many of
Program Change
(continued)
American Institutes for Research… found only three out of
the twenty-four whole school [CSR] reform models studied
had strong evidence of increased student performance.
A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.1 School Intervention to Date
95
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
the comprehensive reform models
themselves. American Institutes for
Research, for example, found only
three out of the twenty-four whole
school reform models studied had
strong evidence of increased student
performance. (AIR, 1999)
Equally troubling have been the diffi-
culties schools have faced in imple-
menting the reforms, even with the
massive infusion of funding and sup-
port related to CSR. After a decade of
implementation and careful evaluation
of the NAS effort, RAND researchers
(Berends et al, 2002) concluded:
• The hypothesis that adopting a
whole school design would lead a
school to improve its performance
was largely unproved. For many
reasons including significant
implementation problems,
researchers found a lack of strong
improvement in most schools in
their samples.
• External interventions need to
address capacity issues such as lack
of teacher capacity, lack of leader-
ship capacity, and a lack of coher-
ent district infrastructure to sup-
port such efforts.
• The schools most likely to be tar-
geted by the federal Title I pro-
gram (for schools serving stu-
dents in poverty) are most likely
to face obstacles to implementing
whole school designs to improve
student performance.
• Externally developed interventions
cannot “break the mold” and be
implemented successfully in most
districts or schools because these
contexts are simply not supportive
of these efforts. For example, many
districts were unwilling to grant
schools the authority needed to
allocate funds, people, and time as
needed to implement the designs.
For another, some would not take
steps to assign to CSR schools
principals supportive of the chosen
CSR model.
These findings resemble those cited
above related to the direct support
provided by HSEs in Kentucky. The
comprehensive school designs, like
the assistance of HSEs, could only go
so far in light of the pre-existing level
of capacity in schools and the prevail-
ing conditions in which the schools
operated. Since CSR models were gen-
erally not themselves designed to
change those conditions, they often
could not overcome these formidable
obstacles. While CSR has had some
notable successes, its promise as a
“solution” to chronic underperfor-
mance has remained unfulfilled.
The Zone of Wishful Thinking
As Paul Hill and Mary Beth Celio
have written (1998), every approach
to school reform has a “zone of wish-
ful thinking”: a set of conditions or
actions that are essential to the suc-
cess of the reform, but that are not
actually brought about by the reform.
In the case of program change in
chronically under-performing
schools, the zone of wishful thinking
is vast. It also has two parts. First, for
program change to work, the people
working in chronically low-perform-
ing schools must have the capacity to
improve. Not that they must already
have all the skills and knowledge nec-
essary to make their schools better;
the whole point of providing pro-
gram-change assistance is to impart
those skills and knowledge. But they
must have the capacity to use that
assistance well and turn it into signifi-
cantly different operating approaches
and performance results in their
schools. Too often, state assistance
teams, distinguished educators, and
comprehensive model providers have
found that school personnel, and
especially the leaders of chronically
under-performing schools, have
lacked that basic capacity. In these
cases, the notion that simply provid-
ing assistance could turn around these
schools was, in fact, wishful thinking.
Second, help is likely to convert to
results only if schools are working
within conditions that allow and
encourage them to activate the advice,
to implement what their assistance-
providers are suggesting. Without
authority to do what helpers advise,
and without strong inducements to
do so even when change is difficult or
controversial, schools may not move
forward according to the plans they
devise with their assistance-providers.
As a result of these zones of wishful
thinking, states and districts have
sometimes sought to go beyond
program change, as discussed in the
following two sections on people and
system redesign.
In the case of program change in chronically under-per-
forming schools, the “zone of wishful thinking” is vast.
A.2
96
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of Turnaround
Providing for new leadership and new staff is also vital – and also insufficient
T
he second broad category of
intervention design focuses on
changing people – usually along with
changing programs. Because capacity
issues have hindered many efforts to
provide help to chronically under-
performing schools, it is natural that
some states and districts have sought
to supplement that assistance with
actual changes in the people staffing
and leading the schools. Given the
well-documented importance of both
leaders and teachers to the outcomes
a school achieves, changing people is
a plausible strategy for boosting per-
formance. But, as we found with
interventions focusing on program
change alone, efforts that address peo-
ple change (even as part of a larger
effort that includes program change)
without also addressing the systems
and conditions in which people work
have not, by and large, produced the
desired results.
People-change initiatives, in general,
take two forms: bringing in a new
principal, and bringing in a more or
less entirely new staff for the school
(“reconstitution”). These initiatives fall
within NCLB’s second option. (Note:
Another way states have sought to
“change people” is to change leader-
ship at the district level via state
takeovers or by granting control of a
district to the mayor or to a control
board. These strategies are most often
part of broader initiatives designed to
restructure failing districts, and are
discussed in the district profiles in the
Supplemental Report.)
Changing Leadership
The importance of the school leader in
determining a school’s success has a
long-standing research base and wide
acceptance among practitioners.
(Waters et al, 2003; Leithwood
et al, 2004) Experience with turn-
arounds across industries reinforces
this notion, since successful turn-
arounds typically involve a change in
top management. (Hoffman, 1989)
Turnaround experience in other sec-
tors reinforces an additional point:
that managing turnaround effectively
requires a particular set of skills,
beyond those generally acknowledged
to be required for effective leadership.
At one level, leadership change as a
response to low performance in
schools is routine – so routine, in fact,
that it has not been documented and
studied rigorously. It is therefore
impossible to cite a research base
about whether, and under what con-
ditions, changing a school’s leader is
likely to lift it out of chronic under-
performance. Cross-industry research
on turnarounds, however, provides
useful insights about two issues: the
qualities of leaders who appear most
likely to succeed in a turnaround con-
text, and the types of actions leaders
appear to take en route to turn-
arounds that achieve some impact.
(Kowal and Hassel, 2005)
Based on these cross-organizational
findings, it appears that the most
promising “changing leadership”
strategies would be those that seek to
install new leaders who bring the
underlying capabilities of successful
turnaround leaders and receive spe-
cialized training on turnaround lead-
ership actions most likely to lead to
success. The leading state-based exem-
plar of this approach is the Virginia
School Turnaround Specialist
Program (VSTSP), a joint venture of
the University of Virginia’s schools of
business and education. This program
identifies high potential turnaround
leaders (from among high-performing
urban principals) and provides them
with specialized training as they take
up posts in chronically low-perform-
ing schools. Specialists can earn
bonuses of $5,000 for completing the
training and $8,000 differentials if
their schools make AYP, achieve state
accreditation, or reduce the failure
rate in reading or math by 10%.
Differentials of $15,000 are available in
years two and three of the principal’s
work if the school continues to make
AYP or obtains state certification. The
program initially focused on Virginia,
but is now working with three large
school districts from other states as
well, with assistance from Microsoft
Corporation. The program is relatively
new, and no external evaluation has
been completed yet, although the
program has issued its own com-
pendium of “stories” from the first
cohort of 10 specialists, with some
analysis of their self-reported experi-
ences. (Duke et al, 2005) The pro-
gram’s promising first year was fol-
lowed by a somewhat more challeng-
ing sophomore year, with a number
of turnaround leaders leaving their
new schools (as reported in
Turnaround experience in other sectors reinforces an
additional point: that managing turnaround effectively
requires a particular set of skills, beyond those generally
acknowledged to be required for effective leadership.
A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
97
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
The second of our conceptual
maps of the school intervention
landscape places initiatives
focused on changing people large-
ly in the lower lefthand quadrant.
These initiatives have tended to
lack scale (limited, as they are, by
the available capacity for new
staff and leadership) and they also
stop short of changing the condi-
tions in which newly reconstituted
staffs and/or new leaders work.
Their track record of impact is lim-
ited, at best (although Virginia’s
Turnaround Specialist program
shows solid improvement in some
of its schools).
Betting on People Change: Still Not Changing the System
FIGURE AB
A.3
98
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Education Week and elsewhere; see
the Supplemental Report for more).
The changing-leadership strategy, in
fact, faces a number of obstacles. First,
since turnaround leadership appears
to be a specialty requiring specific
competencies and skills, it is likely
that the supply of individuals capable
of taking on this role successfully is
limited. Programs like the VSTSP are
seeking to address the supply issue in
one way – though the scale-ability of
that model is limited at best. District-
based leadership academies in places
like New York City, San Diego, and
Boston, while less focused on “turn-
around,” are also aiming to increase
the supply of capable school leaders.
External efforts, notably New Leaders
for New Schools, are scouring the
country for high-potential leaders and
offering them training and support.
But if the nation shortly will have 5-
10,000 chronically under-performing
schools, the demand for capable turn-
around leaders swamps the supply
these efforts can currently offer. For
the changing leadership strategy to
work, then, policymakers, funders, and
entrepreneurs will need to do much
more to increase the pipeline of individ-
uals ready and able to fill these posts.
A second and related challenge is that
for many reasons, the conditions for
leadership in chronically under-per-
forming schools are often far from
ideal. As noted above, principals in
these schools typically lack authority
over the critical resources of people,
money, and time, hemmed in as they
are by district and state policies and
by collective bargaining agreements.
While a hallmark of successful turn-
around leaders is their ability and
willingness to accomplish results
despite such constraints, these barri-
ers make the job less attractive – and
the potential for impact more uncer-
tain. Isolated examples like the bonus-
es paid by VSTSP notwithstanding,
there are also few countervailing
incentives for talented turnaround
leaders to take up these jobs. Though
there may be intrinsic rewards to tak-
ing on the toughest jobs in public
education, there is no prospect for
higher pay, special recognition,
opportunities for advancement, or
other inducements that typically
attract high-performing individuals
into jobs. (Hay Group, 2004) In that
context, recruiting the required
pipeline of leaders looks even more
challenging. The conditions
and lack of authority over resources
and strategies also make sustaining
capable leadership over time
exceedingly difficult.
All of this is not to say that changing
leadership should not be an integral
part of districts’ and states’ turn-
around strategies. There are no silver-
bullet strategies in effective turn-
around, but effective leadership may
well be the most important single ele-
ment. Given the importance of school
leadership in general, and turnaround
leaders more specifically, policymak-
ers must attend to this dimension of
change in their turnaround approach-
es. But to do so successfully, the strat-
egy must also include attention to
priming the pipeline of leaders and
changing the conditions of leadership
– the authority and incentive struc-
ture – in order to make the turn-
around job as attractive and viable as
possible for capable people.
Reconstitution
Reconstitution is a more thorough-
going version of changing people,
involving wholesale replacement of all
or most of a school’s staff, not just the
principal. The theory of reconstitu-
tion is that chronically under-per-
forming schools need a fresh start
with a more or less completely new
team of people who can build from
scratch a school program that works.
Experiments with whole-school
reconstitution have been limited to
date, with generally abysmal results.
Prominent examples include:
• San Francisco. The most cited case
is San Francisco’s 1983 reconstitu-
tion of six schools as part of a
court-ordered desegregation effort.
The district, in addition to chang-
ing the staff, also set about recruit-
ing the best teachers available,
adding technology and other
resources, and focusing on improv-
ing the lot of underserved students.
Researchers found that African
American and Latino students in
these initially reconstituted schools
were performing better than those
from similar backgrounds in other
parts of the city. (McRobbie, 1998)
However, in the eight schools
reconstituted after 1994 in San
Francisco, there has been little if
any improvement in standardized
test scores. (Ziebarth 2004)
People Change
(continued)
The Chicago experience at reconstitution prompted the
district to halt implementation of this strategy in other schools.
A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
99
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
San Francisco moved away from
the strategy and has pursued more
of a program-change approach
featuring the use of coaches to
improve under-performing schools.
• Chicago. Chicago attempted
reconstitutions of high schools in
1997. Hess (2003) explains that
although all teachers in reconsti-
tuted schools were technically
fired, they were allowed to reapply
and be hired back. While the
opportunity to fire and replace
teachers sounds plausible in theo-
ry, in practice Chicago’s experi-
ence suggests the process was too
rushed to allow administrators or
teachers to make thoughtful or
perhaps even meaningful hiring
decisions. The final result was that
varying but fairly high levels of
staff remained in the same build-
ings despite being reconstituted.
There are a variety of reasons for
this variation, including the flawed
hiring process, a lack of desire on
teachers’ part to work in a school
that might close, and the need for
any school district to continuously
serve all of its students – i.e., the
pressure under this kind of strate-
gy to recruit and deploy a new
staff immediately.
After three years of study, the
researchers in Chicago (Hess, 2003)
reported that there had been little
change in the structure of the high
schools, and little change in the
quality of instruction despite the
efforts of external partners. As the
researchers found little had actually
changed except for the changes in
personnel, they were not at all sur-
prised to find lower-than-average
gains in reading achievement
(roughly half the increase that the
city of Chicago gained during this
time period). The Chicago experi-
ence at reconstitution prompted the
district to halt implementation of
this strategy in other schools.
• New York. According to informa-
tion assembled by the Education
Commission of the States (ECS),
the New York Schools Under
Registration Review (SURR) pro-
gram of corrective action led to
more than 40 schools being recon-
stituted in the early years of the
program. The results of this aggres-
sive program, of which reconstitu-
tion is but a part, are mixed.
According to Mintrop and Trujillo
(2005), less than half of the SURR
schools have exited the program.
And Brady (2003) points out that
the criteria for exiting the SURR
program are considerably less strin-
gent than what the state requires
for NCLB. New York’s experience,
then, appears to be another disap-
pointing one for reconstitution.
It appears from this research that
reconstitutions suffer from the same
twin problems that undermine other
efforts to turn around low performing
schools: insufficient capacity and
obstructive conditions. The capacity
challenge appears at two levels. First,
districts attempting reconstitution
have struggled to find more capable
teachers to replace the ones let go dur-
ing reconstitution. If the failing faculty
is replaced by one with equal or lesser
capability, there is no reason to think
reconstitution alone will improve
school performance dramatically.
Second, reconstituted schools have
typically lacked the leadership capacity
and resources to effect a successful
turnaround. The usual reconstitution
timetable is to dismiss staff as one
school year ends and re-hire over the
summer, a timetable that leaves little
opportunity for essentially a new
school start-up effort to be undertaken.
Reconstitutions do involve some
change to the condition set. In partic-
ular, the act of reconstitution itself
requires someone to have the authori-
ty to dismiss members of the school
staff – a critical aspect of condition
change. But this doesn’t mean that the
school, post-reconstitution, lives with-
in a new condition set. The schools’
new leaders may or may not have
ongoing authority to build and
change their teams, to allocate
resources strategically, to set sched-
ules and otherwise use time in ways
that benefit their students.
The broader research on organization-
al turnaround suggests that wholesale
replacement of staff, while sometimes
used effectively, is not a necessary
ingredient of turnaround success.
Indeed, one recent review of the turn-
around literature found that “success-
ful turnarounds often combine new
employees with old to introduce new
energy and enthusiasm without losing
skill and experience,” citing six
research studies in support of that
conclusion. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005)
In that light, the disappointing experi-
ence with school reconstitution is not
at all surprising. While leadership
change is often central to turnaround
success, and the ability to shape school
staff around a turnaround strategy is a
critical authority for turnaround lead-
ers to hold, broad-scale all-at-once
staff replacement appears less viable as
a strategy – or even as one element in
a larger initiative.
A.3
100
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A.4 System Redesign: Program, People – and Conditions Change
The operating context for intervention is as important as the intervention itself
T
here is enough research on the
more typical forms of intervention,
summarized in the two previous sections
(and in the Supplemental Report), to
conclude that they are generally insuffi-
cient to produce exemplary results on
a broad scale – at least in the ways
they have been implemented to date.
Providing advice and continuous review,
implementing new curricular/instruc-
tional/assessment programs, supporting
staff development, even changing leader-
ship and school staff: none of this work
has produced a clearly delineated path-
way that educators and policymakers
might adopt to turn around the lowest-
performing schools successfully.
What’s missing?
Beyond the nature of the programming
and effectiveness of the people, there is
the context in which a school’s leader-
ship and staff are pursuing their mis-
sion – the set of conditions that shapes
how decisions are made and the extent
to which, in any operation, people
are enabled to do their best work.
Providing extensive help to schools
whose leaders lack the authority to
make change (or strong inducements
to do so) appears limited in effect.
Attracting and placing talented new
leaders is more challenging when
the conditions of leadership in a turn-
around school are not designed to make
real leadership possible. The same is
true of teachers: why would talented,
experienced people be drawn to class-
rooms in these schools under the same
conditions that have conspired to pro-
duce so much failure, so consistently?
Ways to Create New Conditions
This is the line of thinking that has
fueled the nation’s charter school
movement over the past ten years: in
order to free up educators and school
leaders to do their best work, the dys-
functions of the current public educa-
tion system – so clearly evidenced by
the learning outcomes produced in the
bottom five percent of public schools –
must be skirted entirely and a new sys-
tem (and new set of conditions) must
be put in its place. As discussed in the
box on page 104, results from the
nation’s charter experiment are mixed,
depending to a strong degree on the
strength of the authorizing/accounta-
bility framework in which individual
charter schools have developed. But
this completely-outside-the-system
model has not been the only response
to the increasing conviction that the
conditions context of reform is as
important as the nature of the reform
itself and the people implementing it.
Decision-makers in a number of large
school districts, and a growing set of
policymakers at the state level, have
begun to experiment with a hybrid
approach that imports the outside-
the-system thinking that characterizes
charter schools – and attempts to
implement it within the system.
As described in Part 3, the conditions
change that has been the focus of these
newer efforts can be thought of in two
broad categories. One is ensuring that
someone within the system, most likely
school-level leaders or leadership
teams, holds clear authority over the
key resources that affect school per-
formance and the implementation of
any turnaround plan: people, money,
and time. The other is creating strong
incentives for people to take on the
challenge of turning around chronical-
ly under-performing schools, and to
do so successfully. The research on the
central importance of both authority
and incentives is cited in Part 3 as well.
Most of the experimenting with con-
dition change has been undertaken at
the district level, by leaders in large
urban districts including Chicago,
Philadelphia, Miami-Dade, New York,
Oakland, and Boston. The initiatives
are often gathered under the mantel
of autonomy, with the Edmonton,
Canada school district’s experience
cited as a primary model. (Beginning
in the late 1990s, Edmonton pioneered
an approach to district governance
that placed substantial decision-mak-
ing authority in the hands of school
principals and that has produced
promising results.) Increased authority
at the school leadership level is some-
times used as a reward for relative
high achievement, on the theory that
higher-performing schools could and
should be given latitude to pursue
their own strategies for improvement.
But experiments are also underway to
provide that authority (usually along
with tighter accountability) to schools
that volunteer for it – and, in some
cases, to chronically under-performing
schools as a central part of a turn-
around strategy. These district-based
reform efforts are discussed in subse-
quent pages of this section and in the
Supplemental Report.
Decision-makers… have begun to experiment with a hybrid
approach that imports the outside-the-system thinking that
characterizes charter schools – and attempts to implement
it within the system.
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101
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
In this third version of our inter-
vention-vs.-scale “map” of the
current landscape of turnaround
reform efforts, we place a number
of initiatives that attempt to incor-
porate basic changes in operating
conditions, work rules, and incen-
tives as part of their approach to
school intervention. By and large,
we found, initiatives that include
conditions change tend to allow
for significant program and people
change as well – but that is not
always the case.
The initiatives shown here are
district-based strategies because
these selected, large urban dis-
tricts have been more entrepre-
neurial than state policymakers in
attempting this multi-dimensional
kind of reform. Their experiments
are too new to show definitive
results, so it is too early to declare
that they have found demonstra-
bly effective turnaround pathways
for chronically under-performing
schools. But they do reflect a more
comprehensive, systems-oriented
approach that appears to more
fully embrace, in our view, the
characteristics of the HPHP (High-
Performing, High-Poverty) schools
profiled in Part 2. These initiatives
are briefly described over the fol-
lowing pages and in greater detail
in the Supplemental Report.
Getting to System Redesign by Incorporating Changes in Operating Conditions
FIGURE AC
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102
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
“Inside” and “Outside”
Strategies to Transform
Operating Conditions
Efforts to change the conditions
context in which intervention takes
place fall along a continuum from
inside to virtually outside the normal
school district governance and man-
agement structures, as portrayed in
Figure AD.
At the “inside” end of the
continuumare strategies that seek to
change the conditions for turnaround
schools, but largely within existing
school district structures and arrange-
ments. Schools remain district operat-
ed; staff members remain district
employees and members of collective
bargaining units; most district and
collective bargaining policies still
apply to the schools. But there are
some special rules, some exceptions
to policies that allow these schools to
do things differently. Miami’s School
Improvement Zone, described more
fully below and in the Supplemental
Report, is a prime example of the
inside approach to conditions change.
New York’s Chancellor’s District (an
initiative that operated in the 1990s),
Philadelphia’s district-operated low-
performing schools, and Chicago’s
“Performance Schools” fit into this
category as well.
At the “outside” end, districts and
states effect conditions change by
turning over control of schools to
outside providers. Through a charter
or a contract, these providers gain
authority over the key resources
of people, time, and money. And
through that same contract or char-
ter, they shoulder potentially power-
ful incentives to succeed or else face
revocation or non-renewal of their
agreement. While there are many
isolated examples of this approach
to improving chronically under-
performing schools, a small number
of districts have begun using this
instrument across multiple schools.
Philadelphia and Chicago, for exam-
ple, have entered into contracts
and charters with a wide variety of
nonprofit and for-profit entities to
operate chronically low-performing
System Redesign
(continued)
The Continuum of Outside-the-System Approaches,
Applied to Various Degrees Inside the System
A.4 System Redesign A.3 People Change A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
FIGURE AD
103
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
An Inside Turnaround Zone Model:
Miami-Dade’s Improvement Zone
Upon becoming Miami-Dade’s superintendent of schools in 2004, Rudolph
(Rudy) Crew created the Miami School Improvement Zone, a cluster of 39
schools with chronically low test scores. (Crew had pioneered this approach
with the Chancellor’s District in New York City, previously.) Schools in the
Zone receive the whole range of interventions described in this report. The
district provides a great deal of assistance to Zone schools, in the form of
intensive teacher training around district-selected curricula. The district also
enabled fairly extensive people change, replacing 15 principals at the 39
schools and turning over a significant number of teachers. And the district
also changed the schools’ operating conditions, negotiating with the
teacher’s union for the authority to pay Zone teachers 20 percent more to
compensate them for working an extra hour per school day and a ten-day-
longer school year. (Farrell, 2005)
In contrast to the other approaches described below, conditions-change in
the Zone has not revolved around granting more authority to school-level
managers. On the contrary, schools in the Zone are subject to more intensive
centralized control over such matters as curriculum, scheduling, and teacher
training. The conditions-change has had more to do with increased authority
in these areas at the district level, via negotiations with the teachers’ union.
The key idea here is thus not simply the delegation of power to schools, so
much as it is ensuring conditions that support the district’s strategies for
intervention. That set of strategies, developed in part by former Miami-Dade
deputy superintendent Irving Hamer (who was a principal consultant on this
report), involves a suite of nine interlocking elements ranging from new cur-
ricula and assessments to close collaboration with social service agencies.
A critical hallmark of Miami-Dade’s approach has been the re-establishment
of an identity for Zone schools that has helped to make them places where
people want to work. The district held a successful national recruiting fair
for teachers that set that tone even before the Zone opened for its first year
– and convinced some teachers who’d thought they might transfer out of
the schools to stay. Since then, the schools in the Improvement Zone (which
completed its third year in 2006-7), have shown appreciably stronger
achievement gains than other Miami-Dade schools in the same time period,
though many remain below district averages. See the Supplemental Report
for a more detailed analysis.
schools. In San Diego, four schools
facing “Restructuring” under No
Child Left Behind were closed and
reopened as charter schools under
former superintendent Alan Bersin.
In between these two extremes are
hybrid efforts to use in-district but
charter-like structures to create a
condition set that similarly combines
authority and incentives (including
increased accountability). A leading
example of this general approach is
Boston’s network of “pilot schools” –
though Boston has used the pilot
mechanism primarily to start new
schools rather than to turn around
low-performing schools. In pilot
schools, teachers remain union
members, but the schools receive
greater latitude in five areas –
curriculum, staffing, budgeting,
scheduling, and governance (see box
at the end of this section) – to pursue
learning models developed individual-
ly by staff and leadership at each pilot
school. Other districts have created
similar arrangements for single schools,
such as Worcester, Massachusetts’
University Park Campus School,
profiled extensively in the
Supplemental Report and at Mass
Insight’s effective-practice research
website, www.buildingblocks.org.
The following descriptions profile
these approaches – inside, outside,
and hybrid – and their emerging
results in more detail.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
System Redesign
(continued)
Outside Forms of Turnaround Zones:
Chartering and Contracting
In contrast to Miami’s inside strategy, the approach of “outsourcing” management –
contracting or chartering with outside organizations – places authority and account-
ability directly with the school, or with the school operator in the case of contracts
with multi-school education management organizations. While 3,600 charter schools
operate nationwide, only a small number of schools have been closed and reopened
as charter schools in response to chronic low performance. The states of Louisiana
and Colorado have taken this step, as has the San Diego school district. (Ziebarth
and Wohlstetter, 2005) The Chicago and Philadelphia “portfolio” approaches include
complements of schools run by charter management organizations, through these
arrangements look more like contracts than independent charters, strictly speaking;
the Oakland school district, meanwhile, went so far as to collaborate with outside
partners to create a new charter management organization (called Education for
Change) to take over two struggling elementary schools.
More common has been the contracting approach, where districts have entered
into agreements with an outside entity to manage low-performing schools. These
entities come in both for-profit (education management organizations, or EMOs)
and non-profit (charter management organizations, or CMOs) varieties, and they
also differ substantially in the types of instructional programs they offer and how
they are managed. (Colby, Smith, & Shelton, 2005) Many districts have contracted
out the management of individual schools, but some have gone farther in an
attempt to use contracting as a more scaled-up strategy. These include Baltimore,
MD, and Chester, PA, which contracted with Edison Schools for the management of
some struggling schools; Philadelphia, which contracts with a range of for-profit
EMOs as well as universities and non-profits to manage some of its toughest
schools; and Chicago, which is closing low-performing schools and reopening them
under a variety of arrangements including contracts. Some states (e.g., Maryland)
have experimented with the approach as well, though in the majority of cases
(e.g., Hawaii and Massachusetts), the contracting has stopped short of outsourcing
authority to run the under-performing schools.
The research on contracting, in general, closely parallels that on chartering –
meaning, the results are mixed. A number of charter schools and some contract
schools have produced extraordinary results with previously unsuccessful students,
but the performance of many other charter and contract schools is similar to or
lower than that of comparable schools. Key distinguishers appear to match the
conditions context and related analysis outlined above, with flexibility, incentives,
and resources – especially human resources – emerging as important factors. At the
system level, a rigorous provider selection process, strong accountability for results,
and extensive school autonomy appear to support effective chartering. (National
Association of Charter School Authorizers, 2005) According to a U.S. Department of
Education study of successful charter schools, the authority to do things differently
is a critical success factor for the schools examined. (U.S. Department of Education,
2004) At the school level, effective school design and highly capable leadership
both appear to distinguish successful charter schools, though the specific character-
istics of a capable start-up leader are different from those of a capable leader of an
on-going school. (Arkin & Kowal, 2005)
With results very mixed, contracting has not proved to be a panacea for districts
seeking dramatic improvement. Some experiments, such as Chester, PA’s attempt to
contract out the management of almost all the system’s schools, have failed miser-
ably. (Rhim, 2004) In other cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, contracting
has achieved mixed but somewhat more encouraging success. (Rhim 2005a,
2005b; Gill et al, 2007); see the profile of Philadelphia in the Supplemental Report
for more detail.) But system-level conditions similar to those in chartering appear
to facilitate success, including rigorous upfront selection, freedom to act for chosen
contractors, and clear contracts that instill results-based accountability. (Rhim
2005a, 2005b) In Chester, for example, the contractor (Edison Schools) did not
receive substantial authority over the critical resources, especially staff.
The issues surrounding chartering and contracting as strategies for intervention
mirror the challenges facing struggling schools in general. As a study completed
by Mass Insight for the NewSchools Venture Fund (2007) showed, the provider
“marketplace” currently lacks both the capacity and, to a strong degree, sufficient
interest in contracting with school districts to run turnaround schools. Most of the
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executives at the 50 CMOs and EMOs interviewed for that study expressed skepticism
that the contracts would provide them with the autonomy and the resources they
believe would be required to turn around a struggling school. The experience of those
who had done some contract work for school districts, in fact, bears out that skepti-
cism. (Mass Insight, 2007) In one noteworthy example, the Green Dot charter manage-
ment organization elected to create a set of small charters within the enrollment draw
area of Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, because it could not arrive at an agree-
ment with the LAUSD for turnaround of Jefferson High that gave Green Dot the authori-
ty it felt it needed. In other large districts, even when the commitment to autonomy
from district red tape was strong at the superintendent level, contract operators report-
ed that this commitment did not necessarily extend into the middle layers of the district
bureaucracy, which precipitated issues around facility use and non-educational services
such as transportation and food.
In short, chartering and contracting have not proved, by themselves, to be the answer
to the problem of chronically under-performing schools. While these “outsourced-
management” arrangements show promise in sometimes bringing together important
elements for intervention – in the form of program, people, and conditions change –
the track record for experiments being pursued under this approach is too mixed
(and is still too young) to have yielded conclusive results. These strategies present, in
addition, other questions that are difficult to address: for example, what happens when
a contract for management of an under-performing school expires? If the work has
been successful, is the contract extended or is the now adequately-performing school
returned to the school district – and under what kinds of conditions?
Outcomes emerging from some larger district/partner collaborations, such as the First
Things First program being implemented by the Kansas City, KS school district with the
non-profit group IRRE (Institute for Research and Reform in Education), indicate that
sustained, comprehensive partnerships encompassing all three forms of change, in some
manner, can produce improvement. The question is whether – and how – school districts
and states can combine effective partnering with outside-of-the-system conditions and a
comprehensive, integrated reform approach to turn around the most dysfunctional, most
consistently under-performing schools. That question is taken up in Part 5 of this report.
How Ready Are Districts to Contract Successfully with
Turnaround Partners?
Mass Insight’s 2007 study for NewSchools Venture Fund
identified four variables that indicate school districts’ readiness to
contract effectively with outside partners to pursue turnaround in
under-performing schools:
1. Interest in using outside providers for restructuring: district
leadership commitment to shake up the status quo, along with
legal/regulatory “permission”
2. Willingness to grant providers sufficient autonomy: through
chartering or contracting – with autonomies clearly spelled out in
the contract language
3. Stability and clout of educational and political leadership:
strong mayor as important as strong superintendent, in some cases
buttressed by state intervention providing additional powers
4. Financial/contractual viability of turnaround initiative:
adequate funding (see page 79) and appropriate contracting
mechanisms and capacity.
Source: Considering School Turnarounds: Market Research and Analysis in Six Urban Districts,
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, 2007
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
System Redesign
(continued)
A Hybrid Inside/Outside Model:
Boston’s Pilot Schools
As shown in Figure AD, there is a continuum of possibilities between Miami-Dade’s
internal, district-centric effort to transform operating conditions in struggling
schools and the outsourcing strategies of chartering and contracting. Some districts
have pursued a strategy that combines inside and outside approaches to conditions
change, the best example of which may be Boston’s “pilot schools” strategy. Pilot
schools first opened in 1995 through an unusual agreement between the district,
the teachers’ union, and other parties. Under this agreement, pilot schools enjoy
five “autonomies”: budget, staffing, scheduling, curriculum/instruction/assessment,
and governance/policies – in short, precisely the sort of authority associated with
conditions change we have studied in this report. Yet unlike charter and contract
schools, pilot schools are still squarely within-district schools, and staff remain
members of the city’s collective bargaining unit.
A recent evaluation of Boston’s pilot schools found that they use their autonomy
to make time for faculty collaboration, reduce class sizes and teacher loads,
increase the length of instructional periods, create a “nurturing” school culture,
and require competency or mastery beyond statewide requirements for graduation.
(Center for Collaborative Education, 2006) The evaluation also cites strong student
performance results for the pilot schools, relative to regular district schools.
(For example, 84% of pilot school students passed the state 10th grade English
Language Arts exam in 2005, compared to 58% of Boston Public School students
overall. The study also points to better attendance and fewer discipline issues
as signals of these schools’ success.) Skeptics of their success note that they are
“opt-in” academies (as are charter schools) that serve more motivated students
(and fewer trouble-makers) than regular public schools.
The pilot school approach was not originally developed as a way to conduct
turnaround of under-performing schools; like charter schools, and like other
initiatives such as Edmonton’s school-level autonomy approach, New York City’s
Empowerment Zone, and Oakland’s Results-Based Budgeting program, it reflects
the idea that decentralizing some forms of decision-making authority will ensure
that “those closest to the students... get to make the key decisions” (to quote from
New York’s description of its Children First initiative, announced in January 2007).
If all of this sounds a bit like the site-based management wave of reform that had
its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that’s because it is a descendent in
many ways of that movement, but with more careful attention being paid, generally,
to the mix of “tight” (centralized) and “loose” (decentralized) authorities across
the various domains in which schools operate: instruction, assessment, human
resource management, facilities management, transportation, policy compliance,
etc. We study the loose-tight blend of authority in our discussion of a potential
state and district framework for school turnaround in Part 4, and in the profiles
of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami-Dade in the Supplemental Report.
Boston’s Pilot School model has recently become the centerpiece of a new experi-
ment by the Massachusetts State Board of Education – one that merits close atten-
tion. Seeking ways to motivate districts to pursue more dramatic, transformational
turnaround of failing schools, Board chair Christopher Anderson invited three
districts (Boston, Springfield, and Fitchburg) to use a new Commonwealth Pilot
(or “Co-Pilot”) turnaround option to avoid having the “chronically under-perform-
ing” label pinned on four schools. The schools were essentially given two alterna-
tives: take ownership of a substantial conversion process into a Co-Pilot School, or
accept much more intensive state intervention. All four schools elected, with union
support and 80% faculty votes, to enter into Co-Pilot status and submitted plans
that met the state’s ten “enabling conditions” (see page 74) and other criteria.
They were to reopen in the fall of 2007 as Co-Pilots with many of the autonomies
described here, supported by their district and a Co-Pilot network managed by
the Center for Collaborative Education. It’s an interesting experiment in achieving
the right balance of local control/buy-in, state-specified turnaround criteria, and
network support. The keys to success will lie in adjusting the Pilot model to suit
a turnaround context – which would mean firmer support and direction from the
network – and ensuring that the network provider has the necessary resources
to provide the required external capacity.
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A Demanding Strategy
Two broad points about conditions
change as a key element in turning
around low-performing schools
appear warranted from our examina-
tion of what’s been tried. First: the
nature of this principle and the
newness of its application within a
turnaround context point to the need
for much more research into which
authorities can effectively be decen-
tralized and which should more logi-
cally remain the province of a cen-
tralized network operator – in most
cases, a school district – and how this
loose-vs.-tight equation should be
adjusted for higher, lower, or the
most chronically poor-performing
schools. “Loose-vs.-tight,” in our
view, may well become the critical
school reform research question of
this decade. (For a compelling analy-
sis already published, see Colby,
Smith, and Shelton, 2005. Mass
Insight is planning an in-depth
research-and-development process
to produce a set of recommendations
on this issue for school networks.)
Second: districts and states need
substantial capacity of their own
to engage in successful conditions
change, even if it is part of a strategy
that devolves authority to schools
or to outside providers. It is tempting
to think of changing conditions as
a low-investment strategy, one that
involves changing rules and policies
but otherwise not requiring the sub-
stantial funding and related support
associated with such approaches as
providing guidance via school assis-
tance teams. Research and experience
with conditions change, however, tell
another story. Chartering and con-
tracting, for example, require signifi-
cant investment in systems to recruit
and develop providers, select quali-
fied operators, design RFPs and
contracts that reflect research-based
reform criteria, monitor contract
performance, and take action when
contract performance falls short.
Failure to develop such systems
underlies many of the problems that
have emerged with chartering and
contracting approaches nationally.
(Kowal and Arkin, 2005; Arkin and
Kowal, 2005) The importance of such
systems would be doubled when a
district or state wants to undertake
conditions change for the purpose
of school turnaround – and doubled
again when turnaround is undertaken
at scale, across a number of schools
and districts simultaneously.
The Five Autonomies of Boston’s Pilot Schools
Staffing: Teachers who work in Pilot Schools are exempt from teachers’ union contract
work rules, while still receiving union salary, benefits, and accrual of seniority within
the district. Teachers voluntarily choose to work at Pilot Schools; when hired, they sign
what is called an “election-to-work agreement,” which stipulates the work conditions
for each school for the coming school year. The agreement is revisited and revised
annually with staff input.
Budgetary: Rather than receiving most of their budget through staffing allocation
formulas set by the district, Pilot Schools receive a lump sum per pupil amount equal
to other BPS (Boston Public) schools that each Pilot School is able to allocate as they
see fit. As well, Pilot Schools can decide whether or not to purchase discretionary
central office services from the district. If a service is not purchased, the per pupil
amount for that service is added to the school’s lump sum per pupil budget.
The total amount of central discretionary services is approximately $500 per pupil.
Curriculum and Assessment: Pilot Schools… are not required to follow district-man-
dated curriculum or assessments. Pilot Schools often create or modify curriculum to fulfill
each individual school’s mission. For example, one Pilot School is focused on expedi-
tionary learning, and staff planned a whole curriculum around the idea of survival. Staff
engagement [reportedly has] increased with their increased decision-making capabilities.
Governance: Several different decision-making bodies exist in Pilot Schools, drawing
on the voices of staff, students, and families. Staff decision-making groups may include
leadership teams, curriculum teams, and committees. Governing boards in Pilot Schools
have more authority than traditional school site councils. Pilot School governing boards
consist of the principal, staff (at least four), family representatives, community mem-
bers (including from higher education, business, community organizations), and for
middle and high schools, students. Their respective peers elect staff, family, and student
representatives, while the overall governing board selects community members.
Scheduling: Schools vary the length and schedule of instructional periods, which
allows staff more flexibility in their teaching. Many Pilot Schools choose to increase
the length of instructional blocks to improve teaching and learning. Extra time allows
staff and students to pursue a subject more deeply. Teachers also have the possibility
of teaching an interdisciplinary curriculum and team-teaching. Pilot Schools are [also]
able to modify the school schedule and calendar. High schools may determine start and
end times for their schools (elementary and middle schools are still constrained by the
district bus schedule); as a result, most Pilot high schools start later in the day than
regular BPS schools.
Excerpted from The Essential Guide to Pilot Schools, Center for Collaborative Education; available at www.cce.org
A.4
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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ing, High-poverty Schools. Retrieved from Center for Public
Education website:http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org.
David, J., & Coe, P., et al. (2003). Improving Low-performing
Schools: A Study of Kentucky’s Highly Skilled Educator Program.
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from Education Commission of the States website:http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=6428.
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Educators’ Perspectives on the Critical Factors Influencing
Student Achievement in Comparatively High and Low
Performing Urban Public Schools. Retrieved from University
of Massachusetts/Donahue Institute website:http://www.don-
ahue.umassp.edu/docs/gain-trac-report.
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of Growing up Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Duke, D. L., Tucker, P. D., Belcher, M., Crews, D., Harrison-
Coleman, J., Higgins, J., et al. (2005). Lift-off: Launching the School
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to Improve its Worst Schools are Intense and Focused.
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cle=zone
Finn, Jeremy and Jeffrey Owings. (2006). The Adult Lives
of At-risk Students: The Roles of Attainment and Engagement
in High School. Washington DC: National Center for
Educational Statistics.
Appendix B: References
Active links to many of these references can be found athttp://www.massinsight.com/AppendixB.
109
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
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110
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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January). Leading out from Low-performing Schools: The Urban
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Expecting Success: A Study of Five High-performing High-poverty
Schools. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.
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From Kindergarten through Third Grade: Children’s Beginning
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.pdf.
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shipacademy/high%20performance%2090%2090%2090%20and%20
beyond.pdf.
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the Class: Characteristics of Higher Performing Urban High Schools
in Massachusetts. Cambridge, MA.
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Research Project at the Center for Reinventing Public Education.
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute (project organizer)
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent non-profit
that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly
improve student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scale
depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice; and that only dramatic
and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will produce significant achievement gains.
The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform
model now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using Advanced
Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transform
school culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108
617-778-1500 Fax: 617-778-1505
For more information about Mass Insight and for additional
resources and tools relating to the turnaround of under-performing
schools, please find us on the web at www.massinsight.org.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (lead funder)
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works
to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In developing countries, it focuses
on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public
libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great
education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving
the lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer
and Co-chairs William H. Gates Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.
www.gatesfoundation.org
Copyright © 2007 by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, a 501c3 non-profit
organization. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy this report for non-commercial use.
Mass Insight Education
& Research Institute Funders
Leadership Sponsors
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Barr Foundation
The Boston Foundation
National Math & Science Initiative
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
NewSchools Venture Fund
Major and Contributing Sponsors
Analog Devices
Bank of America
Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation
EMC Corporation
Genzyme Corporation
Goodwin Procter
IBM
Intel Corporation
Liberty Mutual
Mass High Tech Council
Mass Mutual Insurance
Microsoft Corporation
The Noyce Foundation
State Street Corporation
Teradyne
Verizon Communications
Public Sources of Funds
Federal/State
• Massachusetts Department of Education
• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership
• Comprehensive School Reform
• Massachusetts Board of Higher Education
Districts/Schools: Membership fees
and earned revenue for field services
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent
non-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state
government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closing
achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that
change at scale depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice;
and that only dramatic and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will
produce significant achievement gains. The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight
implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform model now inform the organiza-
tion's national work on two high-impact goals:
• using Advanced Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science
achievement and to transform school culture, and
• the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
We are:
Synthesizers and providers of research. Mass Insight is a national resource for
practical information on how to effectively implement standards-based education.
The Turnaround Challenge represents a new form of educational policy research:
highly graphical, presented in varying user-formats (print, presentation, web), and
expressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our Building
Blocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-
practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep the
Promise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classes
subject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies for
serving them.
Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,
informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and its
predecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role in
shaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insight
consults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recently
helping to design school turnaround programs in Illinois and Washington State.
Leaders in standards-based services to schools. We provide practical, research-
based technical services, staff and leadership development programs, and consulting
services to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great Schools
Coalition, a 10-year-old partnership of nearly 30 change-oriented Massachusetts
districts. Our field services have focused on math and science, and over the next five-
to-ten years will revolve principally around using increased access to AP® courses and
improved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructional
change in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through the
National Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 million
as the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.
See www.massinsight.org for more details.
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
Prepared through a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Mass Insight Education and Research Institute
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108 • tel: 617-778-1500 • fax: 617-778-1505 • www.massinsight.org
School Turnaround: a dramatic and
comprehensive intervention in a low-performing
school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
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The Turnaround Challenge
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
Prepared through a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Mass Insight Education and Research Institute
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108 • tel: 617-778-1500 • fax: 617-778-1505 • www.massinsight.org
School Turnaround: a dramatic and
comprehensive intervention in a low-performing
school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
T
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Mass Insight Education & Research Institute (project organizer)
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent non-profit
that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly
improve student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scale
depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice; and that only dramatic
and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will produce significant achievement gains.
The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform
model now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using Advanced
Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transform
school culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108
617-778-1500 Fax: 617-778-1505
For more information about Mass Insight and for additional
resources and tools relating to the turnaround of under-performing
schools, please find us on the web at www.massinsight.org.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (lead funder)
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works
to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In developing countries, it focuses
on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public
libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great
education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving
the lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer
and Co-chairs William H. Gates Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.
www.gatesfoundation.org
Copyright © 2007 by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, a 501c3 non-profit
organization. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy this report for non-commercial use.
Mass Insight Education
& Research Institute Funders
Leadership Sponsors
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Barr Foundation
The Boston Foundation
National Math & Science Initiative
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
NewSchools Venture Fund
Major and Contributing Sponsors
Analog Devices
Bank of America
Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation
EMC Corporation
Genzyme Corporation
Goodwin Procter
IBM
Intel Corporation
Liberty Mutual
Mass High Tech Council
Mass Mutual Insurance
Microsoft Corporation
The Noyce Foundation
State Street Corporation
Teradyne
Verizon Communications
Public Sources of Funds
Federal/State
• Massachusetts Department of Education
• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership
• Comprehensive School Reform
• Massachusetts Board of Higher Education
Districts/Schools: Membership fees
and earned revenue for field services
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent
non-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state
government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closing
achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that
change at scale depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice;
and that only dramatic and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will
produce significant achievement gains. The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight
implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform model now inform the organiza-
tion's national work on two high-impact goals:
• using Advanced Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science
achievement and to transform school culture, and
• the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
We are:
Synthesizers and providers of research. Mass Insight is a national resource for
practical information on how to effectively implement standards-based education.
The Turnaround Challenge represents a new form of educational policy research:
highly graphical, presented in varying user-formats (print, presentation, web), and
expressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our Building
Blocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-
practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep the
Promise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classes
subject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies for
serving them.
Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,
informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and its
predecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role in
shaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insight
consults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recently
helping to design school turnaround programs in Illinois and Washington State.
Leaders in standards-based services to schools. We provide practical, research-
based technical services, staff and leadership development programs, and consulting
services to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great Schools
Coalition, a 10-year-old partnership of nearly 30 change-oriented Massachusetts
districts. Our field services have focused on math and science, and over the next five-
to-ten years will revolve principally around using increased access to AP® courses and
improved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructional
change in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through the
National Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 million
as the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.
See www.massinsight.org for more details.
i
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Prepared through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
By Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash
ii
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The authors and Mass Insight Education & Research
Institute would like to express our deep appreciation
to the researchers, policymakers, reform experts, superin-
tendents, principals, and teachers who contributed to the
development of The Turnaround Challenge. The conclu-
sions reached in this report are our own, but they reflect
extensive input from a broad range of project participants.
Thanks also go to our partners at the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, whose support made the project possible. We
owe a deep debt of gratitude, as well, to our core advisors
on the project, particularly Irving Hamer of the
Millennium Group (www.the-m-group.com), who as
Deputy Superintendent was the architect of Miami-Dade’s
Improvement Zone; and Bryan Hassel, noted researcher
and writer on No Child Left Behind and school reform
(www.publicimpact.com). NewSchools Venture Fund
provided funding for a separate research project that
proved extremely valuable to our work on this report.
Finally, this project drew inspiration and evidence from a
wide body of research focused on under- and over-per-
forming schools, change management, and the impacts of
poverty on learning. Special thanks go to Karin
Chenoweth, author of It’s Being Done (Harvard Education
Press, 2007); David Berliner (“Our Impoverished View of
Education Reform,” Teachers College Record, 2006); and
Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (No Excuses: Closing the
Racial Gap in Learning, Simon & Schuster, 2003), all of
whose work gave us confidence that The Turnaround
Challenge can in fact be met.
Authors
Andrew Calkins is Senior Vice President of Mass
Insight Education & Research Institute. He was former-
ly the Executive Director of the nonprofit organization
Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., and a senior editor
and project manager at Scholastic Inc.
William Guenther is Founder and President
of Mass Insight Education & Research Institute.
He is also the founder of Mass Insight Corporation,
a Boston-based research and consulting firm that
seeks to keep Massachusetts and its businesses and
institutions globally competitive.
Grace Belfiore is Senior Editor at Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute. The holder of a
doctorate in education history from Oxford University,
she has worked as a researcher and editor in standards-
based education in both the U.S. and U.K., and was
formerly the director of Pergamon Open Learning, a
self-paced learning division at Reed Elsevier Publishers.
Dave Lash is a strategy and innovation consultant with
expertise in designing and implementing new initiatives.
Principal of Dave Lash & Company
(www.davelash.com), he helped develop the conceptual
models and visual orientation of this report.
Mass Insight Education
and Research Institute
Senior management and project-related staff:
William Guenther, President
Andrew Calkins, Senior Vice President
Melanie Winklosky, Vice President, Development & Operations
Alison Fraser, Great Schools Campaign Director
Joanna Manikas, Design and Production Director
Grace Belfiore, Senior Editor
Charles Chieppo, Senior Writer
Chris Tracey, Researcher/Writer
Deb Abbott, Finance Manager
Julie Corbett, Program Associate
Elizabeth Hiles, Research Associate
Linda Neri Watts, Contributing Editor
Donna Michitson, Graphic Designer
Danielle Stein, [former] Program Mgr., Building Blocks
Project and editorial consultants:
Ethan Cancell, Brockton Public Schools
Bryan Hassel, Public Impact, Inc.
Irving Hamer, Millennium Group
Richard O’Neill, Renaissance School Services
Adam Kernan-Schloss, KSA-Plus
Jennifer Vranek, Education First Consulting
Anne Lewis
Project partners:
Michael Cohen and Matt Gandal, Achieve Inc.
National project advisors
and focus group participants:
Richard Elmore, Harvard University
Tokes Fashola, American Institutes for Research
Lauren Rhim, University of Maryland
Douglas Sears, Boston University
Ken Wong, Brown University
Tim Knowles, University of Chicago
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Cleveland State University
Vicki Phillips, [formerly] Portland, OR Public Schools
Kati Haycock, The Education Trust
Andrew Rotherham, Ed Sector
Richard Hess, American Enterprise Institute
Amy Starzynski, Holland & Knight
Scott Palmer, Holland & Knight
Ana Tilton, NewSchools Venture Fund
Renuka Kher, NewSchools Venture Fund
Anthony Cavanna, American Institutes for Research
Robin Lake, Center for Reinventing Education
Monica Byrn-Jimenez, UMass Boston
Brett Lane, Education Alliance at Brown University
Cheryl Almedia, Jobs for the Future
Celine Coggins, Rennie Center for Education Reform
David Farbman, Mass 2020
Jamie Gass, Pioneer Institute
Fred Carrigg, New Jersey Department of Education
Ron Peiffer, Maryland Department of Education
JoAnne Carter, Maryland Department of Education
Dane Linn, National Governors Association
Fritz Edelstein, U.S. Conference of Mayors
Julie Bell, National Conference of State Legislatures
Sunny Kristin, National Conference of State Legislatures
Massachusetts project advisors
and focus group participants:
Juliane Dow, Massachusetts Department of Education
Lynda Foisy, Massachusetts Department of Education
Spencer Blasdale, Academy of the Pacific Rim, Boston
Sally Dias, Emmanuel College
Peggy Kemp, Fenway High School, Boston
Ken Klau, Massachusetts Department of Education
Matt Malone, Swampscott Public Schools
Earl Metzler, Sterling Middle School, Quincy
Paul Natola, Boston Public Schools
Basan Nembirkow, Brockton Public Schools
Kiki Papagiotis, Salem High School
Ann Southworth, Springfield Public Schools
Acknowledgements
1
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Introductory Material and Executive Summary
Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................................ii
Contents.......................................................................................................................................................1
Foreword......................................................................................................................................................2
12 Tough Questions: A Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround...................................................3
The Main Ideas in The Turnaround Challenge................................................................................................4
Executive Summary of the Report..................................................................................................................8
Part 1: The Challenge of School Turnaround
1.1 The Goals, Methodology, and Organization of This Report...................................................................14
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge....................................................................16
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround – and an Entry Point for Real Reform?................................................20
Part 2: How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
2.1 Understanding the DNA We Must Replicate at Scale...........................................................................24
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor Children......................................................26
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning.....................................................................................28
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness Model..........................................................30
2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP Schools ...............................................................................................38
Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Odds for Turnaround Schools
3.1 Moving Beyond Marginal to Fundamental Change .............................................................................40
3.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective Turnaround.....................................................................44
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround....................................................................48
3.4 The Third C: Clustering for Support .....................................................................................................52
Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools
4.1 Towards a Framework that Offers Good Support for Good Design.......................................................56
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School Intervention......................................................................................58
4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not Enough................................................................................................64
Part 5: A Framework for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools ............................................................69
Appendix A: School Intervention to Date: Goals, Strategies, and Impact
A.1 School Intervention to Date: Goals, Strategies, and Impact ..................................................................90
A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of Turnaround .................................................................................92
A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of Turnaround....................................................................................96
A.4 System Redesign: Program, People – and Conditions Change ...........................................................100
Appendix B: References......................................................................................................................................108
Additional information available
in the Supplemental Report
Profiles of Ten State Intervention Strategies for
Under-Performing Schools
Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia
Profiles of Four School District Strategies for
Under-Performing Schools
Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York City, Philadelphia
HPHP Schools in Action: Lessons from High-
Performing, High-Poverty High Schools
Five Schools Drawn from Mass Insight’s Building Blocks
Effective-Practice Research
Poverty's “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning
and the Implications for School Design
An Expanded Analysis
Resources for Advocacy and Research
on School Turnaround
An Annotated Bibliography of Turnaround Resources
The Turnaround Challenge and its Supplemental
Report can be downloaded from the web at
www.massinsight.org.
Table of Contents
2
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
I
n Time magazine’s recent analysis of the impact of the No Child Left Behind
Act (June 4, 2007), the effort was given an overall grade of C, with some
aspects of the law and its implementation rating an A or a B. What brought the
overall judgment down was the F, by far the lowest grade, given to the category
Helping Schools Improve. “Even the Department of Education,” Time wrote, “con-
cedes that its remedies for chronic school
failure are not working.” ABC-News was lit-
tle more encouraging in its appraisal, giving
“rescue plans for failing schools” a D.
These highly critical reports arrive alongside
of others lauding individual school success
stories. In fact, higher standards and testing
have helped to demonstrate, more clearly
than ever before, that schools serving highly
challenged, high-poverty student enrollments
– the kind of schools most likely to be
deemed “chronic failures” – can succeed. But
we have clearly not developed ways to extend
that success, or to apply successful schools’
strategies to help struggling schools improve.
It is a poignant and troubling irony. Just as
we discover that demographics need not
determine destiny, the nation’s new school-
quality measurement tools reveal that for
students attending our worst-performing
schools… in fact, it does. By the end of the decade, at current rates, about five per-
cent of all U.S. public schools will be identified as chronic failures in need of what
NCLB calls “restructuring.” (See chart, displayed with more detail on page 16.)
The vast majority of students at these schools “graduate” to the next level with a
skills and knowledge deficit that all but cripples their chances at future success.
How can we interrupt this cycle?
That was the charge given to us by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
September, 2005: examine the landscape of current effort to turn around the
nation’s most chronically under-performing schools and develop a new frame-
work for states, working in partnership with communities and districts, to apply
to school turnaround. The Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute represented
a compelling choice for the foundation to
conduct this work: a non-profit organiza-
tion that has been deeply involved in policy
facilitation, education reform advocacy,
effective-practice research, and intensive
school-improvement services simultaneous-
ly at the state level for ten years. All of these
capacities informed this report, as did the
fact that our home and our work over that
decade has been in Massachusetts – a
national model, in many ways, for effective
standards-based reform.
But on the issue of school turnaround there
is much to be done, here in the
Commonwealth and in every state, bar
none. There are no easy answers – except
one. To the question, Will current interven-
tion strategies produce the results we want?,
the research returns a definitive “No.” The
analysis, conclusions, and framework presented in The Turnaround Challenge, we
hope, will help educators, school reformers, and policy leaders across the country
develop a new generation of turnaround strategies that carry, at the very least, the
possibility of success.
William Guenther and Andrew Calkins
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, Inc.
Boston, Massachusetts
Foreword
2005-2006 2006-2007
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Turning Around the Bottom Five Percent:
5,000 Schools in Restructuring by 2010
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010
600
1,100
1,900
3,300
4,900
School Turnaround: a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in a
low-performing school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
Chart projections are based on actual 2005-2006 data for schools in Restructuring Status under NCLB with the assumption
that the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constant over the next four years. Source of 2005-06 data: Center on
Education Policy (2006).
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
3
12 Tough Questions
A Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround
Use this self-audit to measure the probable impact of your state’s approach to school
turnaround. A corollary tool for school principals charged with turnaround can be
found on page 88, following this report’s recommended policy framework.
Evaluating Your State’s Commitment
1. Has your state visibly focused on its lowest-performing five percent of schools
and set specific, two-year turnaround goals, such as bringing achievement at
least to the current high-poverty school averages in the state?
2. Does your state have a plan in place that gives you confidence that it can
deliver on these goals?
3. If not: Is there any evidence that the state is taking steps to accept its
responsibility to ensure that students in the lowest-performing schools
have access to the same quality of education found in high-performing,
high-poverty schools?
Evaluating Your State’s Strategy
4. Does your state recognize that a turnaround strategy for failing schools
requires fundamental changes that are different from an incremental
improvement strategy?
5. Has your state presented districts and schools with:
• a sufficiently attractive set of turnaround services and policies, collected
within a protected turnaround “zone,” so that schools actively want to
gain access to required new operating conditions, streamlined regulations,
and resources; and
• alternative consequences (such as chronically under-performing status
and a change in school governance) that encourage schools and districts
to volunteer?
6. Does your state provide the student information and data analysis systems
schools need to assess learning and individualize teaching?
7. Changing Conditions: Does your state’s turnaround strategy provide school-
level leaders with sufficient streamlined authority over staff, schedule, budget
and program to implement the turnaround plan? Does it provide for sufficient
incentives in pay and working conditions to attract the best possible staff and
encourage them to do their best work?
8. Building Capacity – Internal: Does your state recognize that turnaround
success depends primarily on an effective “people strategy” that recruits,
develops, and retains strong leadership teams and teachers?
9. Building Capacity – External: Does your state have a strategy to develop lead
partner organizations with specific expertise needed to provide intensive
school turnaround support?
10. Clustering for Support: Within the protected turnaround zones, does your state
collaborate with districts to organize turnaround work into school clusters
(by need, school type, region, or feeder pattern) that have a lead partner
providing effective network support?
State Leadership and Funding
11. Is there a distinct and visible state entity that, like the schools in the turn-
around zone, has the necessary flexibility to act, as well as the required
authority, resources, and accountability to lead the turnaround effort?
12. To the extent that your state is funding the turnaround strategy, is that
commitment a) adequate and b) at the school level, contingent on fulfilling
requirements for participation in the turnaround zone?
4
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Despite steadily increasing urgency about
the nation’s lowest-performing schools –
those in the bottom five percent – efforts to
turn these schools around have largely
failed. Marginal change has led to marginal
(or no) improvement. These schools, the
systems supporting them, and our manage-
ment of the change process require funda-
mental rethinking, not more tinkering. We
will not make the difference we need to
make if we continue with current strategies.
That much is clear.
What does successful school turnaround
entail? To begin with: a “protected space”
where schools are given the flexibility,
resources, and support that teachers and
administrators are calling for – and that true
cultural and system change requires.
A Specialized Discipline
Turnaround requires dramatic changes that pro-
duce significant achievement gains in a short peri-
od (within two years), followed by a longer period
of sustained improvement. Turning around
chronically under-performing schools is a differ-
ent and far more difficult undertaking than school
improvement. It should be recognized within
education – as it is in other sectors – as a distinct
professional discipline that requires specialized
experience, training, and support.
There is little track record of turnaround success
at scale. A few large urban districts such as
Chicago, Miami-Dade, and New York City have
undertaken promising turnaround strategies, but
most are in their early stages and developing the
capacity to fully implement them continues to be
a challenge.
Broader implementation of the lessons learned
from these turnaround pioneers will require state
action on a number of fronts:
• Require failing schools and their districts to
either pursue more proactive turnaround strate-
gies or lose control over the school.
• Make fundamental changes in the conditions
under which those schools operate.
• Develop a local marketplace of
partner/providers skilled in this discipline.
• Appropriate the $250,000-$1,000,000 per year
required to turn around a failing school.
A Special Zone for School Turnaround
Comprehensive turnaround will be most effective
when it is actively initiated by districts and schools
in response to state requirements and with state
support. States must work to create an appealing
“space” or zone for failing schools that provides
high-impact reforms such as control over
hiring/placement, scheduling, and budgeting, and
incentive pay to draw experienced teachers. States
must also create distinctly unappealing alterna-
tives that include consequences like school closure
or state-directed restructuring.
Within the Zone: The Three ‘C’ Strategies,
Supporting a Strong Focus on People
Turnaround is essentially a people-focused enter-
prise. States, districts, schools, and outside part-
ners must organize themselves to attract, develop,
and apply people with skills to match the needs of
struggling schools and students.
The Main Ideas in The Turnaround Challenge
Why America’s best opportunity to dramatically improve student achievement lies
in our worst-performing schools
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
5
Three basic elements, this report proposes, are
required to make that strategy succeed:
1. Change conditions. Create a protected space
free of bureaucratic restrictions and overly
stringent collective bargaining agreements.
Provide incentives to challenge and motivate
people to do their best work.
2. Increase capacity internally on school staffs,
especially among school leaders, and externally
through a strong marketplace of local
providers with the experience and ability to
serve as lead turnaround partners (see below).
3. Organize clusters of schools – either within a
district or across districts – with their own lead
turnaround partner providing comprehensive
services focused on turnaround. These clusters
can be grouped by need, school type, region, or
other characteristics.
New State Agency and Commitment
To facilitate the three ‘C’s, states must create a
visible, effective agency that – like turnaround
schools themselves – is free from normal bureau-
cratic constraints and has a flexible set of operat-
ing rules that allow it to carry out its mission.
Turnaround work is expensive. In addition to
creating a management agency with the necessary
authority and flexibility, the work requires ade-
quate resources with corresponding accountabili-
ty measures in place. Since failing schools cus-
tomarily lack a vocal constituency to champion
their cause, the state commitment must realisti-
cally include vigorous advocacy by the governor,
state board of education, state superintendent,
and leaders from the legislature, business, the
nonprofit/foundation community, and the media.
New Model of Turnaround Partners
Failing schools need skilled outside assistance to
mount a comprehensive, sustained turnaround
initiative. That will require a far stronger resource
base of partners than the patchwork of individual
consultants (mostly retired educators) now assist-
ing with intervention in most states. It also will
require development of a special category of lead
turnaround partners – providers that act as inte-
grators of multiple services. The absence of such
integrating partners leaves teachers, schools, and
districts enmeshed within a confusing array of
disconnected outside providers.
Lead turnaround partners would integrate multi-
ple services either as a contractor for school
management or on a consulting basis, in con-
junction with the district. Lead partners would
provide a comprehensive set of integrated aca-
demic (and perhaps some back-office) services.
The Benchmark: High-Performing,
High-Poverty Schools
A small number of schools throughout the coun-
try successfully serve high-poverty populations
similar to those that typically attend our lowest
performing schools. HPHP schools exhibit three
overarching characteristics. Together, they make
up what the report calls the Readiness model – a
set of strategies that turnaround efforts should
emulate. The Readiness dimensions include:
Readiness to Learn
• Schools directly address poverty-related student
deficits with such strategies as:
– Extended school day and longer year
– Action against poverty-related adversity
– Discipline and engagement
– Close student-adult relationships
Readiness to Teach
• Shared staff responsibility for student achievement
• Personalized instruction based on diagnostic
assessment and flexible time on task
• Teaching culture that stresses collaboration and
continuous improvement
Readiness to Act
• Ability to make mission-driven decisions about
people, time, money, and program
• Leaders adept at securing additional resources
and leveraging partner relationships
• Creative responses to constant unrest
With more than 5,000 schools heading towards
the most extreme category of underperformance
(“Restructuring”) under No Child Left Behind by
2009-10, states have little time to waste before
mounting retooled initiatives with the compre-
hensiveness and imagination necessary to suc-
cessfully turn around those failing schools.
The Turnaround Challenge is being released
nationally, with the assistance of a number of
education organizations. The Mass Insight
Education & Research Institute plans to follow up
on this report with a national research-and-devel-
opment initiative to produce step-by-step blue-
prints, tools, and sample policy language for
states and districts committed to pursuing more
proactive forms of turnaround. The initiative also
will examine ways that states and the federal gov-
ernment can spur the development of a much
stronger resource base of highly skilled turn-
around partners. All of this work will be under-
taken in conjunction with a number of collabo-
rating organizations and public agencies.
More information on school turnaround can be
found at our web site at www.massinsight.org.
“While 39 states have the authority to take strong actions,
and while these same 39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably improved for years,
we still find strong interventions extremely rare.”
– Researcher Ronald Brady, 2003
Call to Action
Marginal change = marginal results for under-performing schools
Massachusetts, Mass Insight’s home state, is widely (and deservedly) cited as a leader in achievement
and effective school reform. But the story of the Commonwealth’s poorest-performing schools nonetheless reflects
a national social policy crisis: America’s collective inability to help high-challenge, high-poverty, low-achieving schools succeed.
And: our willingness to let these schools (like the one described in the graph above)
struggle while generations of students pass through, emerging without the skills they need.
Massachusetts has moved, since 2005, toward stronger forms of intervention and support in its failing schools.
So have some other states and large school districts. A few high-performing, high-poverty schools are showing the way.
But without sustained commitment and dramatically different strategies, the future will look like the past.
In the spirit of igniting that commitment and galvanizing bold new responses to the turnaround challenge, we offer this report.
7
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
THE PROBLEM
Five percent or 5,000 of America’s one
hundred thousand public schools,
representing more than 2,500,000 students,
are on track to fall into the most extreme
federal designation for failure by 2009-10.
Many more schools will be placed in less extreme categories; in
some states, the percentage will significantly exceed 50%. But a
good portion of these schools will be so designated because of
lagging gains in one or more student subgroups, under the fed-
eral No Child Left Behind Act. These schools face challenges
that may be solved by fairly modest forms of assistance.
But the 1,100 schools already in Restructuring – the most
extreme designation – as well as those likely soon to reach
it represent a level of persistent failure that commands swift,
dramatic intervention.
Why Schools Fail
These schools fail because the challenges they face are
substantial; because they themselves are dysfunction-
al; and because the system of which they are a part
is not responsive to the needs of the high-poverty
student populations they tend to serve.
The school model our society provides to urban, high-poverty,
highly diverse student populations facing 21st-century skill
expectations is largely the same as that used throughout
American public education, a model unchanged from its origins
in the early 20th century. This highly challenged student demo-
graphic requires something significantly different – particularly
at the high school level.
Turnaround: A New Response
Standards, testing, and accountability enable us,
for the first time, to identify with conviction our
most chronically under-performing schools.
Turnaround is the emerging response to an entirely
new dynamic in public education: the threat of
closure for underperformance.
Dramatic change requires urgency and an atmosphere of crisis.
The indefensibly poor performance records at these schools –
compared to achievement outcomes at model schools serving
serving similar student populations (see The Benchmark, next
page) – should ignite exactly the public, policymaker, and profes-
sional outrage needed to justify dramatic action. If status-quo
thinking continues to shield the dysfunctions that afflict these
schools, there can be little hope for truly substantial reform
throughout the system. Turnaround schools, in other words, rep-
resent both our greatest challenge – and an opportunity for signif-
icant, enduring change that we cannot afford to pass up.
1. The Problem – and the Vision
2. The Challenge of Change 3. The Way Forward 1. The Problem – and the Vision
8
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
THE BOTTOM LINE
Turning around the “bottom five” percent of schools
is the crucible of education reform. They represent
our greatest, clearest need – and therefore a great
opportunity to bring about fundamental change.
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
For more information on the
magnitude and nature of the
turnaround challenge, see Part 1
of this report. For more on the
strategies and lessons offered by
high-performing, high-poverty
schools, see Part 2 and the
Supplemental Report.
The Benchmark
A small but growing number of high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools are demonstrating that differ-
ent approaches can bring highly challenged student
populations to high achievement.
How do they do it? Extensive analysis of HPHP school practice
and effective schools research revealed nine strategies that turn the
daily turbulence and challenges of high-poverty settings into
design factors that increase the effectiveness with which these
schools promote learning and achievement. These strategies
enable the schools to acknowledge and foster students’ Readiness
to Learn, enhance and focus staff’s Readiness to Teach, and expand
teachers’ and administrators’ Readiness to Act in dramatically dif-
ferent ways than more traditional schools. This dynamic “HPHP
Readiness Model” is represented in the graphic above.
A “New-World” Approach
As understanding of these Readiness elements grows, it becomes clear
that HPHP schools are not making the traditional model of education
work better; they are reinventing what schools do. We call this “New-
World” schooling, in contrast to the “Old-World” model – a linear,
curriculum-driven “conveyor belt” that students and schools try (with
little success in high-poverty settings) to keep up with.
The New-World model evokes instead the sense of a medical team
rallying to each student, backed by a whole system of skilled profes-
sionals, processes, and technologies organized and ready to analyze,
diagnose, and serve the goal of learning. The converging arrows
symbolizing this "New-World" model of education lie at the center of
the Readiness Triangle. What happens in classrooms between
teacher and student is the most critical moment in the delivery of the
education service. But the quality of that moment depends entirely
on the readiness of the system and the people who are part of it to
teach, learn, and act effectively and in accordance with the mission.
How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools Do It: The HPHP Readiness Model
FIGURE A
2. The Challenge of Change
WHAT’S BEEN TRIED
The research on turnaround of failing schools
reveals some scattered, individual successes,
but very little enduring progress at scale.
Most schools in Restructuring (the federal designation for
chronic under-performance) are like organisms that have built
immunities, over years of attempted intervention, to the “medi-
cine” of incremental reform. Low-expectation culture, reform-
fatigued faculty, high-percentage staff turnover, inadequate lead-
ership, and insufficient authority for fundamental change all
contribute to a general lack of success, nationally, in turning fail-
ing schools around and the near-total lack of success in conduct-
ing successful turnaround at scale.
Turnaround vs. “School Improvement”
Most of what’s applied to under-performing schools
today represents an incremental-change effort or an
incomplete attempt at wholesale change.
“Light-touch” efforts that redirect curriculum or provide leader-
ship coaching may help some average-performing schools
improve, but they are clearly not sufficient to produce successful
turnaround of chronically poor-performing schools. This is not
surprising, given that high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP)
schools have evolved such fundamentally different strategies to
achieve success, and that turnaround initiatives need additionally
to break through existing inertia.
Turnaround, as we are defining it here, is different from school
improvement because it focuses on the most consistently under-
performing schools and involves dramatic, transformative
change. Change that, in fact, is propelled by imperative: the
school must improve or it will be redefined or closed.
The Inadequate Response to Date
Our collective theory of change has been timid, com-
pared to the nature and magnitude of the need. Most
reform efforts focus on program change and limit
themselves to providing help. Some also allow for
changing people. A very few also focus on changing
conditions and incentives, especially the degree of lead-
ership authority over staff, time, and money.
Analysis of school intervention efforts to date confirms that they
are generally marked by:
Inadequate design: lack of ambition, comprehensiveness,
integration, and networking support
Inadequate capacity: fragmented training initiatives, instead
of an all-encompassing people strategy and strong, integrated
partnerships that support the mission
Inadequate incentive change: driven more by compliance
than buy-in
Inadequate political will: episodic and sometimes confusing
policy design; under-funding; and inconsistent political support
Focusing on program reform is safe. It produces little of the con-
troversy that the more systemic reforms (human resource man-
agement, governance, budget control) can spark. NCLB, despite
its intended objectives, has effectively endorsed and supported
risk-averse turnaround strategies through its open-ended fifth
option for schools entering Restructuring. The net result: little
track record nationally – and that mostly at the district level,
not the state – in comprehensive, system-focused, condition-
changing turnaround.
For more on responses to date, see Part 3, Appendix A, and the
Supplemental Report.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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2. The Challenge of Change 3. The Way Forward 1. The Problem – and the Vision
What Success Requires:
A “Zone” for Effective Turnaround
States and districts can engineer more effective turn-
around at scale by creating space that supports outside-
the-system approaches, focused inside the system.
The high-performing, high-poverty schools we studied tend to
reflect characteristics of highly entrepreneurial organizations.
That makes sense. These schools are succeeding either by working
outside of traditional public education structures (charters); or by
working around those structures, internally (in-district charter-
likes); or by operating exceptionally well against the system – with
emphasis on exceptionally. Lessons from these schools indicate a
need for the following elements in any school turnaround effort –
all of which reflect characteristics that are not norms, broadly
speaking, of traditional inside-the-system public schooling:
Clearly defined authority to act based on what’s best for chil-
dren and learning – i.e., flexibility and control over staffing,
scheduling, budget, and curriculum
Relentless focus on hiring and staff development as part of an
overall “people strategy” to ensure the best possible teaching force
Highly capable, distributed school leadership – i.e., not sim-
ply the principal, but an effective leadership team
Additional time in the school day and across the school year
Performance-based behavioral expectations for all stakehold-
ers including teachers, students, and (often) parents
Integrated, research-based programs and related social services
that are specifically designed, personalized, and adjusted to
address students’ academic and related psycho-social needs
A handful of major school districts – Chicago, Miami-Dade, New
York City, Philadelphia – are experimenting with turnaround zones in
an effort to establish protected space for these kinds of approaches.
(See graphic at right.) The opportunity for states is to create this kind
of protected space for turnarounds on behalf of all school districts.
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Applying Outside-the-System Approaches,
Focused Inside the System
11
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE B
Building the Turnaround Model:
In order to enable school-level reform that incorporates the three “readiness” dimensions of
high-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – either
within or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibit
reform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a framework
of strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.
3. The Way Forward
A CALL TO ACTION FOR STATES
Effective turnaround at scale calls for bold,
comprehensive action from the state, working
together with districts and outside partners.
State governments must take strong action – even in strong local-
control states. They must act in concert with districts and out-
side providers. With rare exceptions, schools and districts –
essentially risk-averse, conservative cultures – will not undertake
the dramatic changes required for successful turnaround on their
own. But while states may have the responsibility to ensure equi-
table intervention across district lines, they clearly do not have
the capacity to implement turnaround on the ground at the scale
of the need. Their role is to require fundamental, not incremen-
tal change; establish operating conditions that support, rather
than undermine, the desired changes; add new capacity in high-
leverage school and district roles and establish turnaround part-
ners; and galvanize local capacity where it is currently trapped in
dysfunctional settings.
The Three ‘C’s of Turnaround at Scale
Our research suggests that a coherent, comprehensive
state turnaround initiative would incorporate three
key elements: Changing Conditions, Building
Capacity, and Clustering for Support.
Changing Conditions
Turnaround requires protected space that dismantles common
barriers to reform. Chronically under-performing schools offer a
politically defensible opportunity to create such a space. A few
entrepreneurial school districts (Chicago, Miami-Dade, New
York) have created such condition-changing zones or “carve-outs”
for their neediest schools. But others (Philadelphia, Oakland) have
needed intervention from the state to mount similar initiatives.
States should pass regulations (as Massachusetts has) or legislation
(as Maryland has) that produce sufficient leverage for all district
leaders to create the protected space they need for turnaround to
be effective. The best regulations change the incentives for local
stakeholders, motivating the development of turnaround zones in
order to gain their advantages – while avoiding “final option”
alternatives that would diminish district and union control.
The condition changes needed for turnaround zones can be con-
troversial. But turnaround leaders clearly must have the authori-
ty to act. That means a collaborative revision of many contractu-
al requirements in districts with unions. Districts, working with
turnaround partners and the state, must be able to install new
principals if needed; principals must in turn have control over
who is working in their buildings, along with the allocation of
money, time, and programming (including curriculum and part-
nerships with social services). Schools must be freed to take on
professional norms, including differentiated roles for teachers
and differentiated compensation. Decision-making must be freed
so that it revolves around the needs of children, not adults. At
the same time, each turnaround school cannot be expected to
design and manage its own change process; its latitude for deci-
sion-making lies within a framework of strong network support
and turnaround design parameters established by the state, and
carried out by districts and/or turnaround partners.
Building Capacity
Organizational turnaround in non-education-related fields
requires special expertise; school turnaround is no different. It is
a two-stage process that calls for fundamental transformation at
the start, managed by educators with the necessary training and
disposition, with steady, capacity-building improvement to fol-
low. Neither schools and districts, nor states, nor third-party
providers have sufficient capacity at present to undertake success-
ful turnaround at scale. Building that capacity for effective turn-
around – both inside of schools and among outside partners –
12
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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3. The Way Forward 2. The Challenge of Change 1. The Problem – and the Vision
must be the state’s responsibility, as school districts lack the
means and expertise to do so on their own. Moreover: turn-
around represents an opportunity to redesign the ways schools
work with outside partners. The fragmentation that characterizes
current school/provider relationships needs to be replaced by an
integrated approach that aligns outside support around the turn-
around plan, organized by a single “systems integrator” partner.
Clustering for Support
Turnaround has meaningful impact at the level of the school build-
ing, but turnaround at scale cannot be accomplished in ones and
twos. States and districts should undertake turnaround in clusters
organized around identified needs: by school type (e.g., middle
schools or grade 6-12 academies), student characteristics (very high
ELL percentages), feeder patterns (elementary to middle to high
school), or region. Clusters should be small enough to operate
effectively as networks, but large enough to be an enterprise – i.e.,
to provide valuable, efficient support from the network center.
The Political Realities: Enabling the State Role
Turnaround of failing local schools has no natural constituency.
Coalitions of support must instead be built at two levels –
statewide and community-wide. To ensure sustained and suffi-
cient statewide commitment to turnaround reforms and invest-
ments, someone (governor, commissioner, business/community
leader) or some agency must create an advocacy coalition of
political, education, corporate, foundation, university, and non-
profit leaders. To ensure broad commitment to turnaround at
the community level, states can blend the leverage of accounta-
bility-based sanctions (you risk losing authority over this school
if you fail to act) with the “carrot” of resources and condition-
change. Finally: to design and implement turnaround effectively,
states must create an appropriate coordinating body or mecha-
nism to lead the work, ideally as a public/private agency linked
to the state department of education.
For more on the three ‘C’s and the state role, see Parts 3 and 4 of
this report, along with the proposed Framework in Part 5.
13
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE C
From Fragmented Improvement Projects
to Integrated Turnaround Strategies
T
he goal of this study was to pro-
duce recommendations for states
and school districts seeking a flexible,
systematic approach to swift and signif-
icant transformation in schools (partic-
ularly high schools) deemed chronically
under-performing under No Child Left
Behind or state accountability systems.
Our research leads us to believe that
turnaround of this kind is achievable,
and furthermore, has the potential to
open the door to more widespread dra-
matic education reform.
Transformation of this kind is, how-
ever, untested and unfamiliar territory
in school reform. There is no real
precedent for the threat of closure
due to under-performance – a new
concept in public education. There is
no clear consensus as to the distinc-
tions between turnaround, takeover,
restructuring, reconstitution, and
redesign. Finally, there is no blue-
print: despite the nation’s longstand-
ing struggle and angst over failing
schools, there is simply no consistent,
reliable, and enduring track record of
turnaround success at the district or
state level anywhere in the country.
Accordingly, the study was designed
not only to learn as much as possible
from past and current reform efforts,
but to broaden the analysis by looking
at specific root causes and at those
rare schools that defy the odds in
addressing them. This included:
• Researching the nature of under-
performance in schools serving dis-
advantaged, high-poverty enroll-
ments (which represent the bulk of
failing schools);
• Examining the well-documented
practices of individual high-per-
forming schools serving these
enrollments and distilling the strate-
gies they use to achieve their results;
• Analyzing a wide spectrum of
scaled-up school intervention, from
those simply providing guidance
and added capacity to more exten-
sive initiatives involving staff or
principal replacement,
closure/reopening, and the establish-
ment of special turnaround “zones”
with altered operating conditions;
• Isolating the key elements, intensity,
duration, resources, and funding
required for turnaround of under-
performing schools to take root; and
• Developing a framework for state
policymakers and school district
leaders to use in developing the sys-
tems, approaches, expanded capaci-
ty, and resource levels required to
bring about dramatic transforma-
tion in struggling schools.
For more on our research methodolo-
gy, see the facing page.
Tools for Practical Use
The project has produced several dif-
ferent tools for your use. They include:
• Main report: This summary of our
major findings, conclusions, and
recommendations, divided into
five Parts and Appendices A and B.
• Supplemental report: Additional
support for the most important
points made in the main report,
along with profiles of ten represen-
tative state intervention initiatives
and four district efforts, with arti-
facts and resources from several of
those initiatives. Available in print
and at www.massinsight.org.
• Downloadable presentations and
resources: Also available at
www.massinsight.org are presenta-
tion decks you may download and
customize to make the case for
coherent, well-supported turn-
around action in your state or dis-
trict. In addition, our website
offers a directory of available turn-
around resources which we will be
continually updating.
1.1 The Challenge of School Turnaround
How this report works, and what you can get out of it
1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround
Part 1 examines:
1.1 The Challenge of School
Turnaround
How this report works, and what
you can get out of it
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature
of the Turnaround Challenge
Many schools need assistance. The
bottom 5 percent need much,
much more
1.3 A Turning Point for
Turnaround – and an Entry
Point for Real Reform?
Failing schools offer a chance to do
things differently. Will we take it?
P A R T 1
14
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
15
Research Methodology
This Project Map presents the research
questions at the core of this project and the
organization of our answers in this report.
Research methods across a year’s worth of
information-gathering included the following:
• Literature analysis: More than 300
research reports, news articles, and other
resources on school intervention, related
federal and state policymaking, effective
schools, poverty impacts, change manage-
ment, and organizational turnaround
• Individual and group interviews with
practitioners, researchers, leading policy-
makers, and reform experts in more than
a dozen states
• Extensive interviews with directors
of school intervention in six major urban
districts and with 50 school management
and/or support organizations, through
a related research project supported by
the NewSchools Venture Fund
• Review of the report’s major findings
and recommendations by more than
two dozen national reform leaders and
project partners (see Acknowledgements
in the Introductory Material section of
the report)
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 1A
Research Investigations Report Elements
Map of The Turnaround Challenge
Part 1: The Challenge of School Turnaround
Understanding the nature and scale of the nation's
turnaround challenge; the reasons for hope; and the
present opportunity to make the practice of school
turnaround a model for change in public education
Part 2: How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
Three dimensions – Readiness to Learn,
Readiness to Teach, Readiness to Act –
in which exemplary high-poverty schools
excel, and what we should learn from them
Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Odds
for Turnaround Schools (See also: Appendix A)
Key lessons from existing, inadequate
restructuring efforts, resulting in a focus
on three critical elements of turnaround
design: conditions, capacity, and clustering.
Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
Why NCLB has failed to catalyze effective,
high-impact intervention strategies; how state
leaders can marshal the support required to
implement comprehensive turnaround
Part 5: A Framework for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
The core elements of a suggested
statewide framework for effective
turnaround at scale
1.1
1.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge
Many schools need assistance. The bottom five percent need much, much more.
T
he challenge for states and dis-
tricts seeking to turn around
chronically under-performing schools
is one of scale and of strategy, having
to do with the nature of these schools,
their students, and the systems of
which they are a part. The difficulty of
the challenge is reflected in the inade-
quacy of existing reform efforts,
proved by the lack of any sustained,
demonstrated success.
Number of Failing Schools
Rising Sharply
In 2005, the latest year for which
complete data are available, more
than 12,000 schools nationally (out of
roughly 100,000) fell into NCLB’s “In
Need of Improvement” category.
Some of these schools narrowly
missed their targets for a single year;
others missed the mark within just
one demographic subgroup (for
example, Latino students or pupils in
Special Education). Both the number
and the percentage are rising annual-
ly, and in all likelihood will continue
to do so as NCLB’s achievement tar-
gets rise towards the proficiency-for-
all goal in 2014.
This flood of schools labeled under-
performing has stirred concern across
the landscape of American public
education. Most relevant to our pur-
poses here: the concern that the ever-
increasing number and percentage of
schools falling into the NCLB watch-
lists are masking a deeper crisis in a
smaller set of schools – those in which
a large proportion of students have
failed to meet state standards for mul-
tiple years in a row.
These are not schools that have been
labeled “low performing” because of
issues with a single student sub-
group. These are schools that any
reasonable observer would agree are
chronically failing to provide their
students with an adequate education.
While states can establish different
definitions of “chronic failure,” such
as 50% of students failing for two or
more years in a row, the schools in
question are schools in which per-
formance has been so low for so long
that they would fall within practically
any definition of chronic failure a
state could devise.
Although inexact, projections of
schools identified for Restructuring,
the ultimate NCLB school-perform-
ance category, provide some estimate
of the number of these chronically
under-performing schools. As Figure
1B shows, if current trends persist,
some 5,000 public schools – about five
percent of all public schools national-
ly – will be in Restructuring by 2009-
10 as a result of failing to make
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for
multiple years.
The Roots of School Failure
These schools fail because the chal-
lenges they face are substantial;
because they themselves are dysfunc-
tional; and because the system of
2005-2006 2006-2007
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Nearly 5,000 Schools Are Projected to Be in Restructuring by 2010
FIGURE 1B
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010
600
1,100
1,900
3,300
4,900
Projections are based on actual 2005-2006 data for schools in Restructuring Status under
NCLB with the assumption that the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constant
over the next four years. Source of 2005-06 data: Center on Education Policy (2006).
The schools in question are schools in which performance
has been so low for so long that they would fall within
practically any definition of chronic failure a state could devise.
1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works
16
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
17
which they are a part is not responsive
to the needs of the high-poverty stu-
dent populations they tend to serve.
This report will discuss all of these
issues, but we begin with the first
and the third. Failing schools serve
mostly poor children. As charts from
eight states on page 27 amply
demonstrate, there is a strong corre-
lation between the family income
characteristics of schools and their
achievement outcomes. That’s not
news. What’s noteworthy about those
charts is the message they send about
the power of some high-poverty
schools to make big differences in
student achievement – and the joint
failure of public education and public
policy to adopt and extend what’s
working in those schools.
Poor children arrive at the school-
house door with deep learning
deficits. The neuroscience of disad-
vantage is clear: By age 3, children
born in poverty have acquired, on
average, only half the vocabulary of
their higher-income counterparts.
(Hart and Risley, 2003) By kinder-
garten, there is a significant deficit in
reading. (NCES, 2005) Being poor far
outweighs race/ethnicity, family struc-
ture, and other factors as causes of
cognitive disadvantage. (Lee and
Burkam, 2002)
Far from mitigating the achievement
gap, the experience of most children
in our public schools appears to
exacerbate it. As indicated in Figure
1C, by grade 4 children eligible for
free or reduced-priced lunch trail
their counterparts by two to three
grade levels in reading – the essential
skill for future learning. (NCES,
2005) By the time they reach grade
12, if they do so at all, poor and
minority students are about four
years behind other students in read-
ing. (Haycock et al, 2001)
As we will explore in Part 2, a child’s
economic circumstances are far from
the only factors inhibiting achieve-
ment in high-poverty schools. The
various risk factors have been well-
documented: higher absenteeism and
behavioral challenges, lower parent
involvement and different parenting
style, higher student migration and
teacher turnover rates, school budget
inequities, higher percentages of new
and under-prepared teachers, and a
prevailing culture of low expectations
for achievement, among others.
Furthermore, our poor and minority
students are highly concentrated in
high-poverty schools, and our minori-
ty and immigrant child populations
are soaring. (Fix and Passel, 2003)
Our failure, as a society, to interrupt
low achievement patterns in high-
poverty schools has significant conse-
quences not only for the children
involved, but also for society in gener-
al (see box, page 19).
Poverty Has an Early and Continuing
Impact on Achievement
FIGURE 1C
Being poor far outweighs
race/ethnicity, family
structure, and other
factors as causes of
cognitive disadvantage.
These schools fail because the challenges they face are
substantial; because they themselves are dysfunctional; and
because the system of which they are a part is not responsive
to the needs of the high-poverty student populations they
tend to serve.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
1.2
18
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge
(continued)
The Inadequacy
of Current Intervention
Given the nature and complexity of
these root causes for under-perform-
ance, it should not be too surprising
that existing, fairly marginal reform
efforts have generally failed to turn the
schools around. These are schools that
continue to fail students at rates that
are double their state averages, and
quadruple (or more) the failure rates
at the highest-performing schools
serving similar student populations.
For a variety of reasons, “first-genera-
tion” interventions – those prompted
since the crystallization of the higher-
standards movement in the early
1990s – have left these schools seem-
ingly untouched. Their achievement
rates are static. Their failure is com-
pounded, with interest, when their
graduates enter middle school or high
school or the workplace with skill sets
that are breathtakingly insufficient for
the new challenges they face.
Wasn’t standards-based reform sup-
posed to change all of this?
The answer is yes – or rather, yes-but.
The “but” in this context has to do
with the nature of public policy,
which tends to be long on the rhetoric
of immediacy but short on actions
that fundamentally alter the status
quo. And nowhere is that tendency
stronger than in education-related
public policy.
The standards movement, codified
nationally in 2002 with the passage of
No Child Left Behind, was and
remains today an effort billed as a
challenge to the status quo. NCLB and
the many partially overlapping state
accountability systems set in place
over the past decade have brought the
challenge of chronically under-per-
forming schools squarely into the pub-
lic limelight. Spurred in part by a kind
of sports-pages fascination with rank-
ings and lists, newspapers and other
media have enthusiastically embraced
the school-performance ratings
released by state education agencies,
splashing them with gusto across their
front pages. Lawmakers and policy-
makers across the country have initiat-
ed waves of regulation in response to
the (often) bad news in the rankings.
The new regulations have advanced a
number of different dimensions of
standards-based reform, including the
determination of the performance
standards themselves, performance
measurement in the form of testing,
and accountability systems designed to
categorize struggling schools. (See
Figure 1D, A “Pacing Guide” to
Standards-Based Reform.)
At the end of that line of standards-
based public policy initiatives comes
“intervention.” And there, public poli-
cy both nationally and in state capitals
across the country has mostly blinked.
Compared to the scale and immediacy
of the need, failing-school interven-
tion policy and the actions it has pre-
cipitated over the past decade can be
characterized this way: Ready... aim…
aim... aim… … aim some more….
A “Pacing Guide” to Standards-Based Reform:
At the End of the Sequence Is Intervention in Failing Schools
1. GOALS Establish clear standards for achievement
2. SUPPORT Provide resources, training, tools, funding
3. ACCOUNTABILITY At every level – districts, schools, students
4. ASSESSMENT High quality, matched with standards, and ensuring fairness
5. INTERVENTION First: support for struggling students
Second: turnaround for struggling schools
Intervention into struggling schools and districts is the least-
developed and least-understood dimension of the nation’s
standards-based reform movement.
Compared to the scale and immediacy of the need, failing-
school intervention policy and the actions it has precipitated
over the past decade can be characterized this way: Ready...
aim… aim... aim… … aim some more….
1.2 The Nature of the Challenge 1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works
FIGURE 1D
19
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
The seven-year timeline, presented in
the Call to Action on page 7 of this
report, for Massachusetts’ response to
the first school to nudge its way into
the state’s Chronically Under-
Performing category is, unfortunately,
far too typical. Intervention into
struggling schools and districts is the
least-developed and least-understood
dimension of the nation’s standards-
based reform movement.
Indeed our analysis of state and dis-
trict intervention efforts (presented in
Part 3 and in detail in Appendix A
and the Supplemental Report) con-
firmed that the vast majority of these
efforts suffer from inadequate design,
stop well short of the comprehensive-
ness of change required, fail to pro-
vide the support that schools require,
and lack the comprehensive “people”
strategies needed to accompany dra-
matic change. School intervention has
been consistently under-funded and
provided with inconsistent political
support. While most involve only
changes in programs, some also
include changes in people; only a
handful address changes in conditions
that would allow the kind of
approaches used by high-performing,
high-poverty schools.
Nonetheless: it appears to us that the
time for more dramatic intervention
has come. Ironically, in making visi-
ble the indefensibility of the status
quo, failing schools’ well-documented
and chronic under-performance may
turn out to be the critical trigger for
effective reform.
Why It Matters
When Public Schools Consistently Fail the Children They Serve
It is difficult to overstate the importance of solving the challenge of chronically
under-performing schools. Within two years, schools in NCLB’s Restructuring cat-
egory will represent more than one million students nationally. Many of these
students will move to the next level without developing foundational skills that
are essential for success, particularly considering the higher-level capabilities
increasingly demanded by the knowledge economy. Many are destined to join
the ranks of high school dropouts, documented most recently in The Silent
Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts (Bridgeland et al, 2006), never
obtaining the high school diploma that is a critical, though increasingly insuffi-
cient, key to economic success. In six of the nine largest school districts in the
U.S., graduation rates are below 50%, and none of the nine has a rate higher
than 55%. (Swanson, 2004)
The statistics are even more dire for students from low-income families and stu-
dents of color, whose rates of achievement, graduation, and post-secondary com-
pletion are far lower than those of their peers. (Perie et al, 2005; Swanson, 2004;
Carey, 2005; and Part 2 of this report)
Economists and educational researchers have argued persuasively that a decent
middle class wage requires at a minimum a high school education that equips
people to pursue post-secondary education successfully. (Murnane & Levy, 1996)
The consequences of poor education ripple through society in the form of higher
crime rates, higher costs of public assistance, and lower tax revenues. No com-
munity can thrive when many of its public schools consistently and thoroughly
fail the children they serve, and our democracy suffers when so many of our citi-
zens are not equipped to participate meaningfully in civic life.
High school dropouts:
• Earn $9,200 less per year, on average, than high school graduates.
• Are three times more likely to be unemployed than college graduates.
• Are twice as likely as high school graduates to enter poverty from one year
to the next.
• Are eight times as likely to be in prison as high school graduates.
• Collectively represent a loss of about 1.6 percent of the gross domestic
product each year.
Sources: Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, The Silent Epidemic (2006); Rouse, Social Costs of Inadequate
Education Symposium, Columbia Teachers College (2005)
Ironically, in making visible the indefensibility of the status quo,
failing schools’ well-documented and chronic under-perform-
ance may turn out to be a critical lever for effective reform.
1.2
20
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround – and an Entry Point for Real Reform?
Failing schools offer a chance to do things differently. Will we take it?
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge
O
n a cloudy, atypically chilly day
last November in Washington,
DC, more than a hundred education
reform leaders from across the country
crowded into a conference convened
by the American Enterprise Institute
and the Fordham Foundation. One
after another, panels of experts – edu-
cators, researchers, public officials,
foundation leaders – took center-stage
and decried the lack of progress being
made under President Bush’s No Child
Left Behind Act in turning around
achievement in the nation’s poorest-
performing schools.
“This was a roomful of the country’s
biggest champions of standards-based
reform,” said one participant after the
conference concluded, “reflecting on
NCLB’s impact on our neediest
schools, five years after its enactment.
And I can tell you it was a relentlessly
discouraging day.”
It’s easy to be dismayed by the results
of the nation’s most vigorous effort
ever to significantly raise achievement
among all public school students.
Reading and math scores on the
National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) have nudged
upwards, but not so much as to
inspire optimism that NCLB’s goal of
proficiency for all by 2014 is even
remotely within reach. (See Figure
1E.) For the 2005-6 school year, more
than one-quarter of the nation’s
schools failed to make Adequate
Yearly Progress; a total of 29 states
saw an increase that year in the num-
ber of schools not making AYP. And
the results to date of state and district
efforts to turn around chronically
under-performing schools, spurred by
NCLB’s accountability requirements
and “toolbox” of restructuring
options, is inconclusive at best and
substantially disappointing at worst.
And yet.
And yet our research over the past
eighteen months has convinced us
that a confluence of factors has creat-
ed a window of opportunity for much
more dramatic approaches to school
reform, focused (at least at first) on
the bottom five percent of schools.
These factors include:
• The promise of high-performing,
high-poverty school success
• A new generation of comprehen-
sive intervention strategies by a few
major urban districts on behalf of
their struggling schools
• The growing sense of urgency and
acceptance that in these schools,
the status quo is indefensible and
everything has to be on the table.
The Promise of High-Performing,
High-Poverty Schools
It’s a primary benefit of standards-
based reform: our ability to identify
with confidence schools that demon-
strably outperform their peers. It’s what
gives ballast to two truisms of modern-
day school reform: no excuses and all
kids can learn. We all know the pattern:
virtually all of the worst-performing
schools serve high-poverty enrollments.
Yet in every state, some high-poverty
schools perform significantly better
than others, and a few perform nearly
as well as schools serving much more
affluent student populations.
Can good schools, by themselves,
break the cycle of diminished expecta-
tions and quality of life that rules in
impoverished neighborhoods – or do
poverty and its related issues need to
be addressed first? The answer, we
will argue over the course of this
report, is that the two are inextricably
linked, and that success lies in creat-
ing good schools that are also well-
tuned to the nature and needs of
high-poverty student enrollments.
Some inner-city schools are already
demonstrating this, creating new
models designed specifically to meet
the needs of this student population.
As Paul Tough (2006) wrote in a New
York Times Sunday Magazine cover
story that appeared the same week as
the conference in Washington DC,
“The divisions between black and
white and rich and poor begin almost
at birth, and they are reinforced every
day of a child’s life.” But, he contin-
ued: “A loose coalition of schools, all
A small number of high-performing, high-poverty schools are
demonstrating that different approaches can bring highly
challenged student populations to high achievement.
21
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
of them quite new… provide
evidence that… the achievement gap
can be overcome, in a convincing
way, for large numbers of poor and
minority students, not in generations
but in years.”
While effective school practice
research stretches back 30 years, the
high-poverty school (and especially,
high-poverty high school) that has
turned chronic under-performance
into consistent high achievement is
exceedingly rare. Still, there is strong
evidence to conclude that a small
number of high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools are bringing
highly challenged student populations
to high achievement. A number of
these schools operate outside of tradi-
tional school district structures (as
charters or as in-district charter-likes)
– and the others tend to be led by
strong, entrepreneurial principals
whose vision and effectiveness aren’t
constrained by public education’s
conventions and embedded organiza-
tional challenges. They produce stu-
dent achievement outcomes that vast-
ly exceed urban norms.
Educators and reformers have long
used effective-practice research as a
basis for school improvement pro-
grams. But in Part 2 of this report, we
argue that most of this work has taken
place within a fairly narrow band,
focused on technical solutions involv-
ing curriculum, data analysis, and
staff development. Important work –
but insufficient by itself. HPHP
schools are able to generate such high
achievement because they confront, in
specific, comprehensive, on-going
ways, the systemic effects of poverty
on their students’ learning. In Part 2
of this report we extract the essential
methods and strategies they use to do
this – a tailored set of effective prac-
tices we distill in the “HPHP
Readiness Model,” and which consti-
tute a de facto set of design factors for
school turnaround. Taken together,
they illustrate, as Tough noted in his
New York Times article, “the magni-
tude of the effort that will be required
for that change to take place.”
The Promise of District Experiments
in Comprehensive Intervention
The HPHP Readiness model requires
some fundamental changes in the
operating conditions of turnaround
schools – how much authority, for
example, principals and turnaround
leaders have in shaping and working
with their school’s teaching staff. A
handful of major districts – Chicago,
Philadelphia, New York, Miami-Dade
– have begun to experiment over the
past couple of years with more com-
prehensive forms of intervention that
incorporate such thinking. These ini-
tiatives variously provide:
• Authority to turnaround leaders
to make choices about allocating
resources – people, time, money –
in support of the plan
“When educators do succeed at educating poor minority stu-
dents up to national standards of proficiency, they invariably
use methods that are radically different and more intensive
than those employed in most American public schools.”
– Paul Tough, The New York Times
500
300
290
280
270
0
’92 ’94 ’98 ’02 ’05
FIGURE 1E
What Marginal Change Has Wrought: Static Achievement Since 1992
Trend in 12th-grade average NAEP reading scores
Souce: U.S. Department of Education, 2007
Accommodations not permitted
Accommodations permitted
1.3
22
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Turning Point for Turnaround
(continued)
1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround 1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge
• Waivers of some collective bar-
gaining requirements and work
rules, collaboratively developed
with teachers’ unions
• Resources to compensate staff
according to professional norms (i.e.,
for extra responsibility, duty in high-
need areas, or for performance)
• Resources for additional time in
the school day and/or school year
• Extensive outside assistance from
providers and intermediary organ-
izations, often supported by foun-
dation grants.
It is too soon to tell whether these ini-
tiatives (detailed in Appendix A and
the Supplemental Report) will pro-
duce exemplary results. But it’s clear
that they come far closer to providing
an environment conducive to HPHP
Readiness-style strategies than the
more common, traditional forms of
incremental intervention have done.
The Promise of Growing Urgency
Regarding Failing Schools
The accountability timetable set in
motion by No Child Left Behind has
now delivered us to the doorstep of
intervention. We are at the end of a
line of public policy dominos set in
motion by a commitment to higher
academic standards – achievement
goals, resource supports, accountabili-
ty, and assessment. (See the stan-
dards-based reform “Pacing Guide” in
Figure 1D on page 18.)
But NCLB and state accountability
systems are only two of the factors
fueling a growing sense of urgency to
address the nation’s chronically
under-performing schools. Dim com-
parisons of American achievement to
that of students in most other coun-
tries and fears connected to the out-
sourcing of American jobs, among
other developments, have been wake-
up calls for federal and state policy-
makers on the critical importance of
educational attainment to society.
At the same time, awareness of the
HPHP schools, variously called
“Dispelling the Myth schools,”
“Vanguard” schools, “90-90-90”
schools or any number of other
monikers, is undercutting the long-
held dogma of education-by-zip-
code. “The evidence,” as Tough
(2006) concludes in his New York
Times story, “is becoming difficult to
ignore: When educators do succeed
at educating poor minority students
up to national standards of proficien-
cy, they invariably use methods that
are radically different and more
intensive than those employed in
most American public schools. So as
the No Child Left Behind law comes
up for reauthorization, Americans are
facing an increasingly stark choice:
is the nation really committed to
guaranteeing that all of the country’s
students will succeed to the same
high level? And if so, how hard are
we willing to work, and what
resources are we willing to commit,
to achieve that goal?”
Turnaround of America's poorest-
performing schools represents an
opportunity to take up Tough's chal-
lenge, to use these schools as a gate-
way towards the "radically different,"
"more intensive" methods so visible
in high-performing, high-poverty
schools. (See chart, facing page.)
The Turnaround Challenge offers
analysis and a framework to guide
that work. The first step in defining
the turnaround solution is to extract
the “DNA” from the HPHP schools
that already bring under-performing
students up to high standards. This is
where we turn next.
In the challenge represented by America’s most poorly
performing schools lies an opportunity for dramatic,
accessible, and achievable change.
23
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Educators and reformers aiming for fundamental, not incremental, change in public
schooling have essentially three avenues: replacing the entire public education system
with a new one, reforming that system from within, or circumventing the system with
work-around schools (otherwise known as charters). Chronically under-performing schools
and the comprehensive turnaround strategies presented in this report provide entry points,
in different ways, to all three forms of fundamental change. (See chart above.)
Replace the State Management System: Redesign of the entire state-managed
public education system in the United States was the recommendation of the New
Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce in its recently released report,
Tough Choices or Tough Times. Radical changes of the nature recommended by the
Commission – eliminating the school district as we know it now, making states the
employers of teachers, creating K-10 “common schools” that send graduates to upper
secondary or voc-tech academies – would require a vast rethinking of the current sys-
tem and enormous rearrangement of resources, people, and organizational structures.
While acknowledging that these recommendations merit close consideration, The
Turnaround Challenge suggests that the crisis in America’s most poorly performing
schools provides an even more urgent and a more accessible opportunity for dramatic
and achievable change. Urgent and accessible because the standards movement has
provided incontrovertible evidence of these schools’ failure; dramatic because that is
clearly what’s needed to turn these schools around; and achievable because other
schools are proving that similar student populations can produce exemplary results.
We propose in this report a call to arms that is located squarely in the here and now –
but could lead to broader application of fundamental change.
Reform the District Management System: School districts, particularly large urban
districts, have proved to be difficult organizations to reform. But virtually all urban dis-
tricts are under intense pressure to intervene in growing numbers of under-performing
schools. The “zone” strategies now being undertaken in some districts, and recom-
mended in this report, provide the opportunity for a fresh-start proving ground, a
chance for districts and external partners to essentially reinvent the district model
from within.
Create New-Design Schools: “Charterizing” failing schools, meanwhile, is one of
NCLB’s options for schools entering its Restructuring category of under-performance –
albeit not an option that has been selected very often. The charter-related entry point
of more relevance here is the adoption of charter-like rules and authorities for schools
within a district’s turnaround zone. Such a zone thus could become the long-awaited
vehicle for public schools to adapt what appears to work in high-performing charters.
FIGURE 1F
* 2007 Report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
Turnaround Offers an Entry Point to System-Changing Reforms
1.3
A
s ecologists are quick to empha-
size, organisms can be under-
stood only in relation to their envi-
ronments. So it is for high-perform-
ing, high-poverty schools: common
“high-performance” mantras like high
expectations, all children can learn, no
excuses, or for that matter, no child
left behind may signal important val-
ues but do little to illuminate the chal-
lenging circumstances of high-poverty
school environments or the methods
and strategies that HPHP schools
employ in meeting them. (Haberman,
1999; Thomas & Bainbridge, 2001)
Fortunately, as reform researcher
Ronald Brady (2003) points out,
HPHP schools “are a phenomenon of
sufficient import to receive significant
scholarly attention.” (For our detailed
analysis of this, see Part 2.4.)
In addition, emerging research from
a variety of fields is rapidly reshaping
our knowledge of high-poverty
school ecology and why HPHP prac-
tices are successful:
• Researchers studying national
databases of school achievement
data, indexed with school poverty
and minority attributes, are
unlocking the black box of school
performance and describing suc-
cess patterns that are reshaping
education reform as well as teach-
ing. (The Education Trust, 2005a;
Reeves, 2003; National Center for
Educational Accountability/Just for
the Kids, 2006)
• Child poverty researchers are pin-
pointing how a multitude of factors
associated with socioeconomic sta-
tus (SES) affect a child from birth to
adulthood, concluding among
many findings that even relatively
minor mitigations can translate into
meaningful improvement in student
achievement. (Berliner, 2006;
Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997)
• Cognitive scientists report that
“there is a gulf between low and
middle SES children in their per-
formance on just about every test
of cognitive development” (Farah
et al, 2006), with sweeping implica-
tions for early childhood and edu-
cation policy, but also illuminating
key causal mechanisms that might
aid remediation.
• Developmental psychologists have
begun to focus “on the factors that
enable at-risk students to ‘beat the
odds’ against achieving academic
success. Borrowing primarily from
the field of developmental psy-
chopathology, a growing body of
educational research has identified
individual attributes that promote
academic resiliency.” (Borman &
Rachuba, 2001)
Also augmenting and informing
HPHP research are studies of urban
principals (Orr et al, 2005), the
importance and dynamics of achiev-
ing teacher quality (Ingersoll, 2004;
Policy Studies Associates, 2005), the
linkage between student engagement
and academic achievement (Finn &
Owings, 2006), and the importance
for poor students of close adult rela-
tionships and positive role models.
(Shear et al, 2005; The Education
Trust, 2005; Brooks-Gunn et al, 1993)
For this report, our research team
surveyed the voluminous research
literature, analyzed the most promi-
nent studies, and drew deeply on
Mass Insight’s own Building Blocks
effective-practice research
(www.buildingblocks.org), which we
have conducted since 2001. (For the
full analysis, see the Supplemental
Report.)
2.1 How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
Ignite Learning Under Adverse Conditions
Understanding the DNA we must replicate at scale
Part 2 examines:
2.1 How High-Performing, High-
Poverty Schools Ignite
Learning Under Adverse
Conditions
Understanding the DNA we must
replicate at scale
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing
Schools Serve Mostly Poor
Children
But: so do some successful schools,
proving that school quality can
overcome zip code
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm”
Impact on Learning
Understanding the deficits is a pre-
requisite to designing the solutions
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve
Their Results: The Readiness
Model
Nine interlocking elements of
schools that serve challenged
students well
2.5 Applying the Lessons
of HPHP Schools
Change begins with the courage
to break patterns
P A R T 2
24
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model
25
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
We were persuaded by the research of
three points:
1
The ecology of high-poverty
schools is inherently much more
unpredictable, variable, and irregular
than that of low-poverty schools. This
turbulence is foundational: lying below
symptoms like poor teaching and stu-
dent misbehavior, it reflects the vastly
disparate backgrounds and prepared-
ness of students; personal and family
crises; the churn of students and staff
entering and exiting individual
schools; and the shortage of family and
community supports. Students and
staff in high-poverty schools face more
curveballs in a week than their col-
leagues in low-poverty schools see in
a year. Accounting for this turbulence
in academic and organizational design,
as well as in operations and training,
is a prerequisite to successful schools.
2
Our most common approaches do
not help, and in fact sometimes
do harm. Not only is our traditional
model of public education largely
unable to cope with unpredictability
and turbulence that disrupts its
reliance on grade-by-grade advance-
ment, but in addition, common tech-
niques of teaching, testing, and disci-
plining frequently “introduce
additional stressors and adversities
that place [poor] students at even
greater risk of academic failure.”
(Borman & Rachuba, 2001)
3
It seems clear that what we are
observing in the phenomenon of
HPHP schools is the evolution of a
new species. Largely through on-the-
scene improvisation and innovation,
HPHP schools have morphed into
highly adaptable organizations whose
staff are expert at igniting learning for
each child in spite of the surrounding
turbulence. They mitigate the adverse
conditions of poverty and overcome
the unpredictable changes and crises
that sink other high-poverty schools,
not by making the traditional model of
education work better; instead, they
are, in essence, reinventing what
schools do.
When students enroll in one of these
schools, they are often several grade
levels behind. As Paul Tough (2006)
observed: “Usually they have missed
out on many of the millions of every-
day intellectual and emotional stimuli
that their better-off peers have been
exposed to since birth. They are, edu-
cationally speaking, in deep trouble.
The schools reject the notion that all
that these struggling students need are
high expectations; they do need those,
of course, but they also need specific
types and amounts of instruction, both
in academics and attitude, to compen-
sate for everything they did not receive
in their first decade of life.”
To advance each student’s learning,
regardless of background and ability,
HPHP schools have largely abandoned
the Old-World model of education
itself, supplanting the “one-conveyor-
belt-for-all” thinking with a New-World
model placing each student at the center
of a set of coordinated services (Figure
2A) – a model very similar to the prac-
tices Michael Fullan and his co-authors
describe in their provocative book,
Breakthrough (2006).
HPHP schools are still a nascent and
evolving species – almost always the
product of local adaptation and inno-
vation. Our national challenge (and
opportunity) is to apply their success-
ful practices systematically to turn-
around and intervention efforts in
multiple schools, districts, and circum-
stances. Parts 3 and 4 discuss how that
might be accomplished.
But first, Part 2 continues by examin-
ing the patterns of school proficiency
and poverty, explaining why poverty is
playing an increasingly significant role
in American education, and summa-
rizing a “perfect storm” of poverty-
induced challenges that face our high-
poverty schools – and very actively
shape how high-performing, high-
poverty schools have responded. In
Part 2.4, we introduce the HPHP
Readiness Model, which describes nine
elements that comprise HPHP school-
ing. Finally in Part 2.5, we conclude
with implications of HPHP schooling
for effective school turnaround.
It seems clear that what we are observing in the phenome-
non of HPHP schools is the evolution of a new species.
2.1
FIGURE 2A
2.5 Applying the Lessons
T
he most compelling case for a new
model of high-poverty schooling
lies in the achievement numbers. As a
result of NCLB, it is now possible to
track the achievement of students at
every school in every state. The pat-
terns are sobering – and illuminating.
The research team studied state by state
scatterplots, like those on the facing page,
showing school achievement vs. poverty
at the eighth and fourth grade levels (high
school data is not yet readily available).
The patterns of the eight states displayed
here are strongly representative of the
patterns found in other states, and across
other test subjects and grade levels. In
addition to the overall patterns shown
here, we reviewed similar data for high-
minority versus low-minority schools.
Here’s what the data show.
Proficiency drops steadily as school
poverty rises: This pattern is by no
means a surprise, but it remains dis-
heartening to see just how strong the
correlation is between poverty and
chronic under-performance: The same
pattern appears in state after state,
implying deep, systemic deficiencies
rather than occasional management
breakdowns. Schools that fail, year after
year, almost always reflect this profi-
ciency-poverty linkage, which is why
this report focuses on interventions
capable of breaking the cycle. Note that
the poverty drag on proficiency begins
right away: Schools comprised of just
10 or 20 percent poor students trail
schools with negligible poverty, and
that pattern continues along the x-axis
as the percentage of school poverty
mounts. The bottom line: Poverty
erodes proficiency and poor students
are underserved in virtually all schools,
although our recognition of dysfunc-
tion and breakdown is generally
reserved for our most urban and high-
est-poverty schools and districts.
School performance varies signifi-
cantly at every income level, and
extensively among high-poverty
schools: In most states, the proficiency
of schools becomes increasingly scat-
tered as school poverty rises: the range
of high performance and low perform-
ance among high-poverty schools tends
to be significantly greater than among
low-poverty schools. This variability
exists among both high-minority and
low-minority schools and among both
urban and non-urban schools. Note the
dramatic variability of performance
among schools over 50 percent pover-
ty: a large number with appalling per-
formance and a handful of schools per-
forming above the state median.
High-poverty schools that overcome
poverty are scarce: No single, one-year
snapshot can determine an HPHP
school, but we can draw nevertheless
two conclusions from these data: There
are very few HPHP schools and they
are likely to mitigate, but not erase, the
effects of poverty. Look at the subset of
schools that are likely to include HPHP
schools: those schools in the lightly
shaded box within each plot. These are
schools with at least 50 percent poor
students who exceeded their state’s
proficiency median for eighth grade
math in 2005. (Each state has a differ-
ent proficiency median, which is why
the height of the box varies – and why
state-to-state achievement comparisons
cannot be done with these data.) They
are performing far above the high-
poverty norm, and in some cases near-
ly as well as schools serving much
more affluent student populations.
Some schools beat the odds, proving it
can be done and triggering the central
HPHP question: How do they do it?
To completely unpack that question,
we need to go a step further with our
examination of poverty’s impact on
learning. In the next section, Part 2.3,
we will examine the complexity of the
challenge that all high-poverty schools
face – and that only HPHP schools
manage to mitigate.
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor Children
But: so do some successful schools, proving that school quality can overcome zip code
26
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Interpreting the Scatterplots (Figure 2B)
Each dot represents one school. All public schools serving the eighth grade in
each of eight sample states are shown.
It is important to note that each state establishes its own achievement standards
and assessment system; therefore, the proficiency scores of one state cannot be
directly compared to that of another state.
School poverty, on the other hand, is defined the same across all states as the per-
cent of students eligible to receive free or reduced price lunch. Schools whose
school poverty data were not reported or lost appear as “data noise” along the
left axis.
The shaded boxes in the top right of each plot highlight the high poverty schools
that were performing above their state’s median on this math test. See further
discussion of these schools in the paragraphs above.
2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
School Quality Can Meet High-Poverty Challenges – and Does, Though Rarely
In Higher Poverty Schools: Lower Achievement, but Greater Variability, Suggesting Opportunity for Improvement
Each dot plots an individual school’s percent proficiency (eighth grade math in 2005) against the percent of students with lunch eligibility.
The shaded box indicates the relatively small number of schools with lunch eligibility over 50% and math proficiency over the state median.
Massachusetts
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
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f
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e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=456)
California
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
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r
o
f
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t
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% of Students Eligible for Free
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Maryland
0 25 50 75 100
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% of Students Eligible for Free
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(n=277)
Florida
0 25 50 75 100
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% of Students Eligible for Free
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(n=785)
Michigan
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20
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(n=910)
Illinois
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60
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20
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% of Students Eligible for Free
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(n=1362)
Washington
0 25 50 75 100
100
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20
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%
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r
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i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=495)
Ohio
0 25 50 75 100
100
80
60
40
20
0
%
P
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
i
n
M
a
t
h
% of Students Eligible for Free
and Reduced Price Lunch
(n=930)
(n=1829)
27
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
2.5 Applying the Lessons
FIGURE 2B
D
a
t
a
a
r
e
f
r
o
m
t
h
e
N
a
t
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i
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a
l
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h
o
o
l
-
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e
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e
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t
a
t
e
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s
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e
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a
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a
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(
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S
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S
A
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D
)
2
0
0
6
.
2.2
28
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
C
learly the patterns of proficiency
and poverty demand a new
approach. If understanding the prob-
lem is half the solution, then dissect-
ing poverty’s role in exactly why
schools fail establishes a checklist of
design conditions from which solu-
tions and innovations can be forged.
Anatomy of a storm: what poverty
research tells us. The term “perfect
storm” was coined in 1991 to describe
the phenomenon of three major weather
systems combining in the Atlantic to
produce a storm of devastating propor-
tion. Similarly, poverty’s force comes in
three mutually-reinforcing forms: indi-
vidual and family risk factors, communi-
ty and environment effects, and resource
inequality. Each compounds the others,
increasing the risks and obstacles for
poor students in high-poverty schools in
high-poverty neighborhoods. The pover-
ty-related effects are substantial and
measurable even before kindergarten,
underscoring the importance of effective
early intervention.
Drawing on an extensive review of the
literature on poverty, we identified and
analyzed the risk factors with the great-
est implications for student learning
within each of three poverty “arenas.”
Brief summaries are provided on the
facing page and much more detail is
available in the Supplemental Report.
Gathering force: child poverty on
the rise. Poverty’s perfect storm is
building in strength and, as a society, we
are in a high-stakes race to find solu-
tions. Space does not allow us to include
detailed statistics on poverty trends in
America, but they are shocking. Already
35 percent of all students attend high-
poverty schools, including over two-
thirds of all minority students. (Orfield
& Lee, 2005) The figures are on the rise
across the board: Child poverty in the
U.S., already higher than in any other
developed country, increased by more
than 11 percent between 2000 and 2005.
(NCCP, 2006) The LEP (Limited
English Proficiency) child population
more than doubled from 1990 to 2000
from 5.1 to 10.6 million. (Fix and Passel,
2003) Within 25 years, the U.S. will
have more minority students than non-
minority (MBDA, 1999) with an equiva-
lent sharp rise in student poverty.
The opportunity: turning risk factors
into design elements. Understanding
how poverty affects students and their
learning helps to explain why existing
mild interventions in chronically
under-performing, high-poverty
schools have not produced much
improvement in student performance.
“Schools do not achieve high perform-
ance by doing one or two things dif-
ferently. They must do a number of
things differently, and all at the same
time, to begin to achieve the critical
mass that will make a difference in
student outcomes – in other words,
high-poverty schools that achieve
gains in student performance engage
in systemic change.” (CPE/Caliber
Associates, 2005)
That change is rooted in a broad cam-
paign to counter poverty-induced
deficits. Figure 2C demonstrates the
“field of play.” The three forms of
poverty effects we identified for this
study are each shown with their respec-
tive impact on the set of key learning
factors described by Walberg (1984).
In the next section, Part 2.4, we intro-
duce our HPHP Readiness Model,
which describes the nine elements we
believe are most crucial to igniting
learning under adverse conditions.
2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning
Understanding the deficits is a prerequisite to designing the solutions
Poverty Effects Have Moderate to Substantial Impact upon Key Learning Factors FIGURE 2C
Individual & family
risk factors
Community &
environment effects Resource inequality Key Learning Factors
Student Aptitude
Ability or prior achievement Substantial Moderate Moderate
Development by age or maturation Substantial Moderate Some
Motivation or self-concept Substantial Moderate Moderate
Instruction
The amount of time students are engaged Moderate Substantial Substantial
The quality of instruction Substantial Substantial
Environment
The home Substantial
The classroom social groups Substantial Some
Peer groups outside of school Moderate Substantial
Use of out-of-school time Substantial Substantial Some
2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
Adapted from Walberg (1984) and other sources (see Supplemental Report)
29
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
2.5 Applying the Lessons
Poverty’s Force Comes in Three Mutually-Reinforcing Forms
Note: These three forms of poverty impact receive much more detailed analysis in the Supplemental Report.
Individual and family risk factors
The factors in this arena, ranging from health and brain
development and family economic hardship to parenting
style and student motivation, are particularly interrelated.
The children of poverty are not as prepared as the non-poor
to enter the classroom, and before kindergarten, already test
lower in cognitive skills. They come from families that face
grave economic scenarios, and endure both physical and
psychological disadvantages that limit their ability to thrive.
The need to focus on basic health and safety concerns can
overshadow development of higher order thinking skills, and
parent and familial modeling often fail to encourage children
to focus on school. Students of poverty can be susceptible
to poor self-image, or attempt to live up to stereotypic
behaviors that thwart goal setting and the desire to succeed.
One factor compounds another and, as students who
are not at risk continue to develop and progress
on a higher trajectory, students of poverty fall even
further behind.
The effect of community and environment
Compositional effects, such as community and school
context, also have a significant impact on a child’s
experience of education, and his or her performance
in the classroom. Living in poor neighborhoods increases
the odds of student involvement in gangs, of children
developing behavioral problems, dropping out of school,
committing a crime, and becoming pregnant as a teenager.
Even the most conscientious parents can lose their kids
to the street. (Berliner, 2006)
Non-poor students attending high-poverty schools fall
behind more frequently than poor students attending
low-poverty schools. (Kennedy et al, cited in Lippman
et al, 1996, p35) Conversely, research shows that children
who grow up in poverty (and thus carry the same cognitive
lags and ingrained effects of disadvantage) but transfer
to middle-class suburbs and schools show rapid gains
in behavioral measures and academic achievement.
(Anyon, 2005a)
Resource inequity
The distribution of resources between poor and non-poor
schools, and between urban, suburban, and rural schools,
has been a source of controversy at both the local and
national level for years. Research confirms that poor, urban
students bear the brunt of inadequate financial resources.
The inequality in teaching resources is particularly
powerful. Teachers in poorer schools are significantly
less likely to have majored in the subject area they are
teaching, to have passed tests of basic skills and to be
highly qualified. Resource inequity is also much more
likely to fuel the “revolving door” of teacher turnover.
Retention and quality problems reinforce each other to the
extent that in “schools where more than 90 percent of the
students are poor – where excellent teachers are needed
the most – just one percent of teachers are in the highest
quartile.” (Peske & Haycock, 2006)
2.3
30
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
W
e were meeting with leaders
from a partner district of Mass
Insight’s, working through the four
dimensions of effective reform practice
we’d identified through years of
research in Massachusetts (www.build-
ingblocks.org). “All of that makes
every kind of sense,” said one curricu-
lum director. “But tell me how this one
school of ours is supposed to even
think about all of that when on
Monday this week, they got 20 new
ELL students from Vietnam, Tuesday
they had two unscheduled fire drills,
and Wednesday there was a knife-fight
in the parking lot?”
Disadvantage, turbulence, and unpre-
dictability are part and parcel of many
high-poverty communities and a per-
manent condition of the vast majority
of high-poverty schools. Yet some
rare, high-performing, high-poverty
(HPHP) schools manage to organize
themselves to counter the perfect
storm of disadvantage that accompa-
nies many of their students in the
door each morning.
Here is what emerged from our analy-
sis: HPHP schools do not try to solve
the problem of poverty, nor do they
use it as an excuse for lower achieve-
ment. They do respond with innova-
tive strategies that acknowledge and
address the daily disturbances caused
by student mobility, learning deficits,
disruptive behavior, neighborhood
crises, and a host of other poverty-
related circumstances. They start with
the premise that their students can
learn at a high standard, and then
they do whatever is necessary to
remove barriers to learning as well as
create new paths for students to pur-
sue achievement.
The strategies they use to do these
things are summarized in the fol-
lowing pages. It is worth stating up
front that these methods are sub-
stantially different from those famil-
iar in the Old-World model of edu-
cation found in most public schools
today. The nine elements we have
identified as hallmarks of high-per-
forming, high-poverty schools, in
fact, diverge in important ways from
the many lists of “effective-school
elements” available today.
The Readiness Triangle
The New-World model of HPHP
schooling is a dynamic system that
enables schools to:
• Acknowledge and foster students’
Readiness to Learn,
• Elevate and focus staff’s Readiness
to Teach, and
• Exercise more Readiness to Act in
dramatically different ways than is
typically possible in public schools.
These three essential and interlocking
dimensions of HPHP schools are
described in the HPHP Readiness
Model on the facing page, and the
sections that follow this one. Most
readers will immediately find familiar
territory in the Readiness to Teach leg
of the triangle, and in fact, that area is
where the vast majority of education
reform has focused. The elements that
make up Readiness to Learn and
Readiness to Act have had their share
of attention too, but often as part of
reform efforts designed to circumvent
the regular public school system (such
as charter schools, or special in-dis-
trict school clusters with unusual
operating conditions).
On the whole, most HPHP research
has concentrated with a fair degree of
single-mindedness on strategies we
have placed in Readiness to Teach. It
is all important, vital work: aligning
curricula to higher standards, improv-
ing instruction, using data effectively,
providing targeted extra help to stu-
dents who need it. By itself, however,
this set of strategies is not enough to
meet the challenges that educators –
and students – face in high-poverty
schools. Or, for that matter, to turn
around a failing high-poverty school.
Taken together, the Readiness to Teach
strategies represent what’s widely been
known as “whole-school reform.” It’s
clear that the concept of whole school
reform has played a critical role in
emphasizing the importance of inte-
gration – of comprehensive strategies
instead of reform projects. But in gen-
eral, our collective definition of
“whole” has not been whole enough.
On the next pages, we explore the
three Readiness elements and their
associated elements in greater detail.
2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness Model
Nine interlocking elements of schools that serve challenged students well
The nine elements we have identified as hallmarks of
HPHP schools diverge in important ways from the many
lists of “effective-school elements” available today.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
31
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Why “Readiness”?
The converging arrows at the center of the HPHP Readiness Model are the symbol for the
“New-World” model of schooling we introduced earlier in Part 2. New-World schooling, we
suggest, represents a departure from the linear, teaching-driven model of the 20th century
and a leap toward a more student-centered, learning-driven model for this century.
Think of the Old-World model as a factory conveyer belt that students and schools try,
with varying degrees of effectiveness, to keep up with. Its essence lies in what’s being
taught. Think of the new-world model as something more like a modern hospital: a
whole system of skills, processes, and technologies organized to analyze, diagnose, and
serve. Its essence lies in what’s being learned.
The delivery of good healthcare is all about readiness. The impact of the service depends
entirely on the quality of the people providing it and the training they’re given, the tools
at their disposal, the latitude they have to make appropriate decisions, their ability to
form and re-form into teams to provide the highest-capacity response, and (of course) the
readiness of the patient to embrace and implement the cure.
Schools, and especially high-poverty schools, are no different in the New-World model.
What happens in classrooms between teacher and student is the most critical moment in
the delivery of the service. But the quality of that moment depends entirely on the readi-
ness of the system and the people who are part of it to teach, learn, and act effectively
and in accordance with the mission.
FIGURE 2D
2.5 Applying the Lessons
High-Performance, High-Poverty Education: The HPHP Readiness Model 2.4
32
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Learn
At HPHP schools, whatever stands in
the way of learning is fair game to be
addressed. Reorienting the focus from
what’s being taught in schools to
what’s being learned, HPHP schools
proactively address the challenges
accompanying their students as they
walk in the schoolhouse door: from
something as basic as finding an
impoverished child socks or a coat, to
assisting where possible with trans-
portation or health services and attack-
ing the significant cognitive, social,
cultural, and psychological barriers to
learning that many students of poverty
tend to experience. Good learners
must develop “underlying persever-
ance, strong will, and positive disposi-
tion.” (Borman & Rachuba, 2001) At
the same time, “staff in many [old-
world] schools are products of a train-
ing model that ignores the importance
of child development…. In fact, the
whole school structure is not set up to
support development.” (Comer, 2002)
Readiness to Learn is the dimension
on which the HPHP schools differ
most appreciably from other schools.
While all high-performing schools pay
attention to relationships and environ-
ment, the lengths to which HPHP
schools go to address these concerns
for their student populations set them
well apart. Those efforts focus on the
three elements shown to the right.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Learn
Spray Painting Safety
Granger (WA) High School principal Richard Esparza began his principal-
ship with a frontal assault on gang-related graffiti. A storage hut behind
the school was a prime target and every day Esparza would drive to the
hut, take out the spray paint he kept in his car for just this purpose, and
repaint the door, which had been tagged during the night. “I can’t have
gangs announcing that they control the school,” he said. (The Education
Trust, 2005b)
Engagement Pays Dividends
In Norfolk, VA schools, teachers took the unit on Mali, home of many of
the students’ ancestors, “out of the shadows of the final week of school
and infused it throughout the school year,” using dance, literature, his-
tory, song, and other engaging, cross-disciplinary activities. Researchers
reported, “It is hardly an accident that these students also displayed
astonishing improvements in their performance on state social studies
tests.” (Reeves, 2003)
1. Safety, Discipline, & Engagement
“A calm and orderly environment [is] a prerequisite for learn-
ing, reducing the stress and distractions for students and
teachers, and creating norms and confidence to enable deeper
staff and instructional changes to occur.” (Orr, 2005) This
sense of safety is the first rung on the ladder, particularly in
schools and neighborhoods where crime and chaos are part of
everyday life. Clear codes of behavior and well-defined but
flexible routines must be applied consistently and transparent-
ly to students, parents, and staff.
At the same time, HPHP schools also seek ways to engage their
students as fully as possible in their learning, using robust,
well-rounded curricula, thematic and project-based teaching,
collaborative learning, and field trips. While a precise,
laser-like focus on reading, writing, and math forms a vital
core of the HPHP approach (see the Personalization of
Instruction section under Readiness to Teach), researchers also
highlight “explicit involvement of the subjects that are fre-
quently and systematically disregarded in traditional accounta-
bility systems – music, art, physical education, world lan-
guages, technology, career education… Data reveal that the
involvement of these seemingly peripheral subjects in academ-
ic achievement is neither serendipitous nor insignificant.”
(Reeves, 2003) The engagement created in this way produces a
virtuous cycle on which the rest of the entire school model
depends: where students are first engaged and inspired, then
motivated and learning, and finally positive contributors them-
selves to a safe, orderly, and supportive environment.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
33
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Establishing Expectations
Granger (WA) High School had a high dropout rate. When the principal arrived he
organized 50 teams of adults from the school and community to visit the 400 homes
of every student in the district. To those teachers who didn’t want to do home visits,
Esparza says he responded, “You are a great teacher. We have a difference in philoso-
phy. I’d be happy to write you a recommendation.” The school’s dropout rate has
improved markedly since then. (EdTrust, 2005)
The School as Family
University Park Campus School, an outstanding performer in one of the most crime-
ridden parts of Worcester, MA, is small to begin with, but is also organized to fur-
ther strengthen student-teacher relationships. Its grade seven-to-twelve structure
allows students to grow with the school for six years, students are looped with the
same teacher for a minimum of two years, and staff eat lunch side by side with stu-
dents. Students acknowledge that they work harder and behave well largely
because, as one student remarked, “the teachers are like family” whom they are
reluctant to disappoint. (www.buildingblocks.org, UPCS strategy)
3. Close Student-Adult Relationships
First and foremost, HPHP schools focus on establishing numerous and intensive rela-
tionships between students and adults. In fact, the ability of teachers to forge rela-
tionships with children in poverty is cited by some researchers as the key factor in
high-performing schools. (CPE/Caliber Associates, 2005; Haberman, 1999) The move
toward small learning communities is partly intended to enable such relationships.
Indeed the most significant positive change reported by students and staff in the
extensive evaluation of the Gates Foundation small high schools initiative was an
improvement in interpersonal relations. (AIR/SRI, 2005) Students reported feeling
better known and supported by staff, and said their teachers had higher expecta-
tions for them due to increased knowledge of the students’ capabilities.
Schools achieve this sense of connection, and maximize contact and continuity
through a number of specific practices, including looping of teachers with students
for multiple years, the adoption of “early start” grade six or seven through twelve
schools, home visits, and intensive advisory systems. As the principal of the widely
studied University Park Campus School in Worcester, MA, told us: “It’s all about per-
sonalization – how many adults in the building touch each child.”
2. Action Against Adversity
HPHP schools make themselves proficient at addressing poverty effects head-on.
Research shows that “school-based initiatives that actively shield disadvantaged
children from the risks and adversities within their homes, schools, and communi-
ties are more likely to foster successful academic outcomes than are several other
school-based efforts.” (Borman & Rachuba, 2001)
This kind of advocacy is undertaken for needs ranging from the physical and eco-
nomic to the psycho-social. The schools address a broad range of health and human
service needs, offering breakfast, eye exams, and parent training. They connect with
a broad range of partners and social service providers to address these needs. HPHP
schools even provide explicit guidance and guidelines for the development of behav-
ior and values that have been shown to support learning: teaching how to look
someone in the eye while listening, how to work in teams, how to advocate appro-
priately for oneself. As one HPHP researcher noted, “the essential ingredients are a
willingness to examine a new way of thinking, an organizational readiness to fill in
the gaps in protective processes through use of effective instructional programs and
involvement of parent and community partners, and a way of assessing student fac-
tors related to resilience.” (Nettles & Robinson, 1998)
2.5 Applying the Lessons
The School as Gang Replacement
The required enrichment Saturday School at Codman Academy Charter School in
Boston, taught by community members, has explicit benefits, but also a hidden agen-
da: to root Codman students firmly in the school culture. Head of School Meg
Campbell explains, “We’re competing against a lot of negative pressures these kids
have in their lives – crime, drugs, gangs. So in a way, we’re trying to make Codman be
the gang.“ (www.buildingblocks.org, Codman strategy)
Enhancing Student Resilience
Lowell Middlesex Charter School, which serves a population of high school drop-outs
aged 15-21 in Lowell, MA, ensures that all of the full-time faculty have experience
and/or formal training in human services, to enhance their understanding of their stu-
dents’ challenges. They also offer what they call “psycho-educational courses”
designed to directly confront their students’ needs. These include: life skills, non-violent
conflict resolution, parenting, and men’s and women’s groups. (www.buildingblocks.org,
LMACS strategy)
2.4
34
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Teach
This leg of the Readiness Model encom-
passes most of the work of school reform
over the past 15 to 20 years, at least in
terms of scale and investment. Higher
expectations and curriculum standards,
building capacity to teach to those stan-
dards, using data effectively to drive
instruction, and developing interventions
for students who need special help –
these are the core elements of standards-
based reform. They represent not only
the main ideas driving school improve-
ment processes nationwide, but also the
primary (and often exclusive) focus of
the vast majority of the effective-practice
research we reviewed for this report.
HPHP schools address the length and
breadth of these now-common, stan-
dards-based reform practices. However, it
is clear from our research that HPHP
schools approach the Readiness to Teach
dimension with more intensity than other
schools. At HPHP schools, these strate-
gies are not implemented as discrete proj-
ects, but embedded in the schools’ DNA.
This is particularly true in the expressions
of Readiness to Teach that we highlight
on these pages: their ability to generate
shared responsibility for achievement
among every adult in the school; the pre-
cision with which they use frequent
assessment to personalize instruction;
and the priority they give to the develop-
ment of a professional, collaborative
teaching culture.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Teach
Schools Where “Teaching” Means “Learning”
[In the HPHP schools profiled in the book It’s Being Done,] they use the
verb “to teach” properly. That is, they do not say what many teachers
around the country say: “I taught it, but the kids didn’t get it.”
Although common, this formulation actually makes no sense. If I were
to say “I taught my child to ride a bike,” you would expect that my
child could ride a bike. She might be a bit shaky, but she should be
able to pedal and balance at the same time. If she can’t do that, you
would expect me to say something like, “I tried to teach my child to
ride a bike.” I won’t say that no one in any of the “It’s Being Done”
schools ever uses the verb “teach” improperly, but for the most part, if
teachers say that they taught something, that means their students
have learned it. (Passage quoted from Chenoweth, 2007)
4. Shared Responsibility for Achievement
Virtually every “schools that work” report we reviewed for this
project began its discussion of essential reform elements with
the importance of “establishing a culture of high expecta-
tions.” We deliberately chose not to use this phrase, which has
been over-used, mis-used and (sadly) often used simply as a
rhetorical device. Sometimes it is so broad as to become
meaningless; at other times it acts as shorthand for expecta-
tions of student achievement and teacher performance that
are out of all proportion with the inadequate support, training,
and inputs provided to those individuals.
What we saw emerging from the HPHP research can more accu-
rately be described as an explicitly shared responsibility for
achievement. This commitment is intense and conveys a sense of
ownership, more than bar-setting. It is inclusive, involving all stu-
dents and all adults in the building (including custodians and
nurses, for example, in school-wide professional development), as
well as parents (sometimes involving home-school contracts), and
often community members. It is highly focused on learning and
student behaviors that directly affect learning. The 90-90-90
schools analysis of researcher Douglas Reeves, for instance,
declared that “first and most importantly, the 90/90/90 schools
have a laser-like focus on student achievement.” (Reeves, 2003;
“90-90-90” refers to schools that score in the 90th percentile, are
90 percent minority, and are 90% free and reduced-price lunch.)
These responsibilities also included accountability for students
and for teachers, but approached in a flexible way that accounts
for the unsettled nature of high-poverty communities. The HPHP
principal’s response to a student who says “I got no sleep. My
dad got taken to jail last night” was: “ I’m sorry, study some
more and we will give you the opportunity to retake the test.”
(The Education Trust, 2005b) In the same way, teachers at
another HPHP school, according to Haberman (1999), “demon-
strate a strong willingness as well as an expectation that they
as teachers should be held accountable for their children’s
learning.” They do not let their students use limitations in life
experience or language problems as an excuse; neither do they
use them as a way of avoiding responsibility as teachers.
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
35
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Standing PD on its Head
At Brighton High School in Boston, professional development has been redefined in a
way that has revolutionized the teaching culture at the school. Using (and adapting)
Boston’s Collaborative Coaching and Learning (CCL) model, Brighton replaced top-
down, department-directed PD with an “inquiry team” system that assembles teachers
across and within curriculum areas to examine data-driven, achievement-gap priorities
that they themselves identify. Brighton expanded the CCL model by extending it across
all curriculum areas, allocating a full-time coach, and budget funds for “CCL subs” to
free up teachers for the inquiry teams. (www.buildingblocks.org, Brighton strategy)
6. Professional Teaching Culture
The role of teachers in HPHP schools is highly collaborative, focused on improving
instruction, diagnosing student learning challenges, and helping each other improve
their practice. At its best, this role is a highly professional one – that of an expert
working within a team to coordinate a variety of resources and capabilities to solve
problems and achieve results. (The hospital metaphor for “new-world” schooling
that we described at the outset of Part 2.4 is relevant here.) To continue to add
value to the work of the team, each “expert” must continue to learn as well.
Instead of suffering the stresses and challenges of high-poverty schools in isolation,
teachers in HPHP schools work together incessantly and naturally. The HPHP effec-
tive practice literature abounds in professional learning communities, common plan-
ning time, collaborative professional development, common lesson study, and group
reviews of student work. The emphasis within the HPHP new-world model on form-
ative assessment and adaptation of instruction provides additional imperatives for
working together, in order to pool expertise and capacity for problem-solving. The
most effective schools make time for collaboration very frequently, every week or
even every day. Mostly, the time is carved out of administrative meeting time and
professional development allocations.
HPHP teachers also see themselves as lifelong learners about instruction and learn-
ing. School leaders reinforce this focus through their professional development
offerings. “Professional development at high-performing schools differs distinctively
from the norm. It is directly linked to changing instructional practice in order to
improve student achievement. It is often team-based and school-wide, and it
reflects a continual process of improvement.” (CPE/Caliber Associates, 2005)
Increasingly, it is also embedded into ongoing work on data analysis and instruc-
tional development, so that it takes place on site, when and where teachers need it
to address the work they’re doing.
5. Personalization of Instruction
Much more so than their peers, HPHP schools are organized to personalize each
student’s road to academic achievement. This is the practice that most directly
fuels the “new-world” approach they use to reach high performance. When we
saw it in action in the HPHP schools we researched directly, we recognized that we
were seeing a “new-world” for public education, one that has been described well
by Michael Fullan and his co-authors in Breakthrough (2006).
Many schools emphasize data-driven instruction or differentiated instruction. But
what HPHP schools do is something much more individually-oriented and much
more precise. The HPHP schools organize instruction around a short feedback loop
of formative assessment, adapted instruction, further formative assessment, and
further adapted instruction. The evidence from HPHP effective-practice research on
this strategy is overwhelming: Chenoweth’s recent case studies (2007), the
CPE/Caliber Associates research review (2005), Marzano’s meta-analysis of
research on student achievement (2000), and most individual studies cite this kind
of feedback-based instruction as having profound impact on student achievement.
Its implementation in the HPHP schools we studied was intentional and specific. (For
more detail, see the HPHP research in the Supplemental Report.) Core elements include:
• Formative assessments are frequent – very frequent. In some cases, form-
ative assessments (those given to help diagnose problem areas, more than to
generate a grade) are given as often as weekly or bi-weekly.
• Analysis and feedback is immediate. The assessments are often brief (for
weekly tests, 4-5 questions), so that teachers or coaches can analyze the results
within days or hours.
• Instruction is adapted quickly to address the identified gaps or prob-
lems. High-performing schools use a range of ways to apply the results of the
diagnostic data: for example, performance “walls” to strategize for individual
students, small-group classroom learning, and individual tutoring.
• Teachers are provided with the time and flexibility to address the
issues. HPHP schools have not only increased instructional time, but also recon-
figure it to construct sometimes dramatically different daily schedules (long
blocks, extended days, ”re-teach or enrich” time slots) to suit the needs of their
students and this personalized instruction.
As an audit member at one HPHP school noted of a particularly successful school,
“They teach, they test, they teach, they test.” (Kannapel & Clements, 2005) When
assessment is properly integrated into instruction and understood to be a tool, stu-
dents see it as part and parcel of learning and even (as part of a generation raised
on the instant feedback of video and computer games) thrive on the instant feed-
back and opportunity to see their own progress.
2.5 Applying the Lessons
2.4
36
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Readiness to Act
Rarely does reality on the ground align
with theory as well as in this dimension
of HPHP schools. James Thompson
(1967) revolutionized organizational
theory by showing that organizations
facing “the expectation of uncertainty”
– as virtually every urban high-poverty
school does – “must resort to a differ-
ent sort of logic.” Thompson prescribed
a highly responsive, flexible organiza-
tion in which a variety of methods are
available, “but the selection, combina-
tion, and order of application” are
determined by constant assessment
and feedback.” Savvy, timely adjust-
ment of this kind is exactly what we
find in HPHP schools where educators
deftly respond to all manner of crisis.
Agility in the face of turbulence is part
of what we call Readiness to Act. This
agility is part of an insistence among
HPHP schools on organizing and
deploying every resource at their dispos-
al entrepreneurially and strategically. At
traditional public schools, bureaucratic
imperatives frequently impede action
that is truly best for students. In HPHP
schools, operating conditions altered
either by regulation (e.g., charters) or by
fiat (maverick principals) allow deci-
sions to be focused on student needs,
and incentives to become re-integrated
with the “children first” mission.
Open Posting Advantage
Principal Michael Fung at Charlestown (MA) High School used fine print
within the Boston teachers’ contract to achieve open-posting (i.e., the
ability to disregard seniority and recruit the best candidate from inside or
outside the system) for certain teaching positions, such as those involving
stipends and not requiring regular certification. Fung had to get faculty
approval, involve a screening committee, and proactively head-hunt can-
didates. But he credits open posting as a major contributor to his school’s
impressive improvements. He offers new teachers a two-year contract
(allowing them a chance to learn in the first year), but also hyper-man-
ages them to ensure that they absorb best practice and the school’s
ethos. (www.buildingblocks.org, Charlestown strategy)
7. Resource Authority
HPHP schools need broad, local authority over core resources
– people, time, money, and program – in order to continually
tailor instruction for individual students, maneuver against
daily turbulence, and improve their staff. Most public schools
currently do not have the authority to make such decisions –
or if they do, countervailing incentives (such as fear of collec-
tive bargaining issues) undermine their interest in doing so.
HPHP schools do have that authority (as charter schools, or
special district schools with charter-like conditions), or else
they manage to manipulate very unusual combinations of cir-
cumstances (outstanding, entrepreneurial school leadership, or
unique partnerships with universities or other outside forces)
to act as if they had such freedom.
HPHP schools’ resource authority shows up across the full
gamut of school operations: the daily schedule, often the annu-
al school calendar, the way teachers collaborate with each
other and participate in school decision-making, the allocation
of the school’s budget, the very nature of instruction. It also
shows up in the extensive care that school leaders put into
choosing staff members who are best-suited to the model and
their mission. Research overwhelmingly confirms that “teach-
ing quality is the most dominant factor in determining student
success.” (Reeves, 2003) But most schools serving high-poverty
student populations do not have control over teaching and (to
some extent) administrative staff. HPHP schools almost uni-
formly say that recruiting excellent staff members is the most
important thing they do. The charters and the charter-likes have
that unquestioned authority; the regular public schools that are
both high-performing and high-poverty tend to be led by prin-
cipals who will stand for nothing less.
In some cases, HPHP schools have the freedom to offer teach-
ers incentives that are currently rare or non-existent in more
traditional high-poverty school settings: financial incentives,
differentiated and performance-based compensation, more
flexible working conditions, and perhaps the greatest incen-
tive of all – the opportunity to work with highly regarded col-
leagues on an important mission in an effective way.
The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Act
2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
37
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
A Virtuous Cycle
Rather than living within typical resource allocation limits, the MATCH Charter School in
Boston has moved to an atypical “resource-raising” approach – expanding adult support
and raising additional financial resources. They developed their MATCH Corps of recent
college graduates to fulfill the need for intensive tutoring. They entered into partnerships
with local universities and nearby high schools. They also looked to a range of public
financing options (such as leveraging Federal Tax Credits to secure funding for a new
construction), and drew additional funds from private sector companies and private phi-
lanthropies. Promotion of their successes initiates a “virtuous cycle” that leads to further
interest and funding. (www.buildingblocks.org; MATCH strategy)
Converting Excuses into Challenges
Sterling Middle School in Quincy, MA used to have a reputation as a tough school, and
was considered dysfunctional by many of its own faculty members. Then the faculty and
staff stepped closer to perceived obstacles to confront them as problems that could be
solved. The paradigm shift, fueled by Principal Earl Metzler’s “no excuses” mantra, was
from a passive “We can’t because ...” to an active: “We can, by ...,” and the enemy was
no longer the district, the budget, the parents, or the students. The key to success was in
identifying areas where they could make a difference and in incorporating externally
mandated challenges [like the state standards assessments] into internal mechanisms
for improvement. (www.buildingblocks.org, Sterling strategy)
9. Agility in the Face of Turbulence
Part 2.3 of this report looked at the factors contributing to turbulence for the stu-
dent populations of HPHP schools. In turn, these pressures generate a constant
unsettledness that is fundamental to the ecology of high-poverty schools and a fac-
tor that principals and teachers must overcome – not through rigid standards and
control, but through flexibility and persuasion; the ability to adapt, improvise, and
triage on the fly; and the skill to build a resilient organization and culture that
prides itself on high performance despite the turbulence. Not an impossible chal-
lenge, as the HPHP schools demonstrate – just different from the old-world model
of conveyer-belt curriculum for all. It takes this agility, together with Resource
Authority and Resource Ingenuity, for a school to have any hope of supporting their
students’ readiness to learn and their teachers’ readiness to teach – because every
day will be filled with circumstances and events conspiring to disrupt.
But “turbulence” applies to more than the constant turmoil in high-poverty communi-
ties. Orr et al (2005) have taken a parallel look at the challenges that face principals in
urban low-performing schools, most of which are also high-poverty. They paint a picture
of turbulence at the institutional level, characterizing urban districts as loosely struc-
tured, with unclear expectations and uneven service to school leaders. Principals of
urban schools are heavily engaged in the coordination of non-instructional supports,
and spend more time than their suburban peers managing scarce resources and medi-
ating frustrations. Principal leadership in their words encompasses “an ever-changing
balance of skills, experience [and] intuition.”The HPHP research concurs, citing over
and over the importance of leaders being “flexible” and “inventive” in actively reshap-
ing and incorporating districtwide projects and special initiatives for disadvantaged stu-
dents into their own strategies for maximizing performance, rather than acquiescing to
the guidelines and requirements of individual programs. (Orr et al, 2005)
Affirming the Mission
Benwood Initiative schools worked closely with Chattanooga (TN)’s mayor, who provid-
ed a $5,000 bonus to any classroom teacher whose test scores grew more than 15 per-
cent more than the expected growth.... He also arranged for high-performing Benwood
teachers to get low-interest mortgages. (Chenoweth, 2007)
8. Resource Ingenuity
Ingenuity is the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful. Our researchers
can’t identify a single HPHP school or study that fails to underscore that HPHP princi-
pals (and staff) are masters at finding hidden and untapped resources. These high-
poverty schools have almost bottomless needs and may receive barely adequate allo-
cation of public resources, but HPHP leaders are tireless at finding the people, skills,
funds, time, or equipment needed to accomplish what they feel needs to happen. No
one escapes their attention: state agencies, businesses, churches, museums, parents,
neighbors, social service providers, even student volunteers.
School by school, this is nitty-gritty stuff. Some representative examples we encoun-
tered include: reading periods in which every adult in the building is a reading coach;
parent coordinators to organize after-school volunteers; church groups maintaining
safe passage through dangerous neighborhoods; social workers embedded in teach-
ing teams; computer funds redirected to hire additional teachers; free matinees at
area cultural events; and schoolwide teams organized to visit every student’s home.
2.5 Applying the Lessons 2.5 Applying the Lessons
2.4
38
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
I
n this concluding section of Part 2,
we place the lessons of HPHP
schools in the context of the turn-
around challenge.
High-performing, high-poverty
schools are an innovation of incalcula-
ble value. Much studied, they provide
essential insight into what it takes to
ignite learning in high-poverty schools.
Lacking an effective and replicable
school turnaround model anywhere in
the country, individual HPHP schools
are our trailblazers – the vanguard that
extinguishes the debate about unteach-
able kids, demonstrates best practices,
and sets a benchmark against which
reform efforts can be measured.
Because they are so important to keep
in mind as we build a model for turn-
around, the major points from Part 2
are worth reiterating here:
1
The ecology of high-poverty
schools is inherently much more
unpredictable, variable, and irregular
than that of low-poverty schools.
Accounting for the constant unsettled-
ness as well as the wide range of stu-
dent challenges and learning deficits
induced by poverty is a prerequisite to
successful schools.
2
Our most common approaches do
not help, and in fact sometimes
do harm. Our traditional curriculum-,
grade-, and age-based “conveyor belt”
is ill-equipped to handle unpredictabil-
ity and frequently introduces “addi-
tional stressors and adversities that
place [poor] students at even greater
risk of academic failure.” (Borman &
Rachuba, 2001)
3
It seems clear that what we are
witnessing in the phenomenon of
HPHP schools is the evolution of a
new species. HPHP schools have mor-
phed into highly adaptable organiza-
tions whose staff are expert at igniting
learning for each child in spite of the
surrounding turbulence; in essence,
they are reinventing what schools do.
4
The “new-model” of HPHP
schooling evokes the sense of a
team rallying to each student. Adults,
programs, and resources encircle the
student, ready to analyze, diagnose,
and serve his or her needs in a flexible
and ongoing way.
5
Income-vs.-performance data
reveal that school proficiency
drops steadily as school poverty rises.
Just as important: proficiency varies
significantly at every income level, and
extensively among high-poverty
schools, underlining the vital role
school quality plays.
6
Dissecting poverty’s role in exactly
why schools fail establishes a par-
tial checklist of design conditions
from which solutions and innovations
can be forged. Poverty’s “perfect storm”
is comprised of three mutually-reinforc-
ing forms: individual and family risk
factors, community and environment
effects, and resource inequality.
7
The methods used to combat these
factors are summarized in the
HPHP Readiness Model, a system of
nine elements that enable schools to:
• Acknowledge and foster students’
Readiness to Learn,
• Elevate and focus staff’s Readiness
to Teach, and
• Exercise more Readiness to Act in
dramatically different ways than is
typically possible in public schools.
Reframing Our Thinking:
A Precursor to Real Reform
HPHP schools break convention in
two pragmatic yet significant ways:
• They are replacing the traditional
old-world, conveyor-belt model
with a new-world model with each
child at the center and designed to
counter poverty’s perfect storm; and
• They discard many centralized and
bureaucratic management methods
in favor of a highly adaptable
Readiness to Act, much better suit-
ed to the constant unsettledness that
marks high-poverty schooling and
to targeting precious core resources
on real gains in student learning.
What will it take for our education
thinking and our education institu-
tions to catch up to these departures?
First, we must reframe our under-
standing of the high-poverty school.
The time is right to acknowledge (per-
haps even celebrate) the current con-
fluence of research in education, child
poverty, cognitive development, and
psychological resiliency. If “facts are
friendly” and “knowledge is power,”
the new insights emerging from
research place solid new under-
2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP Schools
Change begins with the courage to break patterns
2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning
Lacking an effective and replicable school turnaround
model anywhere in the country, individual HPHP schools
are our trailblazers.
39
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
pinnings and possibility under HPHP
practice and the turnaround of under-
performing high-poverty schools.
Second, we must reframe our under-
standing of HPHP schools and the
lessons they offer. There has been a
strong tendency in past HPHP effec-
tive-schools research to set the char-
acteristics of high-poverty school set-
tings aside, and to focus on what
might be called the “classic” stan-
dards-based education reform cate-
gories of high expectations, curricula,
teaching methods, assessment tools,
and strong leadership. Even in several
of the studies we found most useful in
shaping the HPHP Readiness Model
(see Figure 2E), you will see a great
deal of attention focused on these
Readiness to Teach strategies, almost
to the exclusion of the other two
dimensions in the Readiness Model.
That’s understandable, since most
effective-practice research has gener-
ally followed the most commonly
applied reform strategies – and most
of those strategies have revolved
around Readiness to Teach-style
reforms. The research, in other words,
has followed the path of reform. Yet
all three Readiness elements are pow-
erful themes among principals and
teachers in HPHP schools and in the
significant new research on child
poverty, cognitive development, miti-
gation of at-risk factors, and resilien-
cy. In effect, we’ve been missing cru-
cial elements in what educators in
these schools have been telling us.
Third, we must reframe our
approach to education reform itself.
The rest of this report is predicated on
the assumption that what HPHP
schools are doing today can be repli-
cated. The HPHP Readiness Model is
not only a template for igniting learn-
ing in poor students but also a vehicle
for fundamental change. However,
change will take rethinking our
approach to education reform. To that
vital task, we turn next.
2.5 Applying the Lessons
Major Effective-Practice Research Informs and Supports the HPHP Readiness Model
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Readiness to LEARN
Safety, Discipline, & Engagement G G G G G G G G G G
Action Against Adversity G G G G G G
Close Student-Adult Relationships G G G G G G G G G G
Readiness to TEACH
Shared Responsibility for Achievement G G G G G G G G G G G
Personalization of Instruction G G G G G G G G G G G G G
Professional Teaching Culture G G G G G G G G G G G G G
Readiness to ACT
Resource Authority G G G G G G G G
Resource Ingenuity G G G G G G G G
Agility in the Face of Turbulence G G G
Strong support = G
Some support = G
Note: For complete references and information on these sources, see Appendix B.
FIGURE 2E
2.5
T
he high-performing, high-poverty
schools described in Part 2 pro-
vide school intervention strategists
with a proof-point, a benchmark, and
a vision. They demonstrate what’s
possible, how far highly disadvan-
taged kids can go, and what it looks
like to get them there.
The rest, to paraphrase education
writer Karin Chenoweth (see box),
is engineering.
That makes the task in front of us
sound deceptively easy. Engineering,
after all, is an historical American
trademark. We designed and built
democracy as a form of government,
invented peanut butter, the suburb,
and the nuclear bomb, carved out the
Panama Canal and put a man on the
moon. Surely we can replicate the
strategies of successful urban schools.
But so far, after three decades or more
of effort – some of it involving billions
of dollars of federal aid – the results of
our various attempts to apply effec-
tive-practice research to improve
struggling schools are meager at best.
“Why do good ideas about teaching
and learning have so little impact on
U.S. educational practice?” Harvard
researcher Richard Elmore asked that
question in 1996, at the outset of his
milestone essay, “Getting to Scale with
Good Educational Practice.” He could
well ask the same question, with added
impatience, today.
For this project, we spent 18 months
seeking to answer Elmore’s question
with respect to state- and district-
driven interventions in failing schools.
Our complete analysis is included in
this report as Appendix A, but it boils
down to the observations opposite:
3.1 What Success Requires:
Changing the Odds for Turnaround Schools
Moving beyond marginal to fundamental change
Part 3 examines:
3.1 What Success Requires:
Changing the Odds for
Turnaround Schools
Moving beyond marginal to fun-
damental change
3.2 The First C: Conditions that
Enable Effective Turnaround
Reform depends on the context
in which it’s applied
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to
Conduct Effective Turnaround
Urgently needed: broader, deeper
turnaround capacity at every cor-
ner of the system
3.4 The Third C: Clustering
for Support
It’s not just about autonomy.
Failing schools need strong net-
work support
P A R T 3
3.1 What Success Requires 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support
“Not a Theoretical Challenge, but an Engineering One”
“After visiting all the [HPHP] schools profiled in this book, I began to feel as if the folks
in these schools can be likened to the Wright brothers, who proved once and for all
that manned flight was possible. Once Orville and Wilbur demonstrated how to answer
the challenges of drag and gravity, getting from their experimental plane in Kitty Hawk
to the Boeing 747 was no longer a theoretical challenge but an engineering one. In
the same way, the schools profiled here demonstrate that the job of educating kids to
high levels – even kids traditionally considered ‘hard to teach’ – is theoretically possi-
ble. The challenges these schools have overcome include the ideas that poverty and
discrimination are insuperable barriers to academic achievement; that today’s kids are
so damaged by television, video games and hip-hop music that they are impervious to
books and scholarship; that good, qualified teachers simply won’t work in difficult cir-
cumstances; and that existing teachers and principals are incapable of improvement.
The theoretical arguments pile on, seemingly insurmountable.
“Except that in the case of the schools profiled here, they are proved wrong. When you
overcome drag and gravity with enough thrust and lift, you get flight; when you over-
come poverty and discrimination with enough thoughtful instruction, careful organiza-
tion, and what can only be recognized as the kind of pig-headed optimism displayed
by the Wright brothers, you get learning. The schools profiled here are not perfect, any
more than the Wright brothers’ plane was perfect. But they have tackled the theoreti-
cal challenges one by one and proved that those challenges can be conquered.”
– Karin Chenoweth, It’s Being Done (2007)
40
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Inadequate Design: Lack of ambition, comprehensiveness, integration,
and network support
Marginal change yields marginal results. The strategies of most school inter-
vention efforts have been chronically ill-matched with the need. The vast
majority of what passes for intervention in failing schools can be understood as light
renovation – the school-reform equivalent of wallpapering and new siding. What’s
needed is much more fundamental than repair work on an existing structure: we need
instead a thorough rethinking of how the house serves the people who live in it. That
much is clear from our study of HPHP schools (see Figure 2E). It’s a big issue for school
communities, which tend to think and operate in terms of projects, not strategies.
School intervention strategies generally stop well short of the comprehen-
siveness of change required. Our review of the research on state- and district-driv-
en intervention in low-performing schools prompted us to group intervention initia-
tives in three categories. Most efforts (by far) focus on program change – essentially,
providing a range of help to improve the quality of instruction within the current
model of the school. Some also build in people change – installing a new principal or
replacing the staff, but rarely as part of a complete turnaround strategy. Very few go
further and attempt to change the context of operating conditions and incentives in
which all of the work (including the reform effort) takes place. Yet it is precisely this
conditions context that tends to undercut the impact of reform, particularly in under-
performing schools. (See Figure 3C, page 45.)
School intervention tends toward silver bullets instead of fully integrated
strategies. A strong principal; a smaller learning community; a longer school day.
Individual elements of turnaround may be critically important, but each by itself is
nearly always insufficient to produce major, systemic change – i.e., change that sur-
vives even after the strong principal leaves or the longer school day shrinks.
Intervention tends to focus on individual schools, without the intensive out-
side support that can be obtained through a cluster or network. Schools fail in
part because their central support network (the district) has failed them. Supremely
gifted principals may turn around a school, but turnaround at scale requires intensive
support from a new network, organized within or across district lines.
Inadequate Incentive Change: Current efforts do too little to change the
status quo and are marked more by compliance than buy-in
School intervention has failed to use carrots and sticks effectively to gener-
ate commitment to change. This failure has ramifications at every level in the sys-
tem: policymakers, district leaders, principals, teachers, parents, students. Intervention
represents an opportunity for leverage to be applied to change behavior, which as
Fullan (among other researchers) points out, can then lead to changed beliefs. But
that leverage – and the consequent sense of urgency – does not take place because
state accountability systems have been weak or unclear in establishing firm timelines
and consequences for underperformance. Neither have most intervention strategies
understood the vital importance of “carrots” (such as increased latitude over deci-
sion-making, professional norms for compensation and collaboration, and participa-
tion in groundbreaking reform) in enlisting buy-in for turnaround.
Inadequate Capacity: Failing schools get in-service training instead of the
all-encompassing people strategy and strong external partners they need
School intervention chronically under-values the importance of recruiting and
placing people in the right jobs. The reasons why are understandable. Changing pro-
gram strategies and offering in-service training is safe territory, compared to the com-
plexity and controversy inherent in a total human resource strategy. Most intervention
initiatives include provisions for professional development, but most often, that is as far
as it goes. The choices, changes, and comprehensive “people strategies” that might
come from an honest appraisal of current personnel, management, and HR practices
including compensation and incentive strategies are set aside for another day.
Turnaround requires special skills from school leaders and external partners,
and the resource base in both categories is glaringly weak. Turnaround is only
now becoming appreciated as a special discipline in education. Training for special-
ized school leaders in turnaround management is in its infancy. The lack of a strong
base of outside turnaround partners clearly stems from lack of public investment in
this critical resource. What little demand there is has been driven by private grants.
Inadequate Political Will: Lack of constituency, lack of turnaround skills,
and uncertain outcomes reduce the likelihood of a strong state response
School intervention has suffered from episodic, confusing policy design, con-
sistent under-funding, and indecisive political support. NCLB, ironically, has not
helped. Its five restructuring options include one “wild-card” alternative that has
been used as a limited-change escape from the other, more dramatic options. The
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions are moving so many schools into corrective
action and restructuring categories that states have begun reducing their commit-
ment to intervention. Because failing schools have no political constituency, financial-
ly pressed state governments have found it difficult to launch and sustain the kind of
intervention effort that might make a difference. And finally, responsibility for manag-
ing intervention has fallen to state education agencies that are already under-
resourced and over-extended and, generally, are politically sensitive agencies ill-suited
to crafting powerful, imaginative turnaround strategy.
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Current Intervention Strategies: Four Inadequacies that Must Be Addressed
3.1
How can the now-emerging field of
school intervention address the short-
comings described on the previous
page, and in the “map” of the inter-
vention-design landscape on the fac-
ing page? Together, they summarize a
set of public policy and school reform
strategies that appear to have missed
the mark altogether on both the
nature of the intervention required by
failing schools, and the scale of the
intervention indicated by the magni-
tude of the problem.
And yet: the turnaround challenge, we
believe, is an addressable public policy
problem. Moreover, as we argued in
Part 1, we believe that turnaround of
failing schools represents an opportu-
nity to bring about fundamental
change in education on a broad basis.
That is the focus of the remainder of
this report: defining the difference
between intervention as it has (most-
ly) been done to date, and a more
complete, ambitious form of interven-
tion we call integrated, comprehen-
sive turnaround design – or, “true
turnaround” for short.
The graphic below summarizes our
approach.
• First, it is staked to our analysis of
the HPHP schools in Part 2 and
the Readiness Model for high-
poverty schools that resulted from
that analysis.
• Second, it focuses (in Part 3) on the
elements of turnaround design we
believe are critical to its success at
the ground level: Conditions,
Capacity, and Clustering, the three
‘C’s of turnaround design.
• Third, it presents our view (in Part
4) of how these elements can be
enabled at scale, through the cre-
ation of turnaround zones with
special operating conditions and
supports, and a coordinated frame-
work of state, district, and outside
partner support.
None of this is simple to accomplish.
We are fully aware, having been
deeply involved in Massachusetts edu-
cation policymaking for ten years, of
the complex political dynamics that
can make the organization, launch,
and successful implementation of
such a public policy initiative a daunt-
ing challenge. But we have also seen
success come to Massachusetts, first-
hand, from a sustained, statewide
commitment to real reform among
government, business, community,
and education leaders. Part 4 begins
with a discussion of these dynamics
and the need for states to build a lead-
ership constituency for failing schools.
But first, in Part 3, we elaborate on
the three ‘C’s.
What Success Requires
(continued)
42
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
For More Analysis of…
• Current intervention strategies in gener-
al: Appendix A provides an in-depth exami-
nation of what’s been tried, organized into
the three categories introduced in Figure 3B:
Program Change, People Change, and
Condition Change. Appendix A also provides
an analysis of No Child Left Behind and its
impact on turnaround design.
• State and district intervention initiatives
of particular interest: The Supplemental
Report offers profiles of ten representative
state intervention efforts and four school dis-
trict programs of special note – Chicago,
Miami-Dade, New York City, and Philadelphia.
3.1 What Success Requires 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support
Engineering the Framework for Turnaround: Key Steps
FIGURE 3A
This chart plots three current forms of
school intervention on a graph indicating
the comprehensiveness of each form
against its scale.
• Program Change initiatives have represent-
ed the vast majority of intervention initiatives,
including the federal government’s massive
Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program
and the New American Schools (NAS) models.
This form of intervention provides help in a
vast array of ways – including whole-school
modeling – but stops short of changing the
system in which the work is undertaken, or
the people who are undertaking it.
• People Change initiatives imply a judgment
that turnaround of failing schools involves
more than improving programs; it must include
some change in the people implementing the
reform as well. Some school districts, notably
Washington DC and San Francisco, have experi-
mented with total staff reconstitution: firing
everyone and building a new staff. Virginia is
experimenting with a Turnaround Specialists
program that replaces principals in failing
schools with other school leaders who have
proven track records of effectiveness. These ini-
tiatives go farther than the Program Change
models, but still stop short of addressing barri-
ers in the operating conditions that prevent
reform from fulfilling its potential.
• Conditions Change initiatives provide authority
to turnaround leaders to make choices regarding
programs and key resources including staff,
schedule, and budget. They attempt to reconnect
incentive structures to the school’s educational
mission (through, for example, professional
norms for compensation and collaboration).
Comprehensive turnaround, we believe, inte-
grates all three of these forms of change. A
handful of major districts have begun to experi-
ment with forms of intervention that try to
address all three. The reforms are too new to
have produced definitive results. Turn to
Appendix A and the Supplement for a more thor-
ough treatment of this analysis and profiles of
some of those intervention experiments.
43
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 3B
Current Interventions: Some Scale, but Little True Comprehensiveness
3.1
44
Changing Conditions: Establishing
the operating conditions and new
incentives necessary for school-level
decisions to be made more on the
basis of what’s best for students and
achievement than on the needs of
adults. That means flexible authority
over critical resources – people, time,
money, and program – and profes-
sional incentives that actively encour-
age people to do their best work.
S
upremely skillful principals with
adequate resources pursuing com-
monly-held, research-based reforms
have at least some chance of improv-
ing a low-performing school. But
their success appears to come despite
the context of governance, decision-
making systems, and operating condi-
tions in which they do their work. As
our own seven years of effective-prac-
tice research and our analysis of simi-
lar studies show, principals who suc-
ceed in high-poverty, high-challenge
schools tend to be strategy mavericks
and resource entrepreneurs. They
extract from the system what’s valu-
able to their school, they find ways
around the most dysfunctional obsta-
cles, and they enlist their staff into
willingly coming along with them.
It should not have to be that way, and
it cannot if we are to meet the chal-
lenge of failing schools at the scale of
the need. The challenges presented by
high-poverty schools are too great,
and the supply of supremely skillful
principals is simply too small. Hence
the first of the three ‘C’s of effective
turnaround at scale: Establishing the
changing conditions.
By “conditions,” we don’t mean work-
ing conditions in the classic sense of
the phrase: temperature in the hall-
ways, rowdy students, number of kids
in a class. We mean the large set of
systemic operating conditions that
actively shape how everyone – adults
and students alike – behave in the
school. This set of conditions is driv-
en primarily by two forces: authority
to make choices (particularly regard-
ing the key resources of people, time,
money, and program); and the nature
of the incentive structure.
Authority to Make Choices
One thread that runs through the
research on effective schools and
high-performing high-poverty schools
is the central importance of allocating
a school’s resources in ways that maxi-
mize student learning. Four kinds of
resources stand out as most critical:
1
People: Abundant research sup-
ports the primacy of good teaching
in determining student achieve-
ment. (Hattie, 2003; Rowan,
Correnti, & Miller, 2002; Sanders,
Wright, & Horn, 1997) Schools
seeking to raise student achieve-
ment dramatically put the right
people in the right positions to do
their most effective work, and then
enable that performance with oper-
ating conditions and incentives
(see below) that support it.
Turnaround school leaders must
have the ability to shape the staff in
their schools, without regard to
seniority or other contract bargain-
ing restrictions.
Time: Schools that are effective
with previously low-performing
students typically use time in sub-
stantially different ways from the
norm. At the elementary level, they
increase the time students spend in
core academic instruction (many
studies, with Kannapel & Clements
2005 a recent example). At the high
school level, HPHP schools are
exceedingly deliberate about the
use of instructional time – arrang-
ing available time to help “catch
up” students who arrive behind
(Education Trust, 2005) and in
some cases rewriting the entire
weekly and yearly school calendar.
(Mass Insight, 2001-5) Effective
schools also rework teachers’ time
to allow more monitoring, data-
analysis, planning, and professional
development.
Money: Most intervention program
leaders are handcuffed by their lack
of control over school budgets,
which in turn undercuts their abili-
ty to implement the most impor-
tant elements of their turnaround
plan. The charter schools among
the HPHP schools we studied have
the necessary budget authority;
principals at other HPHP schools
tend to be mavericks with district
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3.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective Turnaround
Reform depends on the context in which it’s applied
1
It is important to recognize that to some degree, these four resources are fungible. That is, they should not be regarded as separate resource “silos” to be treated separately from each other, but as different articulations of available
resources that skillful school and district leaders allocate according to their most important strategies.
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.1 What Success Requires
policy and “resource entrepre-
neurs,” as discussed in Part 2,
in order to gain at least a measure
of flexibility.
Program: Turnaround leaders
need sufficient authority to shape
their school’s teaching approaches
and related services around the
mission and their local circum-
stances – within a framework of
support and direction provided to
them by network partners (which
may include their district).
Much of this “resource authority”
may seem to pertain mostly to untra-
ditional schools – schools organized
to conduct their work somewhat or
completely outside of normal public
school district structures. And this is,
in many ways, the point: the nature of
school turnaround work requires that
we learn from these outside-the-system
approaches and develop better ways of
applying them inside the system. (See
Figure 3C.) Without the ability to
select and place staff, structure time,
and allocate funds, it becomes
extraordinarily difficult for schools to
succeed, especially in a turnaround
context. Much authoritative research
supports the importance of authority
over resources. In RAND’s research
on comprehensive school reform, for
example, schools that were given the
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Applying Outside-the-System Approaches,
Focused Inside the System
FIGURE 3C
Building the Turnaround Model:
In order to enable school-level reform that incorporates the three “readiness” dimensions of
high-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – either
within or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibit
reform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a framework
of strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.
3.2
46
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
freedom to implement their models
were more likely to be successful.
(Berends et al, 2002) RAND came to
similar conclusions in its evaluation of
Edison Schools, which also has
achieved greater success when allowed
the autonomy to implement its pro-
gram. (Gill et al, 2005) Studies of suc-
cessful charter schools have pointed to
freedom and flexibility as critical to the
schools’ success. “In effective charter
schools,” one concluded, “in each case
the school program reflects the school’s
freedom to experiment, to be creative
in terms of organization, scheduling,
curriculum, and instruction.” (U.S.
Department of Education, 2004)
Though these examples emphasize
school-level autonomy, it is important
to note that the concept of “authority
to make choices” does not necessarily
mean untrammeled school-level flexi-
bility over all aspects of school opera-
tions. It may well be sensible, for
example, for a district to deploy a
research-based reading curriculum in
all of its chronically low-performing
schools, rather than allowing each
school to select its own approach. And
it may also be sensible for policymak-
ers to make school-level authority con-
tingent on capacity; e.g., requiring
school-level leaders to earn authority
by showing their ability to lead well.
Simply granting unlimited powers to
incapable school-level actors in such a
context is not a winning turnaround
strategy. But even where school-level
authority is not appropriate or desirable,
someone still needs authority over
resources in order to effect successful
turnaround. Someone needs the power
to allocate people, time, and money in a
way that supports the turnaround effort.
Incentives to Take Action
By “incentives,” we mean all of the
forces that shape behavior within a
school. Too often, incentives run in
exactly the wrong direction inside
chronically low-performing schools.
The incentive challenge is in fact evi-
dent at all levels of the system, from
those shaping superintendent decision-
making to those that define the daily
work of individual teachers and
administrators – and the engagement
of students in their own learning, as
was discussed in Part 2.
First, turnaround leaders at all levels
need incentives to act decisively in
support of fundamental change.
Over the past two decades, local lead-
ers have shown a marked preference
for less dramatic strategies even when
there is little or no evidence that such
a strategy will improve the education
its neediest students receive. (Brady,
2003; McRobbie, 1998; Wong & Shen,
2003) This preference is predictable:
dramatic strategies are by definition
more likely to upset strong interests,
necessitate policy changes, require the
reallocation of funding and people,
and otherwise disrupt the status quo.
Without countervailing incentives to
take bold action, district (and school)
leaders can scarcely be expected to do
so, though there always will be excep-
tions. As Brady (2003) found: “While
39 states have the authority to take
strong actions, and while these same
39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably
improved for years, we still find
strong interventions extremely rare.”
It is tempting to imagine that NCLB
has created such countervailing incen-
tives, but the evidence suggests other-
wise. Though NCLB requires districts
to “restructure” schools after five years
of failing to make Adequate Yearly
Progress, most restructuring appears
to be an extension of more incremen-
tal reform strategies common in the
earlier stages of NCLB intervention.
NCLB delineates four dramatic
options: reopening as a charter school,
contracting with an external manage-
ment provider, replacing relevant staff,
and state takeover. But it also includes
a fifth “other” option, which is the
route most districts are taking. Often,
“other” means using incremental
strategies such as new curriculum pro-
grams or staff development. Very few
districts seem to be employing NCLB’s
more dramatic restructuring options.
(DiBiase, 2005) Until and unless the
restructuring provisions of NCLB are
rewritten, if state policy leaders want
districts to have strong countervailing
incentives to take bold action, they
will have to create them. (See Part 4.2
for more on NCLB’s impact on turn-
around design.)
Incentives That Support Reform
Second, turnaround leaders and edu-
cators in turnaround schools need
powerful incentives to act in ways
that boost student performance dra-
matically. Current incentives produce
personal and organizational behavior
that tends to undercut performance by
Changing Conditions
(continued)
Dramatic strategies are by definition more likely to upset strong
interests, necessitate policy changes, require the reallocation
of funding and people, and otherwise disrupt the status quo.
3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.1 What Success Requires
47
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
students – particularly disadvantaged
students attending dysfunctional
schools. It would seem reasonable, for
example, that students in the lowest
performing schools should be taught
by the most able teachers. But under
current incentive and compensation
structures, it would be irrational to
expect the most capable teachers and
administrators to gravitate to the most
dysfunctional schools. New incentives
– differential pay, low-interest mort-
gages, loan-forgiveness, leadership
roles – must be developed if we are to
match the neediest students with the
teachers and leaders most capable of
helping them.
There are several different kinds of
incentives that policymakers can
mobilize to support school turn-
arounds, including:
Resource incentives: Policymakers
can offer additional funding for dis-
tricts or schools willing to under-
take turnaround strategies that are
most likely to work, rather then
pursuing less promising strategies.
Positioning incentives: Too
often, systems stigmatize schools
that are identified for improve-
ment. Instead, policymakers can
seek to create an environment in
which being designated a “turn-
around school” is valued due to
the attention, resources, condi-
tion changes, and promise that
attach to the status.
Accountability incentives:
Increasingly, No Child Left Behind
and state accountability systems
are insisting on more dramatic
interventions in under-performing
schools, providing ample motiva-
tion to proactive school and dis-
trict leaders – including both man-
agement and unions – to find solu-
tions or risk loss of control, budget
authority, and membership. While
these systems are imperfect in vari-
ous ways, policymakers can use
them as levers to induce action at
the district and school level.
Parent and community
incentives: Parents and communi-
ty members can mobilize in sup-
port of these efforts or detract from
them depending upon how they
become organized relative to the
change. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005;
Arkin and Kowal, 2005; Kowal and
Arkin, 2005) If change-oriented
policymakers and system leaders
can harness that mobilization in
support of viable turnaround
strategies, these incentives can run
in the right direction. Alternately,
if opponents of change are more
effective at capitalizing on this
force, then the incentives will con-
tinue to work against change as
they so often do.
Condition change may be the most
difficult and contentious of the three
‘C’s we propose as vital ingredients
for effective turnaround. It confronts
established interests in the form of
bureaucratic state and district con-
straints, teacher unions and, some-
times, parent and professional associ-
ations. But altered operating condi-
tions and incentive structures are
hallmarks of the HPHP schools, and
district/union collaborating around
turnaround zones in New York,
Chicago, Miami, and elsewhere show
that it can be done. Turnaround
efforts that continuously require
decision-making staked to the best
interests of children, instead of
adults, will be on the right track.
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How to Establish the Enabling Conditions:
Create a Turnaround Zone
They go by different names: Improvement Zone (Miami-Dade). Empowerment
Zone (New York City). Opportunity Zone (Houston). Superintendent’s Schools
(Boston). Renaissance 2010 or “Ren-Ten” schools (Chicago). But they all reflect
the same idea: create special, protected space to provide the changing condi-
tions that research and common sense suggest are necessary for effective turn-
around of under-performing schools. Create, in other words, a turnaround zone.
There is no one model for a turnaround zone. Each of the experiments under-
way in the urban districts listed above is different from the others. But their
goals are the same: to remove common barriers to reform, propel fundamental
(as opposed to incremental) change, reconnect incentives with the schools’ edu-
cational mission, provide a focus for increased support from the district and
from outside partners, and – last but not least – to replace stigmatizing labels
with a strongly positive identity. Turnaround zones are efforts to actualize the
Readiness to Act leg of the HPHP Readiness school model, and to enable school
leaders to expand their staff’s Readiness to Teach.
Districts have led the way in creating such zones. (See Appendix A and the
Supplemental Report for our analysis.) But states now have the opportunity to
learn from the district experiments and create statewide zones that bring the
changing conditions to every district and school undertaking turnaround. That is
one of the foundation ideas in our proposed Turnaround Framework, which is
described in Part 5.
3.2
48
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Building Capacity: Enhancing
schools’ ability to recruit, train,
assign, and support people with the
right skills for the right jobs; and
building, in particular, new capacity
among internal school leadership
teams and external turnaround part-
ners in the specialized skills of school
turnaround management.
T
urnaround is, at its core, a peo-
ple strategy. No matter how good
a new curriculum is, or how solid the
data analysis is, or how imaginatively
the school day is organized, or how
new the technology is – no matter
about all of that – schooling is funda-
mentally a human enterprise. High-
performing, high-poverty schools give
their highest priority to recruiting the
best staff possible and enabling them
to do their best work. Failing schools,
on the other hand, are a painfully
clear reflection of public education’s
general failure to understand and
adopt professional human resource
management systems and strategies.
In the realm of capacity-building,
effective turnaround requires:
• A fundamental rethinking of
internal HR approaches – includ-
ing recruitment, induction, devel-
opment, allocation, and evaluation
– in order to enable people current-
ly in the system to perform at the
highest levels and to attract highly
dedicated, highly skilled newcomers
to the mission. This is true not just
at the level of the classroom
teacher; it’s just as true at every
level in the system of supports for
that teacher, including principals
and coaches, district and school
managers of turnaround efforts,
and framers and implementers of
turnaround policy at the state level.
• A fundamental rethinking of how
external capacity is applied – how
schools, districts, and states work
with outside partners, who have an
important role to play that would
not be supported by the nature and
structure of most current school/dis-
trict/provider relationships.
• A clear understanding of turn-
around management as a disci-
pline with a distinct skill set; the
inadequacy of current turnaround
management capacity everywhere
in the system; and the state’s
responsibility to address that gap.
• Finally: the provision of sufficient
funding and resources. The vast
majority of any investment that
states and districts make in turn-
around will go to building the
capacity required to implement the
strategies comprehensively. Partial
implementation because of insuffi-
cient funding will produce, pre-
dictably, a dimmer result.
Revitalizing Internal HR
Leaders of outside-the-system schools
such as charters and charter-like
schools say that perhaps the most
important authority they have – the
definer of what’s different in their
schools from the traditional model –
is the ability to shape their school staff
into the high-performance team that
schooling in high-poverty environ-
ments requires. (Mass Insight for the
NewSchools Venture Fund, 2007)
Principals of regular, in-district public
schools generally lack the same kind
of authority – a crippling blow to any
serious turnaround effort. But as the
research presented in Part 2 and the
Supplemental Report shows, princi-
pals leading high-performing, high-
poverty (HPHP) schools find ways to
exercise that authority, even when
they have to work around contractual
requirements and longstanding oper-
ating habits. “Effective leaders used all
available discretion and opportunity
to hire the ‘right’ people,” researchers
in Massachusetts found, “and maxi-
mized staff effectiveness by placing
them in the right roles. This some-
times meant pushing people out of
their comfort zones.” (UMass
Donahue Institute, 2007)
This is the intersection of the first two
of our three ‘C’s of effective turn-
around, Changing Conditions and
Building Capacity. The objection to
providing school and district leaders
with more authority over hiring, fir-
ing, placement, responsibilities, and
evaluation is usually that it will lead to
unfair practices or to the school’s
“managers” taking advantage of its
“workers.” In fact, the HPHP schools
demonstrate exactly the opposite
effects. A central finding of the UMass
Donahue Institute study cited above,
which studied matched pairs of high-
and low-performing schools in the
same urban district, is fairly typical:
“Teachers in higher performing
3.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround
Urgently needed: broader, deeper turnaround capacity at every corner of the system
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
49
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
schools frequently characterized their
principals as demanding, but also as
extremely supportive of teachers who
are trying to meet those demands.
There was a motivational aspect to
principals’ support – a sense that they
share a common commitment – and
this often equated to high morale and
energized staff within higher perform-
ing schools.” Effective HR manage-
ment is vastly more difficult than it
should be in most public schools
today. (The Education Partnership,
2005-7) Changing the operating con-
ditions to allow leaders to lead is the
first step towards assembling the
ground-level capacity required to turn
around a failing school.
Redefining External Partnerships
At a meeting of Massachusetts’ lead-
ing school improvement service
providers a couple of years ago, Mass
Insight and about twenty other organ-
izations were asked to pin cards
describing our initiatives onto sepa-
rate posters representing the state’s
largest school districts. This innocent
exercise produced a fascinating (and
discouraging) result. Many posters
looked like pincushions, and many
providers – including Mass Insight –
were taken aback at the number of
other providers who were hard at
work in their best partner districts.
None of us had any real idea how
much “providing” was going on, and
nowhere was there any degree of
coordination among partners working
in the same district.
It is little wonder that teachers
famously say, as various streams of
reform and partner organizations
float overhead, “duck and cover – this
too shall pass.” Where school culture
is weakest, in chronically under-per-
forming schools, this syndrome is
deeply felt. In order for turnaround
schools to have a chance at success,
their relationship with outside part-
ners needs significant restructuring –
and the pool and capacity of potential
turnaround partners needs to be
widened and deepened considerably.
That is the central idea behind
Figure 3D: the reorganization of
the current, highly fragmented
school/partner model into a new one,
for turnaround schools, that builds
on the “systems-integrator” approach
now being used successfully in many
other sectors including business and
healthcare. In this model, lead turn-
around partners take on the respon-
sibility of integrating other providers
into a coherent whole. The current
model assumes that someone in the
school or district will accomplish this
integration, but that appears to be
more the exception than the rule.
In the “Old-World” model of school/provider partnerships still prevalent today, multiple part-
ners work independently in a fragmented, confusing web of disconnected support. In the
“New-World” model most appropriate for turnaround, a lead turnaround partner acts as
systems integrator and coordinates the providers. The “New-World” model illustrated here
also reflects the greater capacity required for turnaround throughout the system: particularly
at the school, but also at the district (through a turnaround zone organized to serve a clus-
ter of schools), partner, and state levels.
FIGURE 3D
3.3
50
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Lead partners can maximize the
value that all outside providers bring
to the task of turnaround.
The same logic applies to turnaround
schools’ need to build strong connec-
tions with social services – the other
large-scale public investment in disad-
vantaged communities, which too
often takes place without much if any
integration with the schools. Through
sheer determination and the “resource
ingenuity” element of our HPHP
Readiness school model, effective
principals in high-poverty settings
already pursue these connections. The
key is lowering the bar so that these
connections happen without requir-
ing exceptional leadership.
The final point to make regarding
turnaround partners is connected to
the need for turnaround capacity-
building throughout the system.
There is exceedingly little capacity,
currently, in the supply of outside
turnaround partners. Most states
seeking to apply outside expertise to
under-performing schools end up hir-
ing recently retired educators as indi-
vidual consultants, who then most
often perform their responsibilities
with very little training or coordina-
tion with their fellow consultants, or,
for that matter, results. There is an
important time consideration for
states in considering how they might
expand provider capacity for turn-
around – in effect, playing a role on
the demand-side to stimulate the
development of higher-capacity turn-
around organizations. Just as NCLB
triggered an enormous (and some-
what chaotic) expansion of the
provider network for Supplemental
Education Services on behalf of
under-performing students, so may it,
soon, trigger dramatic expansion of
turnaround assistance for under-per-
forming schools. That expansion,
inevitably, will also be somewhat
unmanaged and chaotic. But states
can maximize provider effectiveness
through intentional, highly developed
collaborations with outside partners
and districts and an explicit strategy
to expand provider capacity. Some
districts – notably New York and
Chicago – are already showing the
way in working with foundations and
local organizations to expand outside
partner capacity. It is not a role that
states are familiar with, for the most
part. But it is a vital one.
Building Turnaround
Management Capacity
Decades of research on schools has
firmly established the central impor-
tance of school leadership quality,
accounting by one prominent estimate
for 25% of differences in student
learning. (Waters et al, 2003) The
importance of leadership appears even
greater in a school requiring dramatic
improvement. American Institutes for
Research and SRI International’s eval-
uation of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation’s high-school reform ini-
tiative, for example, found that leader-
ship was one of the key determinants
of successful reform in high schools.
(AIR/SRI, 2005) According to a cross-
industry literature review of “turn-
arounds,” about 70 percent of success-
ful turnarounds involve changes in top
management. (Hoffman, 1989)
Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround
(continued)
3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
Contract Manager
Consulting Partner
States and Districts May Contract
with Two Forms of Lead Turnaround Partner
• Assumes control over all aspects of school management
(overall design, curriculum, HR, staff development,
budgeting, scheduling, assessment, back-office services)
on a contract basis with the district or the state.
• Usually multiple-year contract, renewable on attainment
of performance benchmarks.
• Control remains with school district, but within
turnaround framework and conditions/reform
elements required by the state.
• Partner is deeply immersed in all aspects of developing
and collaboratively executing the turnaround plan.
• Partner and district are jointly held accountable
for fidelity to the plan and attainment of
performance benchmarks.
For more on governance issues in turnaround schools, see page 81 and related material in Part 5.
Note: With its “Performance,” “Contract,” and “Charter” schools, Chicago provides good exam-
ples of these different forms of providers and district/provider relationships. Some providers there,
like the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago, have begun filling
both kinds of roles in different schools. See the Supplemental Report for more information.
51
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Turnaround requires more than just
good leadership; it requires leadership
that is adept at the particular challenge
of turnaround. A wide range of research
suggests that leaders who will be
effective in efforts to achieve dramatic
improvement are likely to have
characteristics that are very different
from those of typical school leaders and
take actions that diverge significantly
from those required in more stable lead-
ership situations. (Kowal and Hassel,
2005; Arkin and Kowal, 2005; see box)
Though the research is fairly clear on
this point, policy and practice have yet
to apply it on any kind of scale. Some
states, major school districts, founda-
tions, universities, and non-profit
organizations have put new energy into
recruiting and training new principals
for urban schools. But very few pro-
grams are specifically preparing leaders
for the challenge of school turnaround.
The Virginia School Turnaround
Specialist Program, created by the edu-
cation and business schools at the
University of Virginia at the behest of
then-governor Mark Warner, is one
exception. States making a commit-
ment to turnaround will need to
address this capacity gap at the state
level, because few districts have the
resources necessary to do it themselves.
Finding the Money for Turnaround
Reforms significant enough to generate
dramatic improvement in chronically
low-performing schools will in most
cases require substantial investment of
financial resources. To the degree possi-
ble, system leaders will want to find this
investment by reallocating existing
resources first. As Harvard researcher
Richard Elmore (2002) argued: “The
evidence is now substantial that there is
considerable money available in most
district budgets to finance large-scale
improvement efforts that use profes-
sional development effectively. The
money is there. The problem is that it’s
already spent on other things and it has
to be reallocated to focus on student
achievement… Adding money to a sys-
tem that doesn’t know how to manage
its own resources effectively means that
the new money will be spent the same
way as the old money.” Miami-Dade
pursued this strategy in funding its 39-
school Improvement Zone in its first
year (2004-2005), finding reportedly
close to $1 million per school from
existing line items in the budget (see
the profile in the Supplemental Report).
A reallocation-first strategy also exerts
discipline on system and school lead-
ers to focus initially on the highest-
value-added changes. This kind of
focus is one of the hallmarks of suc-
cessful turnarounds across industries.
That said: the costs of school turn-
around (including money for new
staff, incentive and responsibility-
based compensation, new program
materials, outside partner services and
support, and especially additional time
in the school day or year) range from
$250,000 to a million dollars per
school, per year over three years, with
declining investment in subsequent
years. (See the “Sample Turnaround
Costs” box in Part 5.) On strictly
financial terms, these investments are
more than justifiable. It’s probable that
successful turnaround, viewed as a
percentage increase of overall school
spending, would more than pay for
itself in terms of savings on social serv-
ices and the increased productivity of
successfully maturing students. We
don’t know this for sure only because
it hasn’t yet been done.
How Effective School Turnaround Leaders Work
For their useful report, Turnarounds with New Leaders and Staff (Learning Point Associates,
2005), Kowal and Hassel distilled findings from more than a dozen different sources to
produce a set of desired attributes for effective turnaround leaders in school settings.
Such leaders, they suggest, tend to pursue common actions including the following:
Major Actions
• Concentrate on a few changes with big, fast payoffs
• Implement practices proven to work with previously low-performing students
without seeking permission for deviations from district policies
Support Steps
• Communicate a positive vision of future school results
• Collect and personally analyze school and student performance data
• Make an action plan based on data
• Help staff personally see and feel the problems students face
• Get key influencers within district and school to support major changes
• Measure and report progress frequently and publicly
• Gather staff team often and require all involved in decision-making to disclose and
discuss their own results in open-air meetings
• Funnel more time and money into tactics that get results; halt unsuccessful tactics
• Require all staff to change – not optional
• Silence change naysayers indirectly by showing speedy successes
• Act in relentless pursuit of goals rather than touting progress as ultimate success
3.3
52
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Clustering for Support: Organizing
turnaround for effectiveness and
efficiency in school clusters by need,
type, or region. Educators engaged
in turnaround need particularly
strong support networks, located
either within their district or (in
low-capacity districts) across district
lines. These mini-district clusters,
created in conjunction with district
leaders and turnaround partners,
provide specialized support to
schools engaging in turnaround
under special operating conditions
established by the state.
S
chools need networks. They need
them for reasons of both efficiency
and effectiveness. Regular public
schools, of course, have been organized
into district networks for better than a
hundred years. Even notoriously inde-
pendent charter schools have begun to
organize networks of like-minded
schools, and charter management
organizations are creating new schools
in clusters – witness KIPP Academies’
recent announcement of its goal to
open a total of 42 schools in Houston.
Failing schools have been failed by
their networks. By NCLB’s definition,
schools in restructuring have failed to
meet their goals for at least six years.
The presence of failing schools in a
district does not necessarily mean that
the district is incapable. (Boston, the
Broad Prize winner for urban school
district effectiveness in 2006, has
more than two dozen schools in
which more than half of the students
have failed either English/Language
Arts or math over multiple years.)
But something needs to change, fairly
dramatically, in order for schools that
have been failing for six years to turn
around. In our three ‘C’s model, we
have argued that the operating condi-
tions need to change, and that various
capacity challenges need to be
addressed. We are convinced that
another, equally important part of the
answer lies in a third C: clustering for
support. In other words: intentionally
organizing for school turnaround at
the network level.
Clustering for Efficiency
As Irving Hamer, the educator who
created the 39-school Improvement
Zone in Miami-Dade under
Superintendent Rudy Crew, has con-
tinually reminded us in his role as an
advisor on this project, turnaround “is
past the time for onesies and twosies.”
The number of schools in need is too
great – and the advantages of cluster-
ing are too compelling.
Virtually all of the most far-reaching
district turnaround efforts underway
today are using some sort of cluster
approach. (See Attachment A and the
Supplemental Report for profiles of
the initiatives in Miami-Dade, New
York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.) The
clustering is often tied together with
each district’s “portfolio” of interven-
tion strategies, involving different
forms of school management: one
turnaround cluster being organized by
the teachers’ union, other clusters
being managed by universities or
other intermediary organization, and
other clusters managed by a turn-
around office within the district itself.
State intervention efforts, on the other
hand, appear to have largely refrained
from clustering. Many states offer
staff and leadership development pro-
grams to selected high-need districts
and schools; many provide guidance
and change coaches to schools in
Restructuring or Corrective Action.
But few take a more managed
approach to creating networks of
schools along strategic lines: vertically
(focusing on successful transitions for
students from their elementary
through their high school years), or
horizontally (by type – for example,
urban middle schools or alternative
high schools for at-risk students and
dropouts). Organization of the work
can take several forms, as shown in
Figure 3E:
• Cluster Example 1: across a larger
number of districts, each of which
has just one or two chronically
under-performing schools, or
where the state wants to encourage
implementation of particular
school models and approaches –
for example, grade 6-12 academies.
3.4 The Third C: Clustering for Support
It’s not just about autonomy. Failing schools need intensive network support.
Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent,
deliberate blending of “loose” and “tight” in
implementation and design.
3 ‘C’s of Effective Turnaround
CHANGING CONDITIONS
BUILDING CAPACITY
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT
3.4 Clustering for Support 3.3 Building Capacity 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
53
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
How Different Clusters Support the Work of Turnaround Differently
Clusters are small (5- to 20-school) reform
networks organized with intention around a
common attribute: school type, student need,
reform approach, geography, or feeder pat-
terns. The cluster organizer (which could be a dis-
trict or a turnaround partner) adjusts its support
in part around the nature of that attribute.
This graphic presents three possible clusters. They
can be loosely grouped as “horizontal” (schools
by type) or “vertical” (schools by feeder patterns).
• Cluster 1 (horizontal) could serve a set of
specialty schools – grade 6-12 academies, mid-
dle college schools, Montessori elementaries –
across several districts
• Cluster 2 (horizontal) could serve middle
schools in three continguous, small-city
school districts
• Cluster 3 (vertical) could represent a special
turnaround “carve-out” or zone within a large
urban district, serving schools at all K-12 levels
and potentially following district feeder patterns
We could find no research that points to an opti-
mum size for school clusters. New York City caps its
school cohorts at 25. In the words of one advisor
to this project: they should be large enough to be
an enterprise, and small enough to be successful.
FIGURE 3E
3.4
54
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
• Cluster Example 2: two to four
districts, organized and supported
by the state, where combined turn-
around work makes sense because
of geographic proximity or because
the work focuses on schools that
share particular attributes.
• Cluster Example 3: within single
districts conducting turnaround on
behalf of a cohort of under-per-
forming schools (or multiple
cohorts, in districts pursuing a
portfolio of different approaches
with different governance and/or
management structures).
Clustering for Effectiveness
Effective turnaround at scale requires
a transparent, deliberate blending of
“loose” and “tight” in implementa-
tion and design. The loose/tight
dynamic has come under some study
in recent years, most notably in a
report funded by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and prepared by
leaders from the foundation,
NewSchools Venture Fund, and the
Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based
non-profit. (Colby et al, 2005)
“Loose” refers to latitude in manage-
ment or design, with decisions being
made out in the field; “tight” in this
context means more centralized con-
trol. Questions of looseness and
tightness can be applied across the
full range of school management and
design dimensions (see Figure 3F) –
as, in fact, they always are by districts
on behalf of their schools, in quite
often a fairly constant source of orga-
nizational tension.
The loose/tight dynamic deserves
much deeper study, as it is a linchpin
of reform across clusters of schools.
There is no one right “blend” that will
serve every circumstance; higher-
capacity schools and districts deserve
and sometimes even get broader lati-
tude (or looseness) to make their own
decisions, while clusters of some
kinds of schools – new 6-12 acade-
mies, for example – might insist on
tighter control while implementing a
new model.
Applying the loose/tight dynamic in
the turnaround context presents an
immediate contradiction in terms.
The changes in operating conditions
outlined earlier in this report are nec-
essary to allow the people closest to
the work to have a strong say in how
it is done. The HPHP schools vividly
demonstrate the importance of
school-based decision-making author-
ity and school-wide commitment to
reform. But leaving all decision-mak-
ing authority up to the schools – as in
the charter model – makes little sense
in a turnaround context. Turnaround
requires a careful balance that doesn’t
undercut the power of site-based deci-
sion-making but provides strong sup-
port, backed by shared authority, for
the work from the cluster-network
provider and the state.
Clustering for Support: Organizing the Change
(continued)
“Loose” vs. “Tight” Across Eight Dimensions of School Management and Design
The essential question is: which functions are best left to the site and which are best organized by the network? Edmonton, Oakland, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, among others, are all conducting
experiments on this question. There is no one best answer – more likely, different answers for different contexts – but for schools undergoing turnaround, the difference between a loose, blended, and generally
tightly managed cluster might look like this, in extremely simplified form.
Overall Design
& Approach Curriculum
Recruiting/
Hiring
Staff
Development /
Evaluation Budgeting Scheduling
Performance
Assessment
Back-Office
Services
Loose cluster School School Cluster/ School School School School School School
Blended cluster Shared Shared Cluster/ School Shared School School Shared Shared
Tight cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster Shared Shared Shared Shared Shared
3.4 Clustering for Support 3.3 Building Capacity 3.2 Changing Conditions 3.1 What Success Requires
FIGURE 3F
"What's gone around has come around. After a decade or so spent
largely on setting academic standards against which to hold
schools accountable, states are themselves being held accountable
for helping schools figure out how to meet them.
“The result is a huge leadership challenge."
– Jeff Archer, "Leading the Learning,"
Education Week, 2006
4.1 Organizing at the State Level
For Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools
Towards a framework that offers good support for good design
H
ow can states most effectively
organize a school turnaround
initiative that reflects everything we
have learned about what works – and
what doesn’t?
That is the central question of this
report, and the focus of Part 4.
The graphic for the proposed “New-
World” turnaround framework that
has emerged from our research, shown
at right, is where we will end up. On
the way there, we will discuss elements
in the framework that have less to do
with the business of turnaround (that’s
addressed by the three ‘C’s) in Part 3,
and more to do with the business of
planning, launching, and managing a
statewide initiative campaign.
For that is what’s needed to tackle the
challenge posed by failing schools: an
initiative that looks less like compli-
ance with state and federal accounta-
bility mandates, and more like an
inclusive, high-visibility, entrepre-
neurial partnership aimed at solving
an urgent public dilemma.
The Current Landscape
of State-Led Initiatives
Profiles of ten representative state
intervention efforts appear in the
Supplement to this report. In each state
initiative, there are elements of prom-
ise. But none of the states we looked at
(which have all been at the forefront of
this issue, in one way or another) had
been able to marshal the broad leader-
ship commitment, sustained public
investment, and comprehensiveness of
strategy required to bring about effec-
tive turnaround at the scale of the need.
Generally, with some caveats for
progress being made in some states,
current state intervention initiatives
appear to lack:
• Sufficient intensity, comprehensive-
ness, and sustainability. We saw lit-
tle state engagement in changing
operating conditions within turn-
around schools; little attention to
helping schools develop an overall
people strategy, as opposed to provid-
ing limited forms of staff develop-
ment; little clustering of schools with
similar attributes or turnaround
strategies; insufficient engagement in
building, statewide, capacity for turn-
around management both inside
schools and districts and among
turnaround partners; and only limit-
ed connections between school-level
turnaround efforts and parallel efforts to
improve struggling districts.
• Incentives powerful enough to
drive major change. We saw few
states establishing clear, aggressive
performance targets for restructur-
ing schools that carried equally clear
terminal consequences; and far too
little emphasis on positive incen-
tives that can motivate buy-in to
more fundamental kinds of reform.
• Strong public and private sector
commitment to turnaround. We
saw individuals (the occasional gov-
ernor, commissioner, or state board
chair) or state policymaking bodies
taking the lead in advocating for
turnaround, but not many signals of
the kind of public/private consensus
that has produced real impact in
other areas of school reform, such
as higher standards. In a few states,
courts are playing a role in focusing
attention to the issue, but business,
community groups, and universities
have for the most part not been
deeply engaged.
• Willingness to think outside of
the box regarding management
of the initiative. With a couple of
exceptions, school intervention
Part 4 examines:
4.1 Organizing at the State Level
for Turnaround of Under-
performing Schools
Towards a framework that provides
adequate support for good design
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact
on School Intervention
NCLB has forced the issue,
but has not catalyzed an
adequate response
4.3 Proactive Policymaking
Is Not Enough
A state turnaround initiative
requires entrepreneurial manage-
ment and broad coalition-building
P A R T 4
56
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
initiatives primarily have been
organized and operated through
the most traditional channel, mean-
ing the accountability or technical
service wing of the state education
agency. Virginia and Alabama are
two states that have tried (in very
different ways; see Supplemental
Report) to address the turnaround
challenge with a different kind of
management approach.
The Way Forward
Much of this is understandable, given
the nascent nature of accountability-
driven school turnaround. It is only in
the past couple of years that under-
performing schools have begun hit-
ting No Child Left Behind’s most
extreme categories – Corrective
Action or Restructuring. But there is a
growing recognition in the states we
studied that 2007 and 2008 are water-
shed years for state responsiveness on
this issue. The dimensions and com-
plexity of the challenge are clear
enough, and so now is the urgency as
more and more schools move into
each state’s category for the most dra-
matic forms of intervention.
Can it be done? We are convinced that
it can – if states approach the chal-
lenge with commitment and inven-
tiveness. The framework we present
in this section of the report encom-
passes, at the tactical level, the three
‘C’s discussed in Part 3. But it also
includes two other elements we
believe are fundamental to success:
• Statewide and community coali-
tion-building: Creating a con-
stituency and leadership consensus
for turnaround that is strong
enough to sustain the effort and
retain a focus on what works for
students, more so than adults.
• Freedom and authority to manage
the initiative creatively: Providing
the same degree of operating
authority to the statewide manage-
ment of the initiative that the
framework insists school turn-
around leaders need – perhaps
through the creation of new kind
of coordinating agency.
These elements are explored in Part
4.3 and in the proposed framework
that follows. First, in Part 4.2, we dis-
cuss the state policymaking context in
which this – or any – kind of turn-
around framework would be imple-
mented, one shaped more than any-
thing else by the impact of No Child
Left Behind.
Can it be done? We are convinced that it can – if states
approach the challenge with commitment and inventiveness.
The proposed framework, presented in Part 5, incorporates the three
‘C’s of effective turnaround and two additional elements: the building
of statewide and community coalitions necessary to sustain support;
and providing for effective coordination of the initiative.
57
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Preview of the Proposed
State Framework for School Turnaround
FIGURE 4A
4.1
58
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
T
he federal No Child Left Behind
Act has brought accountability to
public education, as its framers
hoped. A critical element of that new
emphasis on accountability is the
law’s provisions for schools that fail to
meet their achievement targets. The
urgency produced by solid, unar-
guable performance data identifying
struggling schools, coupled with a set
of mandated, escalating intervention
strategies, was supposed to usher in a
new “no-excuses” era of state-driven
turnaround in our most chronically
under-performing schools.
That’s not the way it has turned out.
At least: not yet.
NCLB’s unfulfilled impact on school
turnaround is a classic example of
unintended consequences. Three
aspects of the law, in particular, have
produced responses at the state and
local levels that are different from
what supporters of the legislation
were undoubtedly envisioning. They
relate to the timing and sequencing of
NCLB’s consequences for underper-
formance; the nature of the interven-
tion options presented by the law; and
the scale of the schools heading
through the accountability pipeline.
(A fourth aspect – the lack of targeted
funding for the more intensive forms
of intervention – has more to do with
politics and budget-making than with
policy design, and may improve with
NCLB’s forthcoming reauthorization.
Seven Years to Action
Figure 4B shows the sequence and
timeline for the steps required of
under-performing schools under
NCLB. The steps provide for a gradu-
ally escalating series of measures
designed to improve struggling
schools, serve currently enrolled stu-
dents with additional help, and offer
them the opportunity to switch to a
different (presumably better) school.
Some aspects of the steps in years 3-5 of
the series have come under scrutiny for
failing to produce desired results,
including the Supplemental Educational
Services programs and the school
choice provisions. But our principal
focus here is on the “final step” –
NCLB’s provisions for schools that have
failed to improve despite the interven-
tions set in place by interim steps.
On paper, the escalating conse-
quences for under-performing schools
might seem logical and appropriate.
In practice, though, a chronically fail-
ing middle school could pass two
complete generations of students
through grades 6-8 before NCLB’s
most intensive forms of intervention
are introduced. While those students
are muddling their way through their
years at the school – developing nei-
ther the skills nor the knowledge
required to succeed in high school –
the school undergoes, in most states,
an extensive series of reviews and
light-touch forms of planning assis-
tance that have little significant
impact. The “Call to Action” chart on
page 7 provides a vivid portrait of
policy “fiddling” while student
achievement lags.
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School Intervention
NCLB has forced the issue, but has not catalyzed an adequate response
The NCLB Intervention Timeline: Seven Years to Intensive Intervention FIGURE 4B
Years Not Improvement Status
Making AYP Under NCLB Action To Be Taken
1 None None
2 None After second year of not making AYP, school
is identified as “In Need of Improvement”
3 In Need of School choice for enrolled students
Improvement (Year One) Develop and implement improvement plan
4 In Need of Continue choice
Improvement (Year Two) Supplemental educational services (SES)
to low-income children
Develop and implement improvement plan
5 In Need of Continue choice
Corrective Action Continue SES
Implement corrective action plan (may include
replacing school staff, instituting new curriculum,
extending the school year or day, bringing in
outside experts)
6 Planning for Continue choice
Restructuring Continue SES
Develop a 2-year restructuring plan
(see in box on next page)
7 Restructuring Continue choice
Continue SES
Implement restructuring plan
Adapted from Center on Education Policy (2006) and the Commission on No Child Left Behind
(Aspen Institute, 2007)
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
59
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This is the first installment in our Intervention Taxonomy, designed to help clarify school-intervention’s
terms and to place NCLB’s five Restructuring options within the context of our analysis.
We have assigned labels to each option and ordered them differently from their appearance in the law
(in order to match the analysis coming in Taxonomy 2). These “Same School” options (see the folder
tabs at extreme right) all share one thing: everything else may change – governance, management,
teachers, programs – but the student population at the school essentially remains the same. There is
another option, though, being undertaken by some districts – most notably Chicago, under its
Renaissance 2010 initiative. That “New Start” option is to simply close under-performing schools, dis-
tribute their students, and literally start over from scratch (usually as a charter, contract, or special in-
district school).
NCLB’s Five Restructuring Options Extend from Incremental to Major Change
TAXONOMY 1
FIGURE 4C
For a brief explanation of the NCLB
Restructuring options, see box on the following page.
4.2
60
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The “Other” Restructuring
Category: Taking the Easy Way Out
The box on this page spells out the
five options for restructuring that
NCLB requires of schools entering
their sixth consecutive year of under-
performance (defined as not making
Adequate Yearly Progress, their annu-
al achievement target). The options
also appear on the Intervention
Taxonomy 1 and 2 charts on pages 59
and 61. Three of the options involve
management change; the school
would be turned into a charter school,
or taken over by the state, or assigned
to an independent contractor. One
option, widely referred to as reconsti-
tution, calls for the replacement of
school staff and (potentially) leader-
ship; and the fifth option provides for
the implementation of “any other
major restructuring of the school’s
governance arrangement that makes
fundamental reforms.”
This fifth option, which we call
Revision on our Taxonomy charts,
has achieved a degree of notoriety
over the past several years as more
and more schools have moved
through NCLB’s intervention steps. A
host of policy studies produced by the
Center for Education Policy and other
groups has shown the extreme
propensity of schools in restructuring
(or their district leaders) to choose
this “wild card” option – the least
intrusive, by far, among the five. Out
of 200 Chicago public schools that
had entered the restructuring plan-
ning phase in 2005, for example, 195
chose this option. (See Figure 4D.) In
California, 76% of schools in restruc-
turing in 2005 had chosen the option
(see Taxonomy 2, facing page).
The fifth NCLB option, many
researchers suggest, has been used
essentially to extend the reliance upon
incremental strategies common in the
earlier stages of NCLB intervention –
new curricular programs or additional
staff development. (DiBiase, 2005;
CEP, 2006) What is intended under
the law to be a fundamental restruc-
turing of a school’s operations, man-
agement, and approach to teaching
and learning, in other words, has
most often stayed comfortably within
the realm of incremental reform. We
examine these strategies more closely
in Appendix A.
NCLB’s Mixed Impact
(continued)
A host of policy studies … has shown the extreme
propensity of schools in restructuring (or their district
leaders) to choose this “wild card” option – the least
intrusive, by far, among the five.
Restructuring Options Under NCLB
Schools in restructuring under No Child Left Behind (see sequence, page 58) must
undertake one or more of the following forms of intervention:
Charter Conversion: Reopen the school as a public charter school
Reconstitution: Replace “all or most of the school staff (which may include the prin-
cipal) who are relevant to the failure to make adequate yearly progress”
Contract Management: Contract with “an outside entity, such as a private manage-
ment company, with a demonstrated record of effectiveness, to operate the school”
State Management: Turn the “operation of the school over to the state educational
agency, if permitted under State law and agreed to by the State”
Revision: Engage in another form of major restructuring that involves fundamental
reforms, such as significant changes in the school’s staffing and governance
Some states have limited the options available to their public schools, for example by ruling out state takeover.
Initial labels are ours.
Schools in Restructuring Choose
Incremental Over Fundamental Reform
Chicago Schools in Restructuring, 2005
5 Schools
choosing chartering,
reconstituting,
or contracting
Source: Chicago Public Schools
In the fall of 2005, there were approximately 200 schools
in Chicago in NCLB-mandated planning for restructuring
or in restructuring itself. The state allows only four of the
five NCLB options for restructuring: chartering, reconsti-
tuting staff and principal, contracting, and the fifth “any
other major restructuring” category. Illinois does not
allow for a school to be turned over to the state. Of
those schools, none chose to charter, 1 replaced the staff
and principal, 4 replaced only the principal, none chose
to contract, and 195 chose “other major restructuring.”
195 Schools choosing
“any other major
restructuring”
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
FIGURE 4D
61
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This chart, adapted from one that appears in the Winter 2007 issue of Education Next (“The Easy
Way Out,” S. Mead), demonstrates educators’ and local policymakers’ propensity to choose the
“path of least resistence” among the five NCLB Restructuring options, using data from 533 schools
in California and Michigan. The vast majority conduct Revision work (NCLB’s “any other major
restructuring” choice), focusing on program change. Very few adopt any of the choices that involve
changes in management or governance, or that fundamentally alter operating conditions (authority
over staff, time, and money). California data 2005-6 and Michigan data 2004-5 are from the Center
on Education Policy 2005 , as cited in Mead.
Schools’ Response to NCLB’s Options: The Less Change, the Better
TAXONOMY 2
FIGURE 4E
4.2
62
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Scale Problem: Too Many
Schools in the Pipeline
NCLB has had another unintended
effect on turnaround design, particu-
larly in states that already had devel-
oped intervention efforts as part of
their own standards and school
accountability systems. To begin with,
NCLB’s mandates (and the federal
government’s unwillingness to be
flexible about compliance, in the years
after the law was passed) created
another layer of regulations, labels,
timelines, and consequences for
underperformance in states that had
already created their own system.
Trying to ascertain exactly what each
state is doing in the area of school
restructuring is a challenging exercise
in itself; some states appear to have
created parallel school accountability
plans (one of their own design, one
designed for compliance with NCLB),
while others have tried to merge the
two, with sometimes conflicting
results. One California policymaker
last year counted five separate
accountability systems in place at
once in that state, creating confusion
at every level.
But, even more discouraging: in some
states, NCLB has propelled so many
schools through the accountability
pipeline that policymakers – wary of
promising a level of intervention far
beyond what their current budgets
could possibly support – have begun
watering down restructuring plans,
severely curtailing the degree and
duration of state intervention support.
(See Figure 4F, opposite.) California is
perhaps the most visible example of
this trend; its extensive, thoroughly-
considered intervention plan of sever-
al years ago has more recently (in the
face of the now more than 700 schools
statewide facing restructuring)
become a pale imitation of its former
self. (See the Supplemental Report for
more information on California and
other states.)
NCLB, one could argue, cannot be
held to blame for the rising tide of
schools entering restructuring – that
would be akin to holding the weight-
scale responsible for the ten pounds
gained over the holidays. But large
numbers of schools are moving
through that accountability pipeline
because they are not making AYP on
behalf of a student subgroup –
English Language Learners (ELL), for
example, or Special Education stu-
dents or one or more demographic
groups. While these schools clearly
can use some help in serving the stu-
dent subgroups in question, in some
states they may be overloading the
accountability and intervention sys-
tem, with the result that the truly dys-
functional, under-performing schools
don’t receive the more fundamental
restructuring help they need.
NCLB’s Mixed Impact
(continued)
In some states, NCLB has propelled so many schools
through the accountability pipeline that policymakers…
have begun watering down restructuring plans.
From the Front Lines of State Intervention:
At the start of the 2006-2007 school year, Arizona identified sixty-four schools that were deemed “failing to meet academic standards.”
This figure represents an approximately six-fold increase in the number of schools in the restructuring phase in Arizona. As these schools
begin to undertake restructuring activities, the effectiveness and viability of Arizona’s team-based and aggressive approach to centralizing
school restructuring power will face an increasingly difficult capacity test….
During the 2005-2006 school year, 401 schools in California were in either the planning or implementation stages of restructuring.
Entering the 2006-2007 school year, this number jumped by approximately 75 percent, to 701 schools. In response to the challenges of
scale, California has changed course dramatically, adopting an approach to NCLB restructuring that focuses heavily on local control of
school turnaround efforts. In fact, California does not require approval of restructuring plans and primarily provides technical assistance
to local education agencies regarding the procedural considerations of devising a restructuring plan….
The growing issue of scale has caused Hawaii education officials to begin re-evaluating its privatized approach to restructuring schools.
Projected increases in the number of schools entering restructuring have caused concern over increases to already expensive private
restructuring programs. One official indicated her belief that the system was slowly moving toward a scenario in which all Hawaii schools
would enter the restructuring phase….
Note: These are excerpts from state profiles included in the Supplementary Report. See that report for more.
4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
63
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
From upper-right to lower-left: the mag-
nitude of the turnaround challenge is
forcing states to weaken the anticipat-
ed state role. This chart places selected
state plans for restructuring, based on pub-
licly available information, within a nine-cell
grid. State plans that are in the lower left
cell specify a minimal state role, both in
terms of restructuring design (the Y axis)
and in terms of involvement in implementa-
tion (the X axis). State plans that are in the
upper right cell, on the other hand, call for a
much more significant state role.
States’ original restructuring plans for
under-performing schools were in many
cases more “interventionist” than they have
become in recent years – since the passage
of NCLB and the burgeoning number of
schools entering the restructuring pipeline.
That migration towards a limited state role
is reflected by the arrows in this chart,
showing states that appear to have moved
from the center and upper right down
towards the lower left.
Two caveats. The chart is somewhat subjec-
tive, as many state plans call for a range of
intervention options and roles that could
place them in multiple cells; we have placed
these states as accurately as we could, as of
the winter of 2006-7. Secondly: this chart
depicts state plans for restructuring, and in
many cases there is some distance between
the plans and the subsequent follow-
through. States were selected because they
appeared to be broadly representative of
various types of approaches to restructuring,
discussed in Appendix A of the report and in
detail in the Supplementary Report.
NCLB’s Impact on State Planning for Intervention:
Diminished State Roles in Design and Implementation
FIGURE 4F
4.2
64
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not Enough
A state turnaround initiative requires entrepreneurial management and broad coalition-building
4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
S
tate leaders eager to create a more
effective initiative to turn around
failing schools will find, as we did,
guidance on what turnaround might
look like at the ground level, based in
part on the strategies of high-per-
forming, high-poverty schools. And
they’ll find an emerging research base
on the impact – or more accurately,
the lack of impact – of most state
intervention efforts to date on chroni-
cally under-performing schools.
They won’t find much guidance at all
on two aspects of the work we view
as critical to the success of any seri-
ous state-led effort to turn around
failing schools:
• The need to free up state govern-
ment’s management of the turn-
around initiative from typical
public-agency constraints; and
• The need to build coalitions of
leadership support for turnaround
at the state and local levels.
The first is required to provide the
state (and districts) with the same
operating flexibility to manage school
turnaround as that which schools
need in order to implement it success-
fully on the ground. The second is
required in order to create a con-
stituency for turnaround that is
strong enough to upset the status quo
– and sustain sizable and continuing
state investment.
Freeing Up State Government to
Lead Turnaround Effectively
Policymakers often chafe (often jus-
tifiably) when business principles are
applied to the affairs of state. So do
public school educators. Discussions
quickly devolve into arguments
about why producing successful stu-
dents is different from producing
successful widgets.
At the classroom level, the differences
may be important. But at the level of
managing and implementing change at
scale, the differences remain relevant
only if one assumes that education can-
not conduct its business any differently
from the ways it always has. Business
has learned, far better than education,
how change happens and what pre-
vents it from happening. When a fail-
ing IBM sought to reinvent its business
model in the 1970s, it did so by identi-
fying change agents and separating
them from the structures and culture
that had brought the company to its
knees. The unit that produced the IBM
PC was a “skunkworks” lab based in
Boca Raton – far from company head-
quarters in Armonk, NY. The business
literature, from Tom Peters (In Search
of Excellence, 1988) to Jim Collins
(From Good to Great, 2001), is rife with
examples of companies that under-
stood how to successfully incubate fun-
damental change. Public policymaking
and the implementation of new policy,
for the most part, have been slow to
incorporate these lessons.
State education agencies are the
default managers for any turnaround
initiative. But they are in many ways
ill-suited to conduct a dramatic-
change strategy by using their cus-
tomary structures and approaches –
just as IBM was ill-suited to redevelop
its own business model from within.
Restraints over hiring, salaries, and
authority in state agencies, coupled
with similar restraints over how work
is conducted in schools, have con-
spired to make it difficult for educa-
tion policy and practice to duplicate
business’s occasional success at rein-
venting itself.
What would a different model look
like? There is precedent in the
approach that some states have taken
in creating public-private, semi-
autonomous authorities to undertake
important public initiatives, including
infrastructure improvements and
transportation management. A turn-
around “authority” might well be con-
nected with a state education agency
and its commissioner – but be granted
sufficient operating flexibility to be
able to work effectively with turn-
around schools implementing funda-
mental change strategies. It would not
become a bureaucracy itself, with a
large staff of service providers, but
would take on the role of coordinating
the central state functions in turn-
around as defined in the proposed
framework that begins on page 69:
particularly, establishing and imple-
menting the condition-changing crite-
ria for turnaround design, and sup-
porting the development of turnaround
leadership capacity among educators
and turnaround partner organizations.
Like school leaders working on the ground, turnaround’s
statewide implementers need to be freed to do their
best work.
65
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
As with the thinking behind the exist-
ing public authorities, an agency to
coordinate a state turnaround initia-
tive should be able to recruit the very
best leadership possible, and provide
them with the tools and latitude nec-
essary to complete an important pub-
lic-service priority. The directors of
state initiatives we spoke with while
producing this report tended to feel
that their hands were somewhat tied
behind their back. Like school leaders
working on the ground, turnaround’s
statewide implementers need to be
freed to do their best work.
Building Leadership Coalitions
of Turnaround Support
Beyond questions of state turnaround
management is the matter of leader-
ship commitment, at both the state
and local levels. Failing schools have
no natural constituency. They tend to
be situated in higher-poverty neigh-
borhoods and communities that have
fallen into a continuous cycle of low
expectations. Low test scores do not,
as they might in more affluent com-
munities, spark activism from parents.
There is little ground-level demand for
state or district intervention in strug-
gling schools. What demand there is,
comes from state policymakers moni-
toring the economic and racial
achievement gap; non-profit and com-
munity leaders seeking to
Building Leadership Consensus for Turnaround
FIGURE 4G
Inventing a Constituency: Turnaround of failing schools has no natural set of supporters. The support required to
initiate and sustain strong state investment in intervention must be generated by statewide and local leaders who
are willing to take a stand. There are many convincing arguments for it, on grounds of equal opportunity, civil rights,
and social and economic need – all of them addressed in this report.
4.3
66
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
4.3 State Turnaround Management 4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.1 Organizing at the State Level
Proactive Policymaking
(continued)
revitalize communities through
improved public education; and busi-
ness leaders concerned about local
economies, skill levels in their recruit-
ment pools, or the social costs of
dropouts and unemployable high
school graduates.
There is logical precedent here; these
potential supporters are the same coali-
tion partners that, in many states
(Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland,
Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, and
Florida, to name just a few) champi-
oned the cause of standards-based
reform, even before the federal govern-
ment got into the act with No Child
Left Behind. In Massachusetts, business
leadership along with rare bipartisan
consensus in the state’s legislative and
executive branches led to the
Commonwealth’s successful imple-
mentation of an ambitious high school
graduation requirement in 2003. The
effort received a vital boost from the
state’s urban superintendents, whose
public support for the requirement and
for higher-standards reform (organized
in part by Mass Insight’s Great Schools
Campaign) provided the “air cover”
that policymakers needed to maintain
their commitment during the years of
controversy before the requirement was
implemented – and since.
1
Figure 4G shows the roster of potential
actors in a statewide coalition to advo-
cate for turnaround of failing schools.
Proponents of a more proactive turn-
around initiative need to consider the
agendas and likely roles of each one.
• Mission-driven supporters:
Selected foundations, non-profits,
and business leaders; some educa-
tion leaders, including policymak-
ers and practitioners. These are the
key instigators required to even get
a coalition off the ground.
Urban superintendents’ public support for Massachusetts’
graduation requirement provided the “air cover” that
policymakers needed to maintain their commitment
during the years of controversy before the requirement
was implemented – and since.
Preparing a “Manifesto” for Turnaround
Drawn and adapted from “How to Start an Insurrection,”
in Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel (2000).
1. Convincingly demonstrate the inevitability of the cause: Here’s why
turnaround is necessary, right now.
2. Speak to timeless human needs and aspirations: Here’s why you should
care about failing schools and the students they serve.
3. Draw clear implications for action: Here’s where the need suggests that
we start.
4. Elicit support: Here’s how you can contribute.
5. Search for “data bombs”: Find memorable local statistics on failing
schools that are strong enough to illustrate the need, and simple enough
to enter the language.
6. Find simple phrases and powerful analogies: Create “handles” for peo-
ple to learn to use as shorthand for the effort.
7. Stay constructive: Don’t rehearse past intervention failures unnecessarily.
8. Provide broad recommendations only: Don’t become trapped by a single,
do-or-die course of action.
9. Keep your manifesto short: The more concise, the better.
10. Make the manifesto opportunity-focused: Where’s the big win to focus
energy and resources on first?
11. Sometimes you need a stick: Identifying a bad outcome from status-quo
approaches can provide urgency and incentive.
1
The initiative was then called the Campaign for Higher Standards; it became the Great Schools Campaign after the first decade and phase of Massachusetts’ standards-based reform drive was
completed in 2003-4. See www.massinsight.org for more information.
FIGURE 4H
67
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
• Conditional supporters: Statewide
political leaders including the gov-
ernor, state board chair, chief state
school officer, and legislative lead-
ers; and local leaders, depending on
whether and how their communi-
ties would benefit (or not) under a
proposed state turnaround initia-
tive. Support from this group
requires a merging of multiple self-
interested agendas.
• Potential opponents: The most
obvious candidates here are local
school boards and teacher unions,
both caught up in concerns about
losing authority. But in fact, major
school districts such as Chicago,
Miami-Dade, Philadelphia, and
Boston have demonstrated the fea-
sibility of partnering with their
union locals (with support from
school boards) over turnaround
initiatives focused on their most
struggling schools. Massachusetts’
Commonwealth Pilot Schools ini-
tiative (see Appendix A) was
designed in large part to encourage
local collaboration around a major-
change turnaround strategy, and
was modeled on a ten-year-old
agreement between the Boston
Public Schools and the district’s
American Federation of Teachers
union affiliate.
As for other potential opponents:
Some legislators in communities with-
out failing schools may oppose dedi-
cating state funding for turnaround,
knowing that none of that funding will
ever show up in their communities.
Perhaps most importantly, legislators
and advocates for other investment
targets (within the realm of education
reform or not) will oppose sizable
increases in public funding for under-
performing schools, usually on the
grounds that the state money they’re
already receiving is being ill-spent.
How to Start an Insurrection
Insurrection is an incendiary term not
often heard in public policy circles.
But in his influential book, Leading the
Revolution, researcher and business
strategist Gary Hamel (2000) provides
a blueprint for engineering dramatic
change that turnaround advocates
would do well to review. The “mani-
festo” he describes (see box) as a
launchpad for “starting an insurrec-
tion” within a corporation could serve
just as well as an 11-point guide for
building the case for turnaround.
Other relevant advice for coalition-
builders and statewide turnaround
strategists from his book, which is
based on research into business turn-
arounds and grassroots movements:
• Win small, win early, win often.
In turnaround terms: Don’t try to
address every failing school at
once. Choose to work intensively
with a manageable group of
schools, districts, and clusters;
establish some success first, and
then expand from there.
• Co-opt and neutralize. In the con-
text of turnaround, this is true at
the tactical level, in schools, and at
the strategic and policy levels as
well. At both levels, in general,
turnaround cannot succeed and
endure without broad engagement
and buy-in. “Researchers agree that
reform only works if those most
directly involved in it (teachers,
school staff, school leaders, parents,
and students) buy into it.
Researchers… go so far as to say
‘No Buy-in, No Reform.’” (Cohen
and Ginsburg, 2001) The key to
gaining buy-in at both levels is
establishing, at the outset, consen-
sus that in these bottom-five-per-
cent schools, the status quo has not
worked and urgently needs to be
changed. Important elements in the
proposed turnaround framework
beginning on page 70 address this
issue of buy-in.
• Find a translator. The work of
turnaround is extraordinarily com-
plex. Yet its basic principles – and
the needs among failing schools
that drive them – must be made
clearly and memorably to decision-
makers and practitioners alike.
Hamel describes the need for a
“translator” to serve as a bridge
between the strategists who are
immersed in the work and every-
one else.
Coalition-building, as should be clear
from the discussion above, needs to
happen at two levels – statewide and
community. Statewide leadership con-
sensus can bring about productive pol-
icymaking and investment, but suc-
cessful, sustained implementation on
the ground requires support from edu-
cators, municipal leaders, parents, and
students. How the state can catalyze
that support, while requiring a level of
change that upsets the status quo, is
the balancing act that lies at the center
of the state turnaround policy frame-
work that follows.
Win small, win early, win often. In turnaround terms:
Don’t try to address every failing school at once.
4.3
“There are some things we know and a host of unanswered
questions, but this is the laboratory of the future."
– Michael Fullan, Leadership and Sustainability, 2005
Plan for Action
Recommendations for Policymakers,
Educators, and Turnaround Advocates
School Turnaround: a dramatic and comprehensive intervention
in a low-performing school that produces significant gains
in student achievement within two academic years.
Turnaround must also ready the school for the lengthier,
subsequent process of transitioning into a truly high-performing organization.
A
F
R
A
M
E
W
O
R
K
F
O
R
S
C
H
O
O
L
T
U
R
N
A
R
O
U
N
D
5
A Framework for Turnaround
of Under-Performing Schools
T
his suggested framework for a state initiative to turn around chronically
under-performing schools draws from the findings and conclusions reached
by Mass Insight’s researchers for this report, and from vetting with educators, poli-
cymakers, and reform experts nationwide. Its guiding assumptions rest on evi-
dence from research on school interventions and effective education practice over
the past ten years. The ten elements in the framework represent both a summary
of this report’s findings and a synthesis, applied to the challenge every state cur-
rently faces in addressing chronically under-performing schools.
The framework rests in part on the conclusion to our analysis of NCLB’s restruc-
turing options, presented in the final chart in our Intervention Taxonomy series
on page 75. The research suggests avenues for turnaround that NCLB does not, at
present, clearly and actively support. In particular: the turnaround strategy we
label “Superintendent’s Schools” in this chart reflects the thinking behind the
statewide turnaround zone and school clusters in the proposed framework.
There is no single state that has assembled, funded, and begun to implement a turn-
around strategy incorporating all of the elements of this framework. Aspects have
been drawn from several state intervention efforts – chiefly Massachusetts and some-
what from Florida, Maryland, and several of the other states profiled in the
Supplemental Report – and from districts with pioneering intervention programs
underway, including Chicago, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia.
The political landscape, social/economic circumstances, and education reform
experience and structures of every state will make development of this kind of ini-
tiative uniquely challenging. The proposed framework is an ambitious one. But
we believe that commitment, organization, and inventiveness on this scale is what
the research clearly suggests is required for any state that is serious about turning
around its most under-performing schools. The framework is intended – like the
entire report – to jumpstart informed discussion and action around the vital
importance of school turnaround, the opportunity it represents to bring about
fundamental change, and the need to pursue it with a fully integrated, compre-
hensive, well-supported strategy.
Part 5 presents our recommended framework for a state initiative to
turn around the most chronically under-performing public schools.
Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive
turnaround involve?
SYSTEM REDESIGN: Changing the Whole School
1. Turnaround is a dramatic, multi-dimensional change process at a chronically under-per-
forming school.
2. Successful school turnaround produces significant gains in student achievement over
a compressed time frame, as the first of a two-phase restructuring process.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies: How can the state catalyze effective
turnaround at scale?
CHANGING CONDITIONS: The Authority to Act
3. Effective turnaround relies on widely-recognized program reform elements, but it
depends equally on the conditions into which those reform elements are applied.
BUILDING CAPACITY: People Before Programs
4. Maximizing leadership and staff capacity is the most important element in turnaround suc-
cess – and the state’s most important role.
5. Fragmented, episodic assistance from outside partners must be replaced by a new par-
adigm of aligned, integrated support.
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT: Organizing the Change
6. Effective turnaround solutions focus on producing change at the school and classroom
level, organized in clusters of schools by need, design, or region.
7. Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent, deliberate blending of “loose”
and “tight” in implementation and design.
8. For scale, efficiency, capacity-building, and effectiveness, states should differentiate
their involvement in turnaround by the degree of local capacity.
Organizing the State Role: What is required to enable an
effective, state-led turnaround initiative?
STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS: The Necessary Leadership Consensus
9. Because under-performing schools have no natural constituency, advocates for turn-
around must proactively build leadership support at the state and community levels.
EFFECTIVE STATEWIDE COORDINATION: A Different Kind of Agency to Address
a Different Kind of Challenge
10. The state must free itself to be able to undertake this work.
P A R T 5
70
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role
SYSTEM REDESIGN:
Changing the Whole School
1
Turnaround is a dramatic, multi-dimensional change
process at a chronically under-performing school.
Turnaround is understood to be distinct from school
improvement because it: a) focuses only on the most consistently
under-performing schools – essentially the bottom five percent;
and b) involves system-transforming change that is propelled
by an imperative – the school must significantly improve
its academic outcomes or it will be redefined or removed.
Interventions focused on one particular strategy – staff develop-
ment, a new curriculum, a reconstituted teaching staff – are
unlikely to produce the desired result. Turnaround is the inte-
grated, comprehensive combination of fundamental changes in
program, people, conditions, and (sometimes, but not necessari-
ly) management and governance required to interrupt the status
quo and put a school on a new track towards high performance.
Because most chronically under-performing schools serve high-
poverty, high-challenge student populations, turnaround involves
much more than “fixing” organizational dysfunction; it requires
intensive tuning of strategy and culture to address learning
deficits, behavioral challenges, and the effects of environmental
deprivation. This is (in part) turnaround’s larger role: providing
exemplar strategies for the significantly increasing numbers of
high-poverty schools projected over the next ten years.
What This Might Look Like:
Governor, commissioner, and/or state board of education chair
ask for summary report on impact of state intervention programs
to date, and on the pace of schools entering the failing cate-
gories under NCLB/state accountability.
Simultaneously: state prepares a new turnaround initiative,
incorporating strategies drawn from The Turnaround Challenge
and other sources. High-performing, high-poverty schools and
promising turnaround exemplars in the state are identified as
“proof points.”
Basic elements of the initiative are vetted with stakeholders,
collaborators, key decision-makers, potential outside funders
(see #10 on page 86 for more).
Results of the study are announced, together with the initiative;
state’s commitment to turning around failing schools is reaf-
firmed; focus is placed on moving beyond marginal intervention
to much more dramatic changes that will turn failing schools into
models for reform statewide.
Emphasis: on positive change, rather than negative labeling.
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Turnaround is the integrated, comprehensive combination of fundamental changes in program, people,
conditions, and (sometimes, but not necessarily) management and governance required to interrupt the
status quo and put a school on a new track towards high performance.
Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive turnaround involve?
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
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Successful school turnaround produces significant
improvement in student achievement over a compressed
time frame (no more than two years) and, in high schools,
significant gains in attendance and graduation rates as well.
Turnaround of these lowest of the low-performing schools can be
seen as a two-phase process, each phase requiring different
(though complementary) elements and skill sets. Phase one estab-
lishes the conditions necessary for fundamental reform to take
root – in particular, providing for sufficient authority to allocate
critical resources (people, time, money) to support a turnaround
plan staked to the research-based practices of high-performing,
high-poverty (HPHP) schools. It provides for placing people with
the right skills in the most critical positions: leadership with
expertise in school turnaround and teachers drawn to working in
high-challenge (but high-reward) environments, all as part of an
innovative, highly collaborative reform initiative and a dynamic
school design. Reaching district performance averages in this first
phase – within two years – is a reasonable goal. Phase two com-
prises the hard work of steady improvement, sustaining incre-
mental growth over time and transitioning into a truly high-per-
forming organization.
What This Might Look Like:
State turnaround initiative sets a specific, ambitious, but
reasonable and understandable goal for significant achievement
gains within two years (i.e.: meeting district averages).
Following the two-year turnaround period, the school is
returned to normal state/federal accountability requirements
and timelines.
State initiative requires schools meeting certain, fairly extreme
under-performance criteria to become turnaround schools
(i.e.: schools with undeniably, indefensibly poor achievement
records over multiple years). The initiative invites less severely
under-performing schools to volunteer into the program as a
means of “pre-emptive turnaround.” (See #8 on page 82.)
State initiative requires districts, working with turnaround
partners, to submit a turnaround plan meeting certain criteria
(see #3, next page). Plans that fail to meet the criteria are
denied; those schools are declared chronically under-performing
and are subject to management and governance change as
directed by the state.
Emphasis: This is the last chance, over two years, for current
managers (district, teachers union) – with assistance from the
state and an external turnaround partner – to show they can
produce significant results.
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Turnaround can be seen as a two-phase
process, each phase requiring different (though
complementary) elements and skill sets.
72
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework
The Three ‘C’ Strategies: How can the state
catalyze effective turnaround at scale?
CHANGING CONDITIONS:
The Authority to Act
3
Effective turnaround relies on widely-recognized program
reform elements (curricular improvement and alignment
with standards, teacher capacity-building, effective leader-
ship, focused use of performance data, etc.), but it depends equal-
ly on the conditions into which those reform elements are applied –
mainly, gaining authority over critical resources and levers for
improved achievement. The state can play a crucial role in
enabling these conditions in turnaround schools.
• People: Flexibility to put people with the right skills in the
best position to do their most effective work – to make per-
sonnel decisions based on the needs of the school, its stu-
dents, and its performance goals, and not on the needs of
adults. This flexibility includes control over recruiting, hiring,
placement, development, responsibilities, supervision, evalua-
tion, and removal for chronic under-performance.
• Time: The authority and money required to expand time on
learning for students – in conjunction with other reforms.
More time, by itself, is not a silver bullet, but it appears to be a
critically important supporting element in schools that success-
fully serve disadvantaged students. This expansion includes an
extended school day and an extended school year. Additional
time is similarly required for staff – for adequate professional
development and for common planning. Control over schedul-
ing (double-block periods, special enrichment/remediation
periods, or more far-reaching options) is critical as well.
• Money: Authority to analyze current resources and allocate
them to budget lines that directly support the turnaround
plan. Turnaround design must include a willingness to make
difficult choices between competing priorities. There must be
recognition, in addition, that comprehensive turnaround is
expensive. In particular, additional time and additional (often
higher-capacity) staff cost money. Estimates for the cost of
successful turnaround run from $250,000 to $1 million annu-
ally for three years (see box, page 79).
• Program: Authority to adapt and implement research-based
strategies shown to be effective with the high-poverty, high-
challenge students who attend most chronically under-per-
forming schools. Leaders at HPHP schools and turnaround
exemplars say this flexibility over program approaches is
important for several reasons: matching services with student
needs and local circumstances, prioritizing scarce resources
and time, and building staff buy-in around a vision for the
school. Turnaround school leaders need program flexibility
within a larger framework of district-wide consistency (where
student migration between schools is an issue), structure (cer-
tain required, research-based elements of turnaround design)
and support (because some program elements – for example,
formative assessments – are more efficiently developed across
a network of schools rather than by individual school teams).
Gaining flexible control over the application of resources – and
using that control – can be controversial. That is why most turn-
around and improvement reform models avoid the issues sur-
rounding changing the conditions and focus simply on changing
programs and providing help (i.e., planning assistance, training,
and all forms of coaching). Chronically under-performing
schools under NCLB in fact represent an opportunity for policy-
makers, educators, and partners to move towards more transfor-
mative reform – i.e., models and policy frameworks that address
the conditions in which instructional reform is applied. Some
school districts (New York, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Philadelphia)
already have moved in this direction.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
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5
To ensure broad access to conditions supportive of effective
turnaround, however, state governments and education agencies
will need to play the crucial role. They can do so by establishing
(as Arizona, Florida, and Massachusetts have done) criteria for
turnaround design and implementation, and requiring districts –
and outside providers – to shape their turnaround work accord-
ingly. Superintendents routinely ask for the authority to inter-
vene in struggling schools with powers like those granted to
charter school managers. By creating a statewide turnaround
space with rigorous design criteria (such as Massachusetts’ first
“enabling condition” – granting principals authority over staff
without regard to seniority), state governments can clear aside
roadblocks to reform and produce an intervention zone that
education leaders actively want to join, instead of avoid.
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative codifies, in regulations, protected space for
local “turnaround zones” that a) set requirements for schools
implementing turnaround; b) provide assistance, models, and
contract language for districts and unions to use in creating
necessary waivers to collective bargaining rules; and c) provide
other forms of assistance for turnaround as detailed elsewhere
in this framework.
Turnaround requirements define the elements identified by the
state as essential for effective, comprehensive turnaround. They
specify important changes in operating conditions, including flexi-
ble authority for turnaround leaders over critical resources: people,
time, money, and program. They may also specify other elements
deemed vital to the turnaround process, i.e., additional time for
learning and common planning time for teachers. (See box for one
real-world example – Massachusetts’ ten changing conditions.)
Emphasis: state-required criteria make successful turnaround plau-
sible; local implementation control enables all-important buy-in.
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Condition-Changing State Policy: An Example
These ten requirements form the basis of Massachusetts’ new turnaround policy, passed in October 2006.
Schools entering “Priority” status in the state (following four years of failure to make AYP) must submit
restructuring plans that incorporate these ten “enabling conditions.” Because of insufficient state alloca-
tion for the initiative in FY2008 ($12 million, a third of the DOE’s request), the state will only be able to
partially implement the plan. But the approach and language can serve as a potential model for other
states – as might Massachusetts’ “Commonwealth Pilot” experiment, described on pages 106-7.
1) The school’s principal has authority to select and assign staff to positions in the school without regard
to seniority;
2) The school’s principal has control over financial resources necessary to successfully implement the
school improvement plan;
3) The school is implementing curricula that are aligned to state frameworks in core academic subjects;
4) The school implements systematically a program of interim assessments (4-6 times per year) in English
language arts and mathematics that are aligned to school curriculum and state frameworks;
5) The school has a system to provide detailed tracking and analysis of assessment results and uses
those results to inform curriculum, instruction and individual interventions;
6) The school schedule for student learning provides adequate time on a daily and weekly basis for the deliv-
ery of instruction and provision of individualized support as needed in English language arts and math,
which for students not yet proficient is presumed to be at least 90 minutes per day in each subject;
7) The school provides daily after-school tutoring and homework help for students who need
supplemental instruction and focused work on skill development;
8) The school has a least two full-time subject-area coaches, one each for English language arts/reading
and for mathematics, who are responsible to provide faculty at the school with consistent classroom
observation and feedback on the quality and effectiveness of curriculum delivery, instructional
practice, and data use;
9) School administrators periodically evaluate faculty, including direct evaluation of applicable content
knowledge and annual evaluation of overall performance tied in part to solid growth in student
learning and commitment to the school’s culture, educational model, and improvement strategy;
10) The weekly and annual work schedule for teachers provides adequate time for regular, frequent, depart-
ment and/or grade-level faculty meetings to discuss individual student progress, curriculum issues,
instructional practice, and school-wide improvement efforts. As a general rule no less than one hour per
week shall be dedicated to leadership-directed, collaborative work, and no fewer than 5 days per year,
or hours equivalent thereto, when teachers are not responsible for supervising or teaching students,
shall be dedicated to professional development and planning activities directed by school leaders.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Education
FIGURE 5A
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
TAXONOMY 3
Turnaround Zones Offer Superintendents the Restructuring Option They Have Lacked
FIGURE 5B
This third installment in the report’s Intervention Taxonomy presents our view of a more
complete set of turnaround options than simply the current five presented by NCLB. Two
options (Revision and Reconstitution) may spark substantial movement in some respects,
but the research shows insubstantial outcomes. Charter Conversion, State Management,
and Contract Management tend to incorporate program change, people change, and con-
ditions change – and also require management or governance change. The
“Superintendent’s Schools” option provides for comprehensive system change – including
changes in operating conditions and incentives – initiated by the district (i.e., without
management or governance change). This option is unproven, but would appear to support
the characteristics widely found in high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP) schools. The fold-
ers on the right indicate that these options can be pursued in two ways: by transforming
existing schools or through a close-and-reopen “fresh start” strategy.
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A Framework (continued)
BUILDING CAPACITY:
People Before Programs
4
Maximizing leadership and staff capacity is the most
important element in success – and the state’s most
important role. The task is multi-dimensional: creating
conditions that enable people to do their best work; leading
recruiting, preparation, and licensure processes to ensure a high-
quality pipeline of educators at all levels; and investing in contin-
uous skill-building in high-impact areas of reform and high-need
positions in the schools. Developing the highly skilled principals
and teachers needed in turnaround schools adds another dimen-
sion to this crucial state role. Most importantly: turnaround
requires an infusion of specialized new leadership capacity. The
emerging research on high-performing, high-poverty schools
and promising turnaround schools confirms the central impor-
tance of very strong leadership as probably the most critical fac-
tor in their relative success. Leading the process of turnaround
clearly requires a special skill set in education (as it does in other
fields). Most school districts, except for perhaps the largest 100
or so, do not have the resources themselves to develop high-
capacity school leadership – much less a specialized subset of
principals with expertise in turnaround – so it must be a respon-
sibility of the state, working with outside partners including
higher education, foundations, and non-profits (such as New
Leaders for New Schools). The state must also address the need
for capacity development among high-impact positions in
schools (e.g., coaches, lead teachers, and performance assessment
specialists); among outside providers of turnaround and related
services; and among local policymakers including school board
members. This is not to imply a vast increase in state education
agency bureaucracy; the key is to build on the contracting and
partnering that SEAs are already doing, focusing on expanding
capacity throughout the entire system and on using outside part-
ners more effectively than is currently the case (see #5 on page 78).
State-driven turnaround work needs to convey a sense of inno-
vation, providing compelling career options for more entre-
preneurially-minded educators. The effectiveness and long-
term sustainability of turnaround depends on transformation of
the incentive structures that govern behavior in public schools.
At the district, school, and student levels, during and long after
turnaround work is completed, the incentives and operating
conditions must drive a continuous focus on improved student
achievement. To be successful, turnaround initiatives must draw
high-capacity educators and partners and must elicit the best
work possible from staff who continue on at the school. Positive
incentives for different stakeholders in the system include
changes in working conditions, opportunities for leadership,
increased autonomy, and increased compensation. Sanction-
oriented incentives include prospective loss of governing control,
revenue, or “headcount” (including, from the point of view of
local union leaders, potential loss of union membership).
Most school districts... do not have the
resources themselves to develop high-capacity
school leadership – much less a specialized
subset of principals with expertise in turnaround
– so it must be a responsibility of the state.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative’s requirements for turnaround design allow turn-
around leaders much greater authority to shape school staff,
through recruitment, hiring, firing, placement, development, and
differentiated compensation.
State turnaround initiative is promoted nationally and in-state to
position it as a cutting-edge reform effort and to attract high-
capacity recruits.
State provides intensive training, with non-profit/university part-
ners, in turnaround management for current and aspiring princi-
pals and school leadership teams.
State connects turnaround initiative to related state programs in
curriculum mapping, data analysis, remediation, staff and leader-
ship development, and social service connections, giving schools
in turnaround zones highest priority.
State initiative specifically supports the development of higher-
capacity external turnaround partners to support districts’ turn-
around planning and to provide intensive, integrated services in
direct support of the turnaround plans (see #5, next page).
Emphasis: turnaround zone schools as magnets for mission-driv-
en, highly capable individuals.
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The three ‘C’s represent the state’s primary roles in shaping school turnaround and enabling it at
the ground level. For more, see numbers 3 through 8 of the Framework description on these pages.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 5C
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Building the Framework:
The Three ‘C’ Levers of Fundamental Change
5
5
Fragmented, episodic assistance from outside partners
must be replaced by a new paradigm of aligned, integrat-
ed support. By the time a school reaches NCLB’s restruc-
turing stage, it has probably hosted literally dozens of separate
reform programs and partners, with little or no integration hap-
pening to form a coherent whole. That is due partly to funding
streams that operate in separate “silos”; partly to schools’ (and
districts’) habit of pursuing projects instead of sustained, inte-
grated reform; and partly to organizational dysfunction. There
most often is no one within a school’s leadership structure whose
job is to align its myriad partners – except the principal, who
lacks the time to do so effectively.
The state must not only support the capacity of outside
providers to assist with turnaround (or lead the process); it must
create the structures and policies necessary to ensure that single
providers act as systems integrators, coordinating the roles and
contributions of other collaborating partners (see the graphic on
page 85). Turnaround partners can include non-profit and for-
profit organizations, professional associations, and colleges and
universities. In addition, an important role of any partner serv-
ing the “systems integrator” role in turnaround schools is estab-
lishing strong connections with social service providers and
agencies, which tend to play strong, visible roles in the commu-
nities served by chronically under-performing schools.
These social services help provide important counterweights to
the effects of poverty on families and children through home vis-
iting, workforce training, high-quality child care and early edu-
cation, after-school programs, substance abuse treatment, com-
munity policing, and homelessness prevention strategies. All of
these supports, following the high-performing, high-poverty
(HPHP) Readiness model we developed in Part 2 of this report,
are part of the set of services that enable high-poverty students to
be ready to learn. While they cannot realistically all be managed
through one lead partner organization, their work can play a
critical role in high-poverty school success. Lead turnaround
partners and school leaders need the latitude and the opportuni-
ty to work with them effectively.
What This Might Look Like:
State creates an RFP for turnaround assistance from lead turn-
around partners, i.e., organizations that would act as the integra-
tor for other partners in supporting the creation and implementa-
tion of a turnaround plan, on behalf of schools or school clusters.
Idea is to galvanize the creation of such partner organizations,
filling the capacity gap that exists right now.
State turnaround regulations require districts to work with state-
approved lead turnaround partners in developing and executing
their plans.
State initiative supports capacity-building and practice-sharing
among turnaround partner organizations.
Emphasis: This isn’t a radical new idea by any means. It’s simply the
turnaround corollary of contractual relationships schools and dis-
tricts already have with outside providers (e.g., textbook publishers).
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
By the time a school reaches NCLB’s
restructuring stage, it has probably hosted
literally dozens of separate reform programs
and partners, with little or no integration
happening to form a coherent whole.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Support Personnel
Support personnel configuration would vary by school need, and include full- or part-time people
with skills central to the turnaround mission, such as a turnaround leader, math coach, data ana-
lyst, or social-service program leader. Large schools, obviously, would require more support staff
than smaller schools. (The table is based on a school with 500 students.) In general, comprehen-
sive high schools will be more expensive propositions than middle schools, which will in turn be
more expensive than elementary schools – because of size and the complexity of the turnaround
work involved. Some specialists may be employed by the district, but some would be on-the-
ground practitioners from the lead turnaround partner. Note: the totals here reflect estimates for
the costs of turnaround, without specifying the state and district (or private) share of those costs.
States should assume average district per-pupil spending in these schools at a minimum, and
might well require districts to provide an annually rising share of the additional costs.
Incentive and Responsibility-Based Compensation
Turnaround schools will need to pay for the turnaround expertise of their principals and leader-
ship team, as well as to attract high quality teaching and support staff; compensate for extra
responsibilities; and change incentive structures at the school. We have assumed extra compen-
sation at an average of $3,000 per faculty member (including the principal), but not necessarily
that it is distributed evenly.
Lead Turnaround Partner, Professional Development, and Curriculum
Additional support for the work of the lead turnaround partner, professional development
(school-based and across districts to build turnaround management capacity), diagnostic assess-
ment and data analysis expertise, teaching and social service skills, as well as related curriculum
and program costs, would be provided on a percentage basis staked to student enrollment. For
the purposes of this example, an average of $200,000 per school has been allotted.
Funding for Extended Time
In addition, schools would receive funding separately to pay for extended time, one of the
cornerstones of HPHP performance. Assuming 30 elementary, 15 middle, and 5 high schools
in the mix of 50 schools in this imagined state example, the addition of one hour per day, and
37 operating weeks per year to the school calendar, the cost of this extra time would total
$14.4 million ($5.4/elementaries, $5.4/middle schools, $3.6/high schools).
Turnaround Agency Operations
The cost of the state’s turnaround coordinating agency includes all costs of the administering of
the work, including staff and operating costs, administering state policy, creating the turn-
around models, supporting the turnaround partners, shaping the development of turnaround
leadership, and providing for program evaluation. (For more on the state turnaround initiative
administration, see Part 4.)
Sources of Revenue for Turnaround
Many states, compelled by NCLB, are directing some funds to school intervention initiatives. Our
researchers universally heard complaints that funding for the work was insufficient. The costs
outlined here, multiplied across the many dozens and in some cases, hundreds of schools enter-
ing Restructuring, add up to a sizable annual investment. States can look to foundation help for
innovation and pilot model-building, but the scale-up can only happen through sustained com-
mitment of public dollars. Federal reauthorization of NCLB may produce a substantial portion of
the required investment. States will need to justify the remainder on the grounds that money
invested here will be matched (as research has shown) many times over by savings in social
service costs down the road; the need to build a high-skill workforce to remain nationally and
globally competitive; and as a civil rights obligation to provide an adequate education to all
children, regardless of income or race.
The cost of school turnaround will vary by school, based on size and its own particular needs.
Experience to date with turnaround initiatives suggests costs in the range of $250,000 to a mil-
lion dollars per school per year over the first three years, in order to implement a turnaround
effort incorporating the strategies discussed in this report. As an illustrative example, an effec-
tive state initiative serving 50 persistently under-performing schools in turnaround “zones” is
likely to include costs such as those in the following table.
Sample Turnaround Costs: $50 Million for 50 Schools in Turnaround Zones
3.0 FTEs of support personnel (up to five or more specialists) $270,000 $13,500,000
Incentive and responsibility-based compensation 120,000 average for E/M/H 6,000,000
Lead turnaround partner assistance; staff & leadership
development; curriculum materials and related 200,000 10,000,000
Funding for extended time (one hour/day) 288,000 average for E/M/H 14,400,000
Average school total 878,000 43,900,000
Coordinating turnaround agency staff, research/design,
operations, partner support, program evaluation 5,000,000
Total annual costs for 50 schools $48,900,000
Estimated Average
Cost per School
Estimated Annual Cost for
50-School Turnaround Initiative
Estimated Annual Costs of Turnaround
FIGURE 5D
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These costs reflect the following assumptions and factors:
5
A Framework (continued)
CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT:
Organizing the Change
6
Effective turnaround solutions focus on producing change
at the school level – and through it to the level of class-
room instruction. That is where reform is shown to be
meaningful and productive – or not. In the absence of a relentless
school-level focus, it is too easy for “deck-chair-rearranging” syn-
drome to set in: reorganization that for all of its good intentions,
fails to exert much impact in classrooms or, ultimately, on learning.
However, turnaround work is best organized in clusters of
schools, working in partnership with school districts and
partners, in order to meet the scale of the need. While turn-
around solutions need to focus on instituting change at the
school level, a number of factors – the number of schools
requiring assistance; resource-efficiency; replication of success-
ful models; and establishment of effective K-12 pathways
through school-level feeder patterns – indicate the value and
importance of designing and implementing turnaround work in
clusters of schools. (In these ways, clusters have all of the same
advantages as school districts. They should be large enough to
be an enterprise, to paraphrase researcher and project advisor
Rick Hess, but small enough to succeed – and to avoid issues
that can arise as bureaucracies grow.)
Clustered turnaround work can be approached vertically (focusing
on successful transitions for students from their elementary through
their high school years), or horizontally (by type – for example,
urban middle schools or alternative high schools for at-risk students
and dropouts). Organization of the work can take several forms:
• Within single districts conducting turnaround on behalf of a
cohort of under-performing schools (or multiple cohorts, in
districts pursuing a portfolio of different approaches with dif-
ferent governance and/or management structures)
• Across two to four districts, organized and supported by the
state, where combined turnaround work makes sense because
of geographic proximity or because the work focuses on
schools that share particular attributes
• Across a larger number of districts, each of which has just one
or two chronically under-performing schools, or where the
state wants to encourage implementation of particular school
models and approaches – for example, grade 6-12 academies.
What This Might Look Like:
State initiative, working together with district leaders, organizes
turnaround schools into clusters as described above.
Clusters of turnaround schools implement their turnaround
strategies under the operating conditions and other criteria set
by the state for the statewide turnaround zone.
Clusters are served by lead turnaround partners assigned by the
state (or recruited by districts), who integrate and align the serv-
ices of other outside providers in the implementation of the plan.
Clusters might also include higher-performing, volunteer schools that
match the profile of the schools needing assistance, thereby provid-
ing models and change-colleagues for the turnaround schools.
Emphasis: Individual school turnaround successes are heroic.
Turnaorund success across multiple schools is strategic – and
necessary.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Individual school turnaround successes are
heroic. Turnaorund success across multiple
schools is strategic –and necessary.
The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role Defining the Approach Introduction to the Framework
7
Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent,
deliberate blending of “loose” and “tight” control in
implementation and design. The changes in operating
conditions outlined above are necessary to allow the people clos-
est to the work to have a strong say in how it is done. The HPHP
schools and turnaround exemplars vividly demonstrate the
importance of school-based decision-making authority and
school-wide commitment to reform. But leaving all decision-
making authority up to the schools – as in the charter model –
makes little sense in a turnaround context. In constructing a
turnaround zone like that described in #3, above, states have the
opportunity to mix “loose” (providing latitude) and “tight”
(controlling more systematically within the cluster, often through
the application of leverage) in, for example, the following ways:
• “Loose” in allowing school/district leaders to develop their
own turnaround plans; “tight” in insisting on certain essen-
tial elements and, in some cases, on working with an outside
partner to produce the plan;
• “Loose” in extending to districts an opportunity to use
altered conditions and additional resources to intervene suc-
cessfully in their struggling schools; “tight” in holding them
accountable for performance improvements within two years
and reserving the ultimate authority to install alternate gover-
nance in the school;
• “Loose” in enabling school leaders to shape their staff and
implement turnaround strategy as they see fit; “tight” in
insisting on certain parameters for the work and to organize
some aspects of turnaround centrally – either by the school
district or by a systems-integrating turnaround partner lead-
ing a cluster of schools across district lines.
What This Might Look Like:
State turnaround criteria (see #3 on page 73) empower school
turnaround leaders to make ground-level judgments on design
and overall approach, and in the execution of the turnaround
strategies – but within the framework for turnaround established
by the state.
Districts judged by the state to have sufficient capacity
(in conjunction with a lead turnaround partner) and that have
been able to produce turnaround plans that meet the state’s
criteria may be granted more latitude, with less state oversight,
in implementing the plan. (See #8, next page.)
Emphasis: Turnaround depends on a deliberate blend
of structured, systematic program strategies (“tight”)
and school control and ownership (“loose”).
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The whole point is to motivate districts
and schools to undertake comprehensive
turnaround themselves. The keys are the
positive incentives in joining the turnaround
zone – and the matching incentive to avoid
the more unappealing alternative of deeper
state management authority.
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A Framework (continued)
8
States should differentiate their support by the degree of
local capacity – and allow districts and schools to volun-
teer into a turnaround zone. Some districts and schools are
better equipped to undertake comprehensive turnaround – along
the lines required by the state’s turnaround plan criteria – than
others. Partly for reasons of scale and limited resources, partly to
raise capacity for turnaround statewide, and partly on the princi-
ple of “loose” where authority has been earned and “tight” where
it has not, states should match the degree of their involvement in
the design and implementation of turnaround in inverse propor-
tion to the degree of local capacity to undertake the work.
Moreover, states can accomplish several aims by opening up the
turnaround zone to volunteer schools and districts ready to
undertake “pre-emptive turnaround.” Superintendents clamor for
the ability to intervene more vigorously in schools before they
have entered the most extreme categories of under-performance
under state and NCLB accountability systems. Schools that are
not yet in the bottom five percent but that are proactively looking
to undertake fundamental change will improve the mix in their
turnaround cluster. Their presence will help underline the posi-
tive positioning states will be seeking to give to the entire initia-
tive, and they could be useful “colleagues” for other schools in the
cluster. The volunteer schools represent an important way for
states to scale up the impact of their turnaround zone, as well.
The state's protected space for turnaround would thus be differ-
entiated in two different ways, as shown in the chart at right: first
by voluntary vs. mandatory participation, and then by manage-
ment authority. “Shared Direction” means that management of
the turnaround would be conducted by district, school, and turn-
around partner personnel (through contracts that can include
whole-school management and charter conversion), but within
the turnaround criteria required by the state. "State-Managed"
means the state would directly subcontract management authori-
ty to a turnaround partner or charter school operator.
The whole point is to motivate districts and schools to undertake
comprehensive turnaround themselves. The keys are the positive
incentives in joining the turnaround zone – and the matching
incentive to avoid the more unappealing alternative of deeper
state management authority.
What This Might Look Like:
See the chart at right. State initiative has two broad categories
for participation: Voluntary and Mandatory.
Voluntary: for schools in NCLB’s “Improvement” or “Corrective
Action” categories that want access to changing conditions of a
state-protected turnaround zone – and can produce a turnaround
plan (potentially with a partner) that meets state criteria. State
would not necessarily provide monitoring beyond regular AYP
processes for these schools, though it might provide guidance and
additional resources and supports.
Mandatory: for schools in Corrective Action or Restructuring
that the state requires to implement turnaround with a lead part-
ner. These schools would receive the full benefit of additional
resources and supports.
State makes every effort to support and enable local management of
turnaround within the turnaround criteria (“Shared Direction” in the
chart); reserves the alternative of management change for schools that
a) cannot produce a plan that meets the state’s criteria or b) produce
an adequate plan but then fail to meet achievement goals and other
benchmarks over two years. State would mandate, at that point, use of
an outside partner for school management under contract or through
charter conversion (perhaps using a close-and-reopen strategy).
Contract period of five years, with annual performance benchmarks.
Emphasis: This initiative provides local leaders with their last,
best shot at turning around failing schools, and gives them the
tools they need to succeed.
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Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
83
This graphic presents, in four steps, how states can use an intensive turnaround strat-
egy focused on the most poorly-performing schools (the bottom 5%, or fewer) to
catalyze proactive local response on behalf of those schools – and the much larger
number of schools that have been identified for state intervention at lesser levels of
intensity. Schools that are mandated to implement the state-defined turnaround
process could do so under Shared Direction, if they and their lead partner can pro-
duce a plan that meets the state's criteria. Schools not yet mandated to implement
the process can opt into it, undertaking "preemptive turnaround" using the benefits
of the state's protected turnaround space. In both cases, state policy has catalyzed a
more proactive local response.
How State Policy Can Activate and Shape a Strong Local Response
FIGURE 5E
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Organizing the State Role:
What is required to enable an effective,
state-led turnaround initiative?
EFFECTIVE STATEWIDE COORDINATION:
A Different Kind of Agency
to Address a Different Kind of Challenge
9
The state must free itself to be able to undertake this
work. A visible agency within the Department of
Education with a high-profile leader, or perhaps better, a
special public/private authority (modeled, for example, on agen-
cies created by some states to take on infrastructure challenges)
would be well-positioned to recruit high-quality managers and
to implement more effectively the various roles the state would
play in organizing turnaround:
• Creating the changes in rules and regulations governing
the work within these schools to bring about the appropri-
ate, enabling condition-set, rather than leaving these some-
times difficult changes to local decision-makers and/or
risking the fracturing of local stakeholder relationships
over their implementation
• Distributing targeted resources as appropriate and ensuring
that local districts are investing at least its average per-pupil
expenditure in these schools
• Investing strategically in capacity development, both inter-
nally in districts and schools and among external providers of
turnaround assistance:
I Supporting the development of educational turnaround
leadership as a discipline with a particular skill set
I Supporting the development of a marketplace of high-
capacity providers to assist districts and schools with turn-
around work, and district efforts to create effective turn-
around support offices of their own
I Creating an improved pipeline of high-capacity, well-pre-
pared educators over the long-term.
• Ensuring the quality of school turnaround plans and the
capacity of the implementation teamby providing models
and monitoring the work
• Building a framework to provide these supports that is
unfettered by the regulatory and bureaucratic weights that
sometimes handicap state government initiatives; that pro-
vides differentiated support based on the assessed needs of
school districts with chronically under-performing schools
and their capacity to undertake successful turnaround; and
that can ensure that the work is scaled sufficiently to meet the
statewide need.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
What This Might Look Like:
Proposal for new coordinating agency is created as core element
in overall turnaround strategy for the state. (See Figure 5F.)
State education agency leaders enlisted as supporters as a way
of garnering the necessary authorities, flexibilities to undertake
the strategy.
Agency is included in legislative package and/or budget line item
as a requirement for increased funding for turnaround.
Emphasis: The state needs the same level of operating flexibility
to coordinate turnaround work as schools need to implement it
effectively on the ground.
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States, districts, and the outside provider community all need new organizational structures
in order for turnaround work to succeed at scale. At the state and district level, turnaround
management must have more operating flexibility than current structures tend to allow.
Among providers, lead turnaround partners should work with schools to integrate the too-often
confusing array of projects, consultants, and related support from the state and community into
a coherent, achievable turnaround strategy.
Building the Framework:
New Structures for States, Districts, and Providers
FIGURE 5F
The state needs the same level of operating
flexibility to coordinate turnaround work as
schools need to implement it effectively on
the ground.
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STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS:
The Necessary Leadership Consensus
10
Tough challenges require tough – and united –
leadership. While some effective turnaround work
may take place in scattered locales, states under
NCLB cannot leave it to accidents of good fortune or geography
to assure the right of every child to receive an adequate educa-
tion. The state can and should play an active role in enabling
scaled-up turnaround of chronically under-performing schools.
The politics here are challenging, because under-performing
schools have no natural constituency; parents and local leaders
generally tend to shy away from the dramatic restructuring of
traditional local schools. Turnaround advocates must therefore
seek to create a statewide leadership coalition in their state –
one that conceivably includes the governor, legislative leaders,
the chief state school officer, state board of education, urban
superintendents, and leaders from the state’s foundation, non-
profit, higher-education, and business communities, as well as
from the media. Such a coalition is necessary in order to produce
the policy changes and sustained funding commitments (see
Figure 5D) necessary for effective turnaround.
Coalition-building at the grassroots level is important as well,
in order to sustain leadership support in the legislature and to
build community connection to, and ownership of, the goal
and process of building a higher-performing local school.
Community buy-in is particularly essential in the second
phase of turnaround – the improvement phase, when new
investments are reduced and change (along with achievement
gain) is more incremental. In cities where long lists of parents
wait for openings in magnet and/or charter schools, they rep-
resent a potentially potent advocacy group for highly visible,
comprehensive turnaround of under-performing schools.
What This Might Look Like:
Lead advocate for comprehensive turnaround of failing schools
(governor, commissioner, state board chair, key legislator, leading
CEO or foundation head) initiates high-level discussions with
potential allies, creates workgroup.
Workgroup assembles turnaround experts; builds a case for
turnaround, using statewide research and strategies from
The Turnaround Challenge.
Workgroup identifies a driver for this turnaround coalition –
an existing statewide organization, foundation, or consortium –
or establishes one. Coalition driver adopts comprehensive turn-
around as a central goal.
Key advocates and decision-makers are identified and enlisted.
Media effort showcases gaps between highest and lowest per-
forming schools (with similar high-poverty demographics) in
the state.
Outreach to key superintendents, school board chairs, and may-
ors in affected districts to secure their support, to statewide
teacher union managers, and to other teacher leaders statewide.
Twin strategies, working with the state education agency and
state board of education, to generate necessary changes in state
regulations on school intervention and enlist state legislature to
support the changes (if necessary).
Intensive lobbying effort during legislative budgeting cycle to
secure adequate funding for turnaround.
Emphasis: Turnaround of failing schools is a civil rights obligation
and economic/social imperative of the state.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A Framework (continued)
Organizing the State Role Introduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies
Meeting the Turnaround Challenge: A Framework for Statewide Action
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
FIGURE 5G
The Complete Framework: A comprehensive state initiative depends on every one of the
structures indicated here. Statewide and community leadership coalitions and consensus
(outer ring) are needed to drive the necessary policy changes and targeted public funding.
The centerpiece of the initiative is the establishment of protected space for local turnaround
zones, where the three ‘C’ reforms – changing conditions, building capacity, and clustering
for support – suggested by our “Readiness” triangle-model research into high-performing,
high-poverty schools can gain traction. In order for those reforms to be implemented effec-
tively, each of the primary turnaround agents (the state, the district, and outside providers,
along with the schools themselves) needs to adopt new structures and approaches (repre-
sented by the darkly-colored areas where these agents overlap with the turnaround zones.
States and districts need special sub-agencies dedicated to turnaround; providers need to be
aligned by lead turnaround partners. The schools need fundamentally new approaches,
assisted by all of the agents.
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
The Tough Questions, Revisited
“Can Turnaround Be Successful at Our School?”
A Ten-Point Audit for Policymakers (and Manifesto for Principals)
This set of questions is the school-building-level corollary to the “12 Tough Questions”
that opened this report. It can serve as a short set of indicators for use by policymakers
and turnaround advocates: Are the operating conditions and supports in place that
would allow principals and leadership teams to successfully turn around a failing
school? It could (and should) also be used by principals being asked to undertake
school turnaround: Do I have what I need – and what any turnaround manager would
need – to be successful? If not....
1. Have you and key members of your staff had a leadership role in shaping your
school turnaround plan? Has the planning team benefited significantly from
knowledgeable outside support? Has the process moved swiftly in order to
meet an external deadline, and has it been driven in part by clear guidelines
and criteria set by the state?
2. Is your work supported by a lead turnaround partner that, in your judgment, will
help put your school in the best possible position to meet your student achieve-
ment goals? Does your district, state, community, or partner provide you with
support services tailored to high-poverty settings and to your school’s priorities?
3. Do you and your school's lead turnaround partner have the authority to shape
school staff so as to implement the plan? In the following HR areas, can you
use these (among other) practices drawn from research in high-performance,
high-poverty schools?
• Recruiting, hiring and placement: freedom from seniority rules, bumping
and force-placing; ability to adjust positions to suit student needs
• Removal: discretion to excess teachers who are not performing or are
unwilling to participate fully in the turnaround plan
• Compensation: ability to differentiate through incentives to attract high
quality teachers and/or performance- or responsibility-related pay
4. Do you, your partner, and your leadership team have the authority (and
resources) to adjust your school’s schedule to suit the needs of your students
and instructional approach?
5. Do you and your turnaround leadership team have discretion over budget allo-
cation to support your mission? Is your turnaround plan sufficiently supported
by extra funding and outside resources? Are those resources sufficient to pro-
vide for substantial planning, collaboration, and training time for staff?
6. Do you have the authority to adjust curriculum and programming to suit your
school’s priorities and support the turnaround plan, within a larger framework of
program-related decisions made by your district or cluster/network? Are you free to
make choices and respond to crises with a minimum of compliance-driven oversight?
7. Do you have the authority to shape the way your school works by creating
teacher leadership positions and differentiating responsibilities? Will you and
your leadership team be provided, as part of the turnaround plan, with profes-
sional development to increase your expertise in turnaround management?
8. Do you currently have the technology, systems, and analysis expertise necessary
to implement the frequent formative assessment and feedback that is central
to increasing performance in high-risk populations?
9. Will you be provided, as part of your turnaround status, with the support
of a network of schools involved in similar turnaround initiatives, along with
higher-performing schools that can serve as colleagues and models?
10. Do you feel that you have been provided with unambiguous expectations
and clear measures of accountability to help you bring urgency to the work
of turning around student performance at your school?
A P P E N D I C E S
Appendix A examines:
A.1 School Intervention to Date:
Goals, Strategies, and Impact
Introduction to three categories
of school intervention: Program
Change, People Change, and
System Redesign (including
Conditions Change)
A.2 Why Program Change Falls
Short of Turnaround
Providing help to improve
programs is vital – and
insufficient by itself
A.3 Why People Change Falls
Short of Turnaround
Providing for new leadership
and new staff is also vital
– and also insufficient
A.4 System Redesign:
Program, People – and
Conditions Change
The operating context for
intervention is as important
as the intervention itself
A P P E N D I X A
L
ine up 100 reform-experienced
educators and researchers in
a room, ask them to write down
their own top ten elements of effective
standards-based reform, and odds are
that you’ll see 80% agreement across
their lists.
We haven’t proved that clinically –
but it seems quite plausible from our
exhaustive scan of the effective-prac-
tice and intervention literature.
Adherence to standards and high
expectations; effective mapping of
curricula to those standards; a profes-
sional and collaborative teaching cul-
ture; in-school, job-embedded profes-
sional development; strong school
leadership (individuals and teams);
on-going formative assessment; data-
based decision-making; proactive
intervention for students who need
extra help; productive connections
with social services, parents and com-
munity… There is general consensus
on the importance of these dimen-
sions of effective schools, and an
acknowledgement that within this
palette, actual implementation can
appear in a wide range of colors.
In other words, we know it when we
see it. But getting there – the whole
change management process – is
much more of a mystery.
Change management in education is
chronically under-studied. That’s iron-
ic, for an enterprise that is so focused
on human dynamics and personal
development. Turnaround in other
domains, especially business, is the
object of much careful scrutiny. There
are lessons to be learned from this
work – though with caution, because
of the substantial differences between
the private and the public sectors.
Our Intervention Taxonomy (includ-
ed in Parts 4 and 5) introduced the
three general categories we have
developed for this analysis of school
intervention strategies. They are:
• Program Change: Providing help to
improve programs and performance
within the current set of systems
and conditions. This constitutes the
major portion of school interven-
tion activity to date. This approach
offers consultants, assistance
teams, professional development,
or new curricula and other pro-
gram-related tools to help existing
school personnel improve their
students’ performance, primarily
(though not necessarily) within the
current general model of teaching
and learning employed by the
school.
A.1 School Intervention to Date:
Goals, Strategies, and Impact
We know where we want to go. The journey’s the issue.
“While 39 states have the authority to take strong actions,
and while these same 39 states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably improved for years, we
still find strong interventions extremely rare.”
– Researcher Ronald Brady
A.1 School Intervention to Date A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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• People Change: Reconstitution –
the replacement of leadership and
school staff. The core idea here is
that the caliber of the people
working in the system is the most
important element to success
(which may be the right idea,
except when it also is the only idea
being applied).
• System Redesign: Changing the
conditions and incentives that
shape how work gets done – as
well as allowing for changes in
programming and personnel. This
cumulative category includes the
other two, but also redesigns the
operating conditions in which
staff and leadership implement
programs and reform strategies.
These categories mirror, in general,
the several others that have been
developed and used by other
researchers examining the emerging
track record in school interventions
under NCLB (among others: Brady,
2003; DiBiase, 2005). Brady’s analysis,
conducted for the Fordham
Foundation in the early years of the
law’s implementation, provides a use-
ful grouping of intervention strategies
mandated by NCLB (see box). Our
grouping, described in more detail
over the following pages, emphasizes
interventions’ impact on the daily life
of schools, more than on questions of
governance. We discuss governance
and management more fully in Part 4.
The interventions in the “Mild” and
“Moderate” categories, these and
other reports make clear, are con-
ducted much more frequently than
those in the “Strong” category for
several reasons. There are great
political uncertainties and the risk
of significant political costs associat-
ed with them (witness Maryland’s
effort to take over several under-
performing schools in Baltimore in
2005-6, which was undercut by the
mayor and the state legislature – see
the Supplemental Report for more).
In addition, there are virtually no
“reward” incentives in place to
motivate educators and policymak-
ers to undertake such a risky effort.
As Brady puts it, “While 39 states
have the authority to take strong
actions, and while these same 39
states contain dozens of failing
schools that have not appreciably
improved for years, we still find
strong interventions extremely
rare.” (Brady, 2003) DiBiase’s study
follows Brady’s by more than two
years but it does not have impor-
tantly different conclusions. Given
the option to do so, people and
organizations (even those in some
distress) will tend toward less
change, rather than more – with
perhaps predictable results, as we
shall see over the following pages.
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
Three Flavors
of School Intervention
(From Can Failing Schools Be Fixed?,
by Ronald Brady, Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, 2003)
• Mild:
• Identification
• Planning
• Technical assistance/
External consultant
• Professional development
• Parental involvement
• Tutoring services
• Moderate:
• Add school time (block scheduling,
reducing non-academic core
classes, longer school day, longer
school year)
• Reorganize the school (voluntary)
• Comprehensive School Reform (CSR)
• Change the principal
• Strong:
• Reconstitution (replacing all or most
of a school’s staff and leadership)
• School takeover (state assuming
governance of a school)
• District takeover (state assuming
governance of a district)
• Closing of the school
• Choice (vouchers)
• Major curriculum change
• Outsourcing on a contract basis
• Redirecting, withholding school or
district funds
• Closing failing districts
91
Given the option to do so, people and organizations
(even those in some distress) will tend toward less change,
rather than more – with perhaps predictable results.
A.1
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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
P
rogram Change is by far the
most common state and district
response to underperformance in
schools. This category encompasses
a range of approaches, but what ties
them together is the idea of external
assistance to incumbent school staff,
with the aim of improving their
performance and/or installing
new education programming –
curricula, instructional approaches,
assessments and the like. Two kinds
of external assistance have been
most prevalent: direct state help
with developing and implementing
a school improvement plan, and
“comprehensive school reform”
using an external model provider.
Direct State Assistance
Researchers have posited that there are
three broad categories in which states
attempt to shape the content of school
improvement efforts. (Lane & Gracia,
2005; Laguarda, 2003) These are:
• Needs assessments
• Improvement planning
• Implementation support.
States have chosen to organize this
kind of intervention work differently.
Massachusetts has had a separate
office conducting district and school
audits (the Office of Educational
Quality and Accountability) that
reports to a separate board (the
Education Management Audit
Council). These reviews or audits are
fashioned after the British inspec-
torate system and are deliberately
designed to reflect or monitor a dis-
trict’s or school’s condition but not to
provide direct assistance. (This system
regularly comes under fire from state
budget-setters and may in fact be
modified this year.) Other states, like
North Carolina or Kentucky, do not
make such distinctions between those
who conduct audits and those who
supply assistance.
However organized, implementation
support represents all of the efforts
that make up a state-approved school
improvement plan. Lane & Gracia
(2003) provide a particularly useful
description and categorization of
these supports. (The following is
directly quoted from them.)
• School-based coaching: Facilitation
of school improvement teams; lead-
ership development and mentoring
administrators; job-embedded pro-
fessional development; including
modeling instruction
• School-based data analysis:
Ongoing support to school
teams/committees related to the
analysis of data planning
• Professional development:
Professional development targeted
towards identified needs (for
example, curriculum development
and standards alignment, class-
room and behavior management,
diversity training, etc.)
• Additional resources:
Some states prioritize federal
programs (e.g. Reading First,
Comprehensive School Reform)
or state-sponsored initiatives
to low-performing schools.
The first type of assistance in this list –
school-based coaching – represents
the most intensive version of this kind
of providing help, since it involves
direct, ongoing, hands-on work at
schools by experienced individuals or
teams. Perhaps the most prominent
example of this approach is
Kentucky’s Highly Skilled Educators
program (HSE), formerly known as
Distinguished Educators (DE). Under
Kentucky’s accountability system,
devised in the early 1990s, schools are
required to achieve a certain level of
improvement toward meeting profi-
ciency. The lowest-performing schools
receive assistance from DEs, now
HSEs, beginning with a Scholastic
Audit of the school. (David et al, 2003)
Evaluators of the HSEs work have
broken HSEs’ work into seven major
categories: professional development,
curriculum alignment, classroom
instruction, test preparation, leader-
ship, school organization and decision
making, and resource procurement.
The most recent available formal eval-
uation (David et al, 2003) concludes
that while the HSE program has an
impact on schools served, that impact
is limited in two important respects
particularly relevant to this analysis.
A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of Turnaround
Providing help to improve programs is vital – and insufficient by itself
“Assigning Highly Skilled Educators for more years in
these schools is unlikely to increase HSE success
unless other conditions change.”
– David et al, 2003
A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.1 School Intervention to Date
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©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
This graphic provides an informal, con-
ceptual “map” of school intervention
efforts that we will use over the course
of the analysis in this Appendix. The
map plots the degree to which differ-
ent intervention efforts appear to
incorporate the three “readiness”
dimensions of High-Performing, High-
Poverty schools described in Part 2 –
along with the HPHP schools them-
selves – along the Y axis, against the
scale of these intervention efforts
along the X axis. Interventions in the
upper right quadrant are the goal; they
would represent the promise of both
effectiveness and scale. Interventions in
the other three quadrants, conversely,
either lack scale-ability or, we would
argue, all of the elements required to
be successful. The plotting on the map
is directional only, and is not staked to
numerical values; the intent here is to
illustrate broad ideas, not closely com-
parable data.
Program change initiatives, as shown
in this section, have not demonstrated
effectiveness in significantly improving
performance – particularly in chronical-
ly under-performing schools. While
some prominent programs, especially
the federal government’s $1.5 billion
Comprehensive School Reform (CSR)
program and the New American
Schools (NAS) initiative have certainly
achieved scale, they have not generat-
ed the impact their framers envisioned.
Nor, by and large, have much smaller
program-change initiatives operated by
state education agencies. (See the
Supplemental Report for more informa-
tion on selected state programs.)
Providing Help to Accomplish Program Change:
Interventions with Great Scale but Modest Impact
Figure AA
A.2
94
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
First, on average, HSEs have been
more successful at the elementary
level than at the middle or high school
level. Though the researchers base this
finding on a sample of HSE-assisted
schools that included only one high
school, they do reach some conclu-
sions about the limits of the HSE
strategy in the high school setting.
Working closely with 10-12 teachers
to improve instruction, they argue, is
a plausible challenge for an HSE. By
contrast, working closely with 40-50
teachers (or more) is probably impos-
sible for one person. An added chal-
lenge is the need for an HSE to be a
content expert in the various disci-
plines at the high school or even the
middle school level.
Second, the evaluation finds that
HSEs had less impact at schools with
the lowest capacity – exactly the sort
of chronically under-performing
schools that are the subject of this
analysis. David et al (2003) write:
“The impact of HSEs is considerably
weaker in schools with the most
severe problems with faculty morale,
school leadership, and district support
– which also tend to be those in the
most economically depressed areas.”
In a sobering statement, the authors
conclude, “Assigning HSEs for more
years in these schools is unlikely to
increase HSE success unless other
conditions change” (p. 27).
Importantly, HSEs have had no
authority to change broader condi-
tions. Their role is strictly advisory.
There has been one exception in the
program’s history: for schools labeled
“in crisis,” due to steep declines in test
scores, DEs had the authority to evalu-
ate and recommend dismissal for staff.
According to one of the program’s
architects, however, that power was
never implemented (Connie Lestor
interview, January 2006).
The Supplemental Report profiles a
number of state efforts that fall into
this broad category. States such as
Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Michigan,
Massachusetts, and North Carolina
have geared intervention-support
strategies around regional school
improvement coaches, peer mentors,
school improvement specialists, “solu-
tions teams,” or “School-Wide
Assistance Teams” (also known as
SWAT teams). There has been no rig-
orous, performance-based analysis, at
least that we could identify, of these
programs and similar initiatives in
other states. But our survey uncovered
much dissatisfaction in these states
with the outcomes of these interven-
tions to date. HSEs and programs
modeled after the Kentucky approach,
it appears, can be helpful in schools
with some level of pre-existing capaci-
ty to improve, especially at the ele-
mentary level. Their efficacy at higher
levels of schooling, and in the particu-
lar subset of chronically under-per-
forming schools that we are examin-
ing here, appears to be much less
promising. In these cases, simply pro-
viding expert assistance without the
ability to make more substantial
changes happen falls short of the
magnitude of the task.
Comprehensive School Reform
The other major way states have pro-
vided help to under-performing
schools is by offering funds to enable
schools to adopt “comprehensive
school reform” (CSR) models. The
idea behind CSR is that high-per-
forming schools typically have a clear,
coherent mission and design that
guides all of the schools’ activities. If
schools are failing, they need a new
school design, and they need an exter-
nal partner with expertise in the
design to help them implement it.
CSR achieved prominence in the
1990s under the sponsorship of New
American Schools (NAS), a nonprofit
that provided funding for the develop-
ment and scale-up of research-based
school designs such as Success For All
and Expeditionary Learning/Outward
Bound. CSR received an enormous
boost in the late 1990s when Congress
began appropriating funds for a feder-
al Comprehensive School Program –
over $1.5 billion through FY2006.
Since these funds flow through states
to schools, every state now has a com-
prehensive school reform office that
administers the program and its brand
of program change.
The impact of CSR, however, has been
severely limited, especially on chroni-
cally low-performing schools. Part of
the challenge stemmed from the lack
of research base undergirding many of
Program Change
(continued)
American Institutes for Research… found only three out of
the twenty-four whole school [CSR] reform models studied
had strong evidence of increased student performance.
A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.1 School Intervention to Date
95
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
the comprehensive reform models
themselves. American Institutes for
Research, for example, found only
three out of the twenty-four whole
school reform models studied had
strong evidence of increased student
performance. (AIR, 1999)
Equally troubling have been the diffi-
culties schools have faced in imple-
menting the reforms, even with the
massive infusion of funding and sup-
port related to CSR. After a decade of
implementation and careful evaluation
of the NAS effort, RAND researchers
(Berends et al, 2002) concluded:
• The hypothesis that adopting a
whole school design would lead a
school to improve its performance
was largely unproved. For many
reasons including significant
implementation problems,
researchers found a lack of strong
improvement in most schools in
their samples.
• External interventions need to
address capacity issues such as lack
of teacher capacity, lack of leader-
ship capacity, and a lack of coher-
ent district infrastructure to sup-
port such efforts.
• The schools most likely to be tar-
geted by the federal Title I pro-
gram (for schools serving stu-
dents in poverty) are most likely
to face obstacles to implementing
whole school designs to improve
student performance.
• Externally developed interventions
cannot “break the mold” and be
implemented successfully in most
districts or schools because these
contexts are simply not supportive
of these efforts. For example, many
districts were unwilling to grant
schools the authority needed to
allocate funds, people, and time as
needed to implement the designs.
For another, some would not take
steps to assign to CSR schools
principals supportive of the chosen
CSR model.
These findings resemble those cited
above related to the direct support
provided by HSEs in Kentucky. The
comprehensive school designs, like
the assistance of HSEs, could only go
so far in light of the pre-existing level
of capacity in schools and the prevail-
ing conditions in which the schools
operated. Since CSR models were gen-
erally not themselves designed to
change those conditions, they often
could not overcome these formidable
obstacles. While CSR has had some
notable successes, its promise as a
“solution” to chronic underperfor-
mance has remained unfulfilled.
The Zone of Wishful Thinking
As Paul Hill and Mary Beth Celio
have written (1998), every approach
to school reform has a “zone of wish-
ful thinking”: a set of conditions or
actions that are essential to the suc-
cess of the reform, but that are not
actually brought about by the reform.
In the case of program change in
chronically under-performing
schools, the zone of wishful thinking
is vast. It also has two parts. First, for
program change to work, the people
working in chronically low-perform-
ing schools must have the capacity to
improve. Not that they must already
have all the skills and knowledge nec-
essary to make their schools better;
the whole point of providing pro-
gram-change assistance is to impart
those skills and knowledge. But they
must have the capacity to use that
assistance well and turn it into signifi-
cantly different operating approaches
and performance results in their
schools. Too often, state assistance
teams, distinguished educators, and
comprehensive model providers have
found that school personnel, and
especially the leaders of chronically
under-performing schools, have
lacked that basic capacity. In these
cases, the notion that simply provid-
ing assistance could turn around these
schools was, in fact, wishful thinking.
Second, help is likely to convert to
results only if schools are working
within conditions that allow and
encourage them to activate the advice,
to implement what their assistance-
providers are suggesting. Without
authority to do what helpers advise,
and without strong inducements to
do so even when change is difficult or
controversial, schools may not move
forward according to the plans they
devise with their assistance-providers.
As a result of these zones of wishful
thinking, states and districts have
sometimes sought to go beyond
program change, as discussed in the
following two sections on people and
system redesign.
In the case of program change in chronically under-per-
forming schools, the “zone of wishful thinking” is vast.
A.2
96
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of Turnaround
Providing for new leadership and new staff is also vital – and also insufficient
T
he second broad category of
intervention design focuses on
changing people – usually along with
changing programs. Because capacity
issues have hindered many efforts to
provide help to chronically under-
performing schools, it is natural that
some states and districts have sought
to supplement that assistance with
actual changes in the people staffing
and leading the schools. Given the
well-documented importance of both
leaders and teachers to the outcomes
a school achieves, changing people is
a plausible strategy for boosting per-
formance. But, as we found with
interventions focusing on program
change alone, efforts that address peo-
ple change (even as part of a larger
effort that includes program change)
without also addressing the systems
and conditions in which people work
have not, by and large, produced the
desired results.
People-change initiatives, in general,
take two forms: bringing in a new
principal, and bringing in a more or
less entirely new staff for the school
(“reconstitution”). These initiatives fall
within NCLB’s second option. (Note:
Another way states have sought to
“change people” is to change leader-
ship at the district level via state
takeovers or by granting control of a
district to the mayor or to a control
board. These strategies are most often
part of broader initiatives designed to
restructure failing districts, and are
discussed in the district profiles in the
Supplemental Report.)
Changing Leadership
The importance of the school leader in
determining a school’s success has a
long-standing research base and wide
acceptance among practitioners.
(Waters et al, 2003; Leithwood
et al, 2004) Experience with turn-
arounds across industries reinforces
this notion, since successful turn-
arounds typically involve a change in
top management. (Hoffman, 1989)
Turnaround experience in other sec-
tors reinforces an additional point:
that managing turnaround effectively
requires a particular set of skills,
beyond those generally acknowledged
to be required for effective leadership.
At one level, leadership change as a
response to low performance in
schools is routine – so routine, in fact,
that it has not been documented and
studied rigorously. It is therefore
impossible to cite a research base
about whether, and under what con-
ditions, changing a school’s leader is
likely to lift it out of chronic under-
performance. Cross-industry research
on turnarounds, however, provides
useful insights about two issues: the
qualities of leaders who appear most
likely to succeed in a turnaround con-
text, and the types of actions leaders
appear to take en route to turn-
arounds that achieve some impact.
(Kowal and Hassel, 2005)
Based on these cross-organizational
findings, it appears that the most
promising “changing leadership”
strategies would be those that seek to
install new leaders who bring the
underlying capabilities of successful
turnaround leaders and receive spe-
cialized training on turnaround lead-
ership actions most likely to lead to
success. The leading state-based exem-
plar of this approach is the Virginia
School Turnaround Specialist
Program (VSTSP), a joint venture of
the University of Virginia’s schools of
business and education. This program
identifies high potential turnaround
leaders (from among high-performing
urban principals) and provides them
with specialized training as they take
up posts in chronically low-perform-
ing schools. Specialists can earn
bonuses of $5,000 for completing the
training and $8,000 differentials if
their schools make AYP, achieve state
accreditation, or reduce the failure
rate in reading or math by 10%.
Differentials of $15,000 are available in
years two and three of the principal’s
work if the school continues to make
AYP or obtains state certification. The
program initially focused on Virginia,
but is now working with three large
school districts from other states as
well, with assistance from Microsoft
Corporation. The program is relatively
new, and no external evaluation has
been completed yet, although the
program has issued its own com-
pendium of “stories” from the first
cohort of 10 specialists, with some
analysis of their self-reported experi-
ences. (Duke et al, 2005) The pro-
gram’s promising first year was fol-
lowed by a somewhat more challeng-
ing sophomore year, with a number
of turnaround leaders leaving their
new schools (as reported in
Turnaround experience in other sectors reinforces an
additional point: that managing turnaround effectively
requires a particular set of skills, beyond those generally
acknowledged to be required for effective leadership.
A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
97
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
The second of our conceptual
maps of the school intervention
landscape places initiatives
focused on changing people large-
ly in the lower lefthand quadrant.
These initiatives have tended to
lack scale (limited, as they are, by
the available capacity for new
staff and leadership) and they also
stop short of changing the condi-
tions in which newly reconstituted
staffs and/or new leaders work.
Their track record of impact is lim-
ited, at best (although Virginia’s
Turnaround Specialist program
shows solid improvement in some
of its schools).
Betting on People Change: Still Not Changing the System
FIGURE AB
A.3
98
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
Education Week and elsewhere; see
the Supplemental Report for more).
The changing-leadership strategy, in
fact, faces a number of obstacles. First,
since turnaround leadership appears
to be a specialty requiring specific
competencies and skills, it is likely
that the supply of individuals capable
of taking on this role successfully is
limited. Programs like the VSTSP are
seeking to address the supply issue in
one way – though the scale-ability of
that model is limited at best. District-
based leadership academies in places
like New York City, San Diego, and
Boston, while less focused on “turn-
around,” are also aiming to increase
the supply of capable school leaders.
External efforts, notably New Leaders
for New Schools, are scouring the
country for high-potential leaders and
offering them training and support.
But if the nation shortly will have 5-
10,000 chronically under-performing
schools, the demand for capable turn-
around leaders swamps the supply
these efforts can currently offer. For
the changing leadership strategy to
work, then, policymakers, funders, and
entrepreneurs will need to do much
more to increase the pipeline of individ-
uals ready and able to fill these posts.
A second and related challenge is that
for many reasons, the conditions for
leadership in chronically under-per-
forming schools are often far from
ideal. As noted above, principals in
these schools typically lack authority
over the critical resources of people,
money, and time, hemmed in as they
are by district and state policies and
by collective bargaining agreements.
While a hallmark of successful turn-
around leaders is their ability and
willingness to accomplish results
despite such constraints, these barri-
ers make the job less attractive – and
the potential for impact more uncer-
tain. Isolated examples like the bonus-
es paid by VSTSP notwithstanding,
there are also few countervailing
incentives for talented turnaround
leaders to take up these jobs. Though
there may be intrinsic rewards to tak-
ing on the toughest jobs in public
education, there is no prospect for
higher pay, special recognition,
opportunities for advancement, or
other inducements that typically
attract high-performing individuals
into jobs. (Hay Group, 2004) In that
context, recruiting the required
pipeline of leaders looks even more
challenging. The conditions
and lack of authority over resources
and strategies also make sustaining
capable leadership over time
exceedingly difficult.
All of this is not to say that changing
leadership should not be an integral
part of districts’ and states’ turn-
around strategies. There are no silver-
bullet strategies in effective turn-
around, but effective leadership may
well be the most important single ele-
ment. Given the importance of school
leadership in general, and turnaround
leaders more specifically, policymak-
ers must attend to this dimension of
change in their turnaround approach-
es. But to do so successfully, the strat-
egy must also include attention to
priming the pipeline of leaders and
changing the conditions of leadership
– the authority and incentive struc-
ture – in order to make the turn-
around job as attractive and viable as
possible for capable people.
Reconstitution
Reconstitution is a more thorough-
going version of changing people,
involving wholesale replacement of all
or most of a school’s staff, not just the
principal. The theory of reconstitu-
tion is that chronically under-per-
forming schools need a fresh start
with a more or less completely new
team of people who can build from
scratch a school program that works.
Experiments with whole-school
reconstitution have been limited to
date, with generally abysmal results.
Prominent examples include:
• San Francisco. The most cited case
is San Francisco’s 1983 reconstitu-
tion of six schools as part of a
court-ordered desegregation effort.
The district, in addition to chang-
ing the staff, also set about recruit-
ing the best teachers available,
adding technology and other
resources, and focusing on improv-
ing the lot of underserved students.
Researchers found that African
American and Latino students in
these initially reconstituted schools
were performing better than those
from similar backgrounds in other
parts of the city. (McRobbie, 1998)
However, in the eight schools
reconstituted after 1994 in San
Francisco, there has been little if
any improvement in standardized
test scores. (Ziebarth 2004)
People Change
(continued)
The Chicago experience at reconstitution prompted the
district to halt implementation of this strategy in other schools.
A.3 People Change A.4 System Redesign A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
99
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
San Francisco moved away from
the strategy and has pursued more
of a program-change approach
featuring the use of coaches to
improve under-performing schools.
• Chicago. Chicago attempted
reconstitutions of high schools in
1997. Hess (2003) explains that
although all teachers in reconsti-
tuted schools were technically
fired, they were allowed to reapply
and be hired back. While the
opportunity to fire and replace
teachers sounds plausible in theo-
ry, in practice Chicago’s experi-
ence suggests the process was too
rushed to allow administrators or
teachers to make thoughtful or
perhaps even meaningful hiring
decisions. The final result was that
varying but fairly high levels of
staff remained in the same build-
ings despite being reconstituted.
There are a variety of reasons for
this variation, including the flawed
hiring process, a lack of desire on
teachers’ part to work in a school
that might close, and the need for
any school district to continuously
serve all of its students – i.e., the
pressure under this kind of strate-
gy to recruit and deploy a new
staff immediately.
After three years of study, the
researchers in Chicago (Hess, 2003)
reported that there had been little
change in the structure of the high
schools, and little change in the
quality of instruction despite the
efforts of external partners. As the
researchers found little had actually
changed except for the changes in
personnel, they were not at all sur-
prised to find lower-than-average
gains in reading achievement
(roughly half the increase that the
city of Chicago gained during this
time period). The Chicago experi-
ence at reconstitution prompted the
district to halt implementation of
this strategy in other schools.
• New York. According to informa-
tion assembled by the Education
Commission of the States (ECS),
the New York Schools Under
Registration Review (SURR) pro-
gram of corrective action led to
more than 40 schools being recon-
stituted in the early years of the
program. The results of this aggres-
sive program, of which reconstitu-
tion is but a part, are mixed.
According to Mintrop and Trujillo
(2005), less than half of the SURR
schools have exited the program.
And Brady (2003) points out that
the criteria for exiting the SURR
program are considerably less strin-
gent than what the state requires
for NCLB. New York’s experience,
then, appears to be another disap-
pointing one for reconstitution.
It appears from this research that
reconstitutions suffer from the same
twin problems that undermine other
efforts to turn around low performing
schools: insufficient capacity and
obstructive conditions. The capacity
challenge appears at two levels. First,
districts attempting reconstitution
have struggled to find more capable
teachers to replace the ones let go dur-
ing reconstitution. If the failing faculty
is replaced by one with equal or lesser
capability, there is no reason to think
reconstitution alone will improve
school performance dramatically.
Second, reconstituted schools have
typically lacked the leadership capacity
and resources to effect a successful
turnaround. The usual reconstitution
timetable is to dismiss staff as one
school year ends and re-hire over the
summer, a timetable that leaves little
opportunity for essentially a new
school start-up effort to be undertaken.
Reconstitutions do involve some
change to the condition set. In partic-
ular, the act of reconstitution itself
requires someone to have the authori-
ty to dismiss members of the school
staff – a critical aspect of condition
change. But this doesn’t mean that the
school, post-reconstitution, lives with-
in a new condition set. The schools’
new leaders may or may not have
ongoing authority to build and
change their teams, to allocate
resources strategically, to set sched-
ules and otherwise use time in ways
that benefit their students.
The broader research on organization-
al turnaround suggests that wholesale
replacement of staff, while sometimes
used effectively, is not a necessary
ingredient of turnaround success.
Indeed, one recent review of the turn-
around literature found that “success-
ful turnarounds often combine new
employees with old to introduce new
energy and enthusiasm without losing
skill and experience,” citing six
research studies in support of that
conclusion. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005)
In that light, the disappointing experi-
ence with school reconstitution is not
at all surprising. While leadership
change is often central to turnaround
success, and the ability to shape school
staff around a turnaround strategy is a
critical authority for turnaround lead-
ers to hold, broad-scale all-at-once
staff replacement appears less viable as
a strategy – or even as one element in
a larger initiative.
A.3
100
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
A.4 System Redesign: Program, People – and Conditions Change
The operating context for intervention is as important as the intervention itself
T
here is enough research on the
more typical forms of intervention,
summarized in the two previous sections
(and in the Supplemental Report), to
conclude that they are generally insuffi-
cient to produce exemplary results on
a broad scale – at least in the ways
they have been implemented to date.
Providing advice and continuous review,
implementing new curricular/instruc-
tional/assessment programs, supporting
staff development, even changing leader-
ship and school staff: none of this work
has produced a clearly delineated path-
way that educators and policymakers
might adopt to turn around the lowest-
performing schools successfully.
What’s missing?
Beyond the nature of the programming
and effectiveness of the people, there is
the context in which a school’s leader-
ship and staff are pursuing their mis-
sion – the set of conditions that shapes
how decisions are made and the extent
to which, in any operation, people
are enabled to do their best work.
Providing extensive help to schools
whose leaders lack the authority to
make change (or strong inducements
to do so) appears limited in effect.
Attracting and placing talented new
leaders is more challenging when
the conditions of leadership in a turn-
around school are not designed to make
real leadership possible. The same is
true of teachers: why would talented,
experienced people be drawn to class-
rooms in these schools under the same
conditions that have conspired to pro-
duce so much failure, so consistently?
Ways to Create New Conditions
This is the line of thinking that has
fueled the nation’s charter school
movement over the past ten years: in
order to free up educators and school
leaders to do their best work, the dys-
functions of the current public educa-
tion system – so clearly evidenced by
the learning outcomes produced in the
bottom five percent of public schools –
must be skirted entirely and a new sys-
tem (and new set of conditions) must
be put in its place. As discussed in the
box on page 104, results from the
nation’s charter experiment are mixed,
depending to a strong degree on the
strength of the authorizing/accounta-
bility framework in which individual
charter schools have developed. But
this completely-outside-the-system
model has not been the only response
to the increasing conviction that the
conditions context of reform is as
important as the nature of the reform
itself and the people implementing it.
Decision-makers in a number of large
school districts, and a growing set of
policymakers at the state level, have
begun to experiment with a hybrid
approach that imports the outside-
the-system thinking that characterizes
charter schools – and attempts to
implement it within the system.
As described in Part 3, the conditions
change that has been the focus of these
newer efforts can be thought of in two
broad categories. One is ensuring that
someone within the system, most likely
school-level leaders or leadership
teams, holds clear authority over the
key resources that affect school per-
formance and the implementation of
any turnaround plan: people, money,
and time. The other is creating strong
incentives for people to take on the
challenge of turning around chronical-
ly under-performing schools, and to
do so successfully. The research on the
central importance of both authority
and incentives is cited in Part 3 as well.
Most of the experimenting with con-
dition change has been undertaken at
the district level, by leaders in large
urban districts including Chicago,
Philadelphia, Miami-Dade, New York,
Oakland, and Boston. The initiatives
are often gathered under the mantel
of autonomy, with the Edmonton,
Canada school district’s experience
cited as a primary model. (Beginning
in the late 1990s, Edmonton pioneered
an approach to district governance
that placed substantial decision-mak-
ing authority in the hands of school
principals and that has produced
promising results.) Increased authority
at the school leadership level is some-
times used as a reward for relative
high achievement, on the theory that
higher-performing schools could and
should be given latitude to pursue
their own strategies for improvement.
But experiments are also underway to
provide that authority (usually along
with tighter accountability) to schools
that volunteer for it – and, in some
cases, to chronically under-performing
schools as a central part of a turn-
around strategy. These district-based
reform efforts are discussed in subse-
quent pages of this section and in the
Supplemental Report.
Decision-makers… have begun to experiment with a hybrid
approach that imports the outside-the-system thinking that
characterizes charter schools – and attempts to implement
it within the system.
A.4 System Redesign A.3 People Change A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
101
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
In this third version of our inter-
vention-vs.-scale “map” of the
current landscape of turnaround
reform efforts, we place a number
of initiatives that attempt to incor-
porate basic changes in operating
conditions, work rules, and incen-
tives as part of their approach to
school intervention. By and large,
we found, initiatives that include
conditions change tend to allow
for significant program and people
change as well – but that is not
always the case.
The initiatives shown here are
district-based strategies because
these selected, large urban dis-
tricts have been more entrepre-
neurial than state policymakers in
attempting this multi-dimensional
kind of reform. Their experiments
are too new to show definitive
results, so it is too early to declare
that they have found demonstra-
bly effective turnaround pathways
for chronically under-performing
schools. But they do reflect a more
comprehensive, systems-oriented
approach that appears to more
fully embrace, in our view, the
characteristics of the HPHP (High-
Performing, High-Poverty) schools
profiled in Part 2. These initiatives
are briefly described over the fol-
lowing pages and in greater detail
in the Supplemental Report.
Getting to System Redesign by Incorporating Changes in Operating Conditions
FIGURE AC
A.4
102
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
“Inside” and “Outside”
Strategies to Transform
Operating Conditions
Efforts to change the conditions
context in which intervention takes
place fall along a continuum from
inside to virtually outside the normal
school district governance and man-
agement structures, as portrayed in
Figure AD.
At the “inside” end of the
continuumare strategies that seek to
change the conditions for turnaround
schools, but largely within existing
school district structures and arrange-
ments. Schools remain district operat-
ed; staff members remain district
employees and members of collective
bargaining units; most district and
collective bargaining policies still
apply to the schools. But there are
some special rules, some exceptions
to policies that allow these schools to
do things differently. Miami’s School
Improvement Zone, described more
fully below and in the Supplemental
Report, is a prime example of the
inside approach to conditions change.
New York’s Chancellor’s District (an
initiative that operated in the 1990s),
Philadelphia’s district-operated low-
performing schools, and Chicago’s
“Performance Schools” fit into this
category as well.
At the “outside” end, districts and
states effect conditions change by
turning over control of schools to
outside providers. Through a charter
or a contract, these providers gain
authority over the key resources
of people, time, and money. And
through that same contract or char-
ter, they shoulder potentially power-
ful incentives to succeed or else face
revocation or non-renewal of their
agreement. While there are many
isolated examples of this approach
to improving chronically under-
performing schools, a small number
of districts have begun using this
instrument across multiple schools.
Philadelphia and Chicago, for exam-
ple, have entered into contracts
and charters with a wide variety of
nonprofit and for-profit entities to
operate chronically low-performing
System Redesign
(continued)
The Continuum of Outside-the-System Approaches,
Applied to Various Degrees Inside the System
A.4 System Redesign A.3 People Change A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
FIGURE AD
103
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
An Inside Turnaround Zone Model:
Miami-Dade’s Improvement Zone
Upon becoming Miami-Dade’s superintendent of schools in 2004, Rudolph
(Rudy) Crew created the Miami School Improvement Zone, a cluster of 39
schools with chronically low test scores. (Crew had pioneered this approach
with the Chancellor’s District in New York City, previously.) Schools in the
Zone receive the whole range of interventions described in this report. The
district provides a great deal of assistance to Zone schools, in the form of
intensive teacher training around district-selected curricula. The district also
enabled fairly extensive people change, replacing 15 principals at the 39
schools and turning over a significant number of teachers. And the district
also changed the schools’ operating conditions, negotiating with the
teacher’s union for the authority to pay Zone teachers 20 percent more to
compensate them for working an extra hour per school day and a ten-day-
longer school year. (Farrell, 2005)
In contrast to the other approaches described below, conditions-change in
the Zone has not revolved around granting more authority to school-level
managers. On the contrary, schools in the Zone are subject to more intensive
centralized control over such matters as curriculum, scheduling, and teacher
training. The conditions-change has had more to do with increased authority
in these areas at the district level, via negotiations with the teachers’ union.
The key idea here is thus not simply the delegation of power to schools, so
much as it is ensuring conditions that support the district’s strategies for
intervention. That set of strategies, developed in part by former Miami-Dade
deputy superintendent Irving Hamer (who was a principal consultant on this
report), involves a suite of nine interlocking elements ranging from new cur-
ricula and assessments to close collaboration with social service agencies.
A critical hallmark of Miami-Dade’s approach has been the re-establishment
of an identity for Zone schools that has helped to make them places where
people want to work. The district held a successful national recruiting fair
for teachers that set that tone even before the Zone opened for its first year
– and convinced some teachers who’d thought they might transfer out of
the schools to stay. Since then, the schools in the Improvement Zone (which
completed its third year in 2006-7), have shown appreciably stronger
achievement gains than other Miami-Dade schools in the same time period,
though many remain below district averages. See the Supplemental Report
for a more detailed analysis.
schools. In San Diego, four schools
facing “Restructuring” under No
Child Left Behind were closed and
reopened as charter schools under
former superintendent Alan Bersin.
In between these two extremes are
hybrid efforts to use in-district but
charter-like structures to create a
condition set that similarly combines
authority and incentives (including
increased accountability). A leading
example of this general approach is
Boston’s network of “pilot schools” –
though Boston has used the pilot
mechanism primarily to start new
schools rather than to turn around
low-performing schools. In pilot
schools, teachers remain union
members, but the schools receive
greater latitude in five areas –
curriculum, staffing, budgeting,
scheduling, and governance (see box
at the end of this section) – to pursue
learning models developed individual-
ly by staff and leadership at each pilot
school. Other districts have created
similar arrangements for single schools,
such as Worcester, Massachusetts’
University Park Campus School,
profiled extensively in the
Supplemental Report and at Mass
Insight’s effective-practice research
website, www.buildingblocks.org.
The following descriptions profile
these approaches – inside, outside,
and hybrid – and their emerging
results in more detail.
A.4
104
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
System Redesign
(continued)
Outside Forms of Turnaround Zones:
Chartering and Contracting
In contrast to Miami’s inside strategy, the approach of “outsourcing” management –
contracting or chartering with outside organizations – places authority and account-
ability directly with the school, or with the school operator in the case of contracts
with multi-school education management organizations. While 3,600 charter schools
operate nationwide, only a small number of schools have been closed and reopened
as charter schools in response to chronic low performance. The states of Louisiana
and Colorado have taken this step, as has the San Diego school district. (Ziebarth
and Wohlstetter, 2005) The Chicago and Philadelphia “portfolio” approaches include
complements of schools run by charter management organizations, through these
arrangements look more like contracts than independent charters, strictly speaking;
the Oakland school district, meanwhile, went so far as to collaborate with outside
partners to create a new charter management organization (called Education for
Change) to take over two struggling elementary schools.
More common has been the contracting approach, where districts have entered
into agreements with an outside entity to manage low-performing schools. These
entities come in both for-profit (education management organizations, or EMOs)
and non-profit (charter management organizations, or CMOs) varieties, and they
also differ substantially in the types of instructional programs they offer and how
they are managed. (Colby, Smith, & Shelton, 2005) Many districts have contracted
out the management of individual schools, but some have gone farther in an
attempt to use contracting as a more scaled-up strategy. These include Baltimore,
MD, and Chester, PA, which contracted with Edison Schools for the management of
some struggling schools; Philadelphia, which contracts with a range of for-profit
EMOs as well as universities and non-profits to manage some of its toughest
schools; and Chicago, which is closing low-performing schools and reopening them
under a variety of arrangements including contracts. Some states (e.g., Maryland)
have experimented with the approach as well, though in the majority of cases
(e.g., Hawaii and Massachusetts), the contracting has stopped short of outsourcing
authority to run the under-performing schools.
The research on contracting, in general, closely parallels that on chartering –
meaning, the results are mixed. A number of charter schools and some contract
schools have produced extraordinary results with previously unsuccessful students,
but the performance of many other charter and contract schools is similar to or
lower than that of comparable schools. Key distinguishers appear to match the
conditions context and related analysis outlined above, with flexibility, incentives,
and resources – especially human resources – emerging as important factors. At the
system level, a rigorous provider selection process, strong accountability for results,
and extensive school autonomy appear to support effective chartering. (National
Association of Charter School Authorizers, 2005) According to a U.S. Department of
Education study of successful charter schools, the authority to do things differently
is a critical success factor for the schools examined. (U.S. Department of Education,
2004) At the school level, effective school design and highly capable leadership
both appear to distinguish successful charter schools, though the specific character-
istics of a capable start-up leader are different from those of a capable leader of an
on-going school. (Arkin & Kowal, 2005)
With results very mixed, contracting has not proved to be a panacea for districts
seeking dramatic improvement. Some experiments, such as Chester, PA’s attempt to
contract out the management of almost all the system’s schools, have failed miser-
ably. (Rhim, 2004) In other cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, contracting
has achieved mixed but somewhat more encouraging success. (Rhim 2005a,
2005b; Gill et al, 2007); see the profile of Philadelphia in the Supplemental Report
for more detail.) But system-level conditions similar to those in chartering appear
to facilitate success, including rigorous upfront selection, freedom to act for chosen
contractors, and clear contracts that instill results-based accountability. (Rhim
2005a, 2005b) In Chester, for example, the contractor (Edison Schools) did not
receive substantial authority over the critical resources, especially staff.
The issues surrounding chartering and contracting as strategies for intervention
mirror the challenges facing struggling schools in general. As a study completed
by Mass Insight for the NewSchools Venture Fund (2007) showed, the provider
“marketplace” currently lacks both the capacity and, to a strong degree, sufficient
interest in contracting with school districts to run turnaround schools. Most of the
A.4 System Redesign A.3 People Change A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
105
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
executives at the 50 CMOs and EMOs interviewed for that study expressed skepticism
that the contracts would provide them with the autonomy and the resources they
believe would be required to turn around a struggling school. The experience of those
who had done some contract work for school districts, in fact, bears out that skepti-
cism. (Mass Insight, 2007) In one noteworthy example, the Green Dot charter manage-
ment organization elected to create a set of small charters within the enrollment draw
area of Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, because it could not arrive at an agree-
ment with the LAUSD for turnaround of Jefferson High that gave Green Dot the authori-
ty it felt it needed. In other large districts, even when the commitment to autonomy
from district red tape was strong at the superintendent level, contract operators report-
ed that this commitment did not necessarily extend into the middle layers of the district
bureaucracy, which precipitated issues around facility use and non-educational services
such as transportation and food.
In short, chartering and contracting have not proved, by themselves, to be the answer
to the problem of chronically under-performing schools. While these “outsourced-
management” arrangements show promise in sometimes bringing together important
elements for intervention – in the form of program, people, and conditions change –
the track record for experiments being pursued under this approach is too mixed
(and is still too young) to have yielded conclusive results. These strategies present, in
addition, other questions that are difficult to address: for example, what happens when
a contract for management of an under-performing school expires? If the work has
been successful, is the contract extended or is the now adequately-performing school
returned to the school district – and under what kinds of conditions?
Outcomes emerging from some larger district/partner collaborations, such as the First
Things First program being implemented by the Kansas City, KS school district with the
non-profit group IRRE (Institute for Research and Reform in Education), indicate that
sustained, comprehensive partnerships encompassing all three forms of change, in some
manner, can produce improvement. The question is whether – and how – school districts
and states can combine effective partnering with outside-of-the-system conditions and a
comprehensive, integrated reform approach to turn around the most dysfunctional, most
consistently under-performing schools. That question is taken up in Part 5 of this report.
How Ready Are Districts to Contract Successfully with
Turnaround Partners?
Mass Insight’s 2007 study for NewSchools Venture Fund
identified four variables that indicate school districts’ readiness to
contract effectively with outside partners to pursue turnaround in
under-performing schools:
1. Interest in using outside providers for restructuring: district
leadership commitment to shake up the status quo, along with
legal/regulatory “permission”
2. Willingness to grant providers sufficient autonomy: through
chartering or contracting – with autonomies clearly spelled out in
the contract language
3. Stability and clout of educational and political leadership:
strong mayor as important as strong superintendent, in some cases
buttressed by state intervention providing additional powers
4. Financial/contractual viability of turnaround initiative:
adequate funding (see page 79) and appropriate contracting
mechanisms and capacity.
Source: Considering School Turnarounds: Market Research and Analysis in Six Urban Districts,
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, 2007
A.4
106
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
System Redesign
(continued)
A Hybrid Inside/Outside Model:
Boston’s Pilot Schools
As shown in Figure AD, there is a continuum of possibilities between Miami-Dade’s
internal, district-centric effort to transform operating conditions in struggling
schools and the outsourcing strategies of chartering and contracting. Some districts
have pursued a strategy that combines inside and outside approaches to conditions
change, the best example of which may be Boston’s “pilot schools” strategy. Pilot
schools first opened in 1995 through an unusual agreement between the district,
the teachers’ union, and other parties. Under this agreement, pilot schools enjoy
five “autonomies”: budget, staffing, scheduling, curriculum/instruction/assessment,
and governance/policies – in short, precisely the sort of authority associated with
conditions change we have studied in this report. Yet unlike charter and contract
schools, pilot schools are still squarely within-district schools, and staff remain
members of the city’s collective bargaining unit.
A recent evaluation of Boston’s pilot schools found that they use their autonomy
to make time for faculty collaboration, reduce class sizes and teacher loads,
increase the length of instructional periods, create a “nurturing” school culture,
and require competency or mastery beyond statewide requirements for graduation.
(Center for Collaborative Education, 2006) The evaluation also cites strong student
performance results for the pilot schools, relative to regular district schools.
(For example, 84% of pilot school students passed the state 10th grade English
Language Arts exam in 2005, compared to 58% of Boston Public School students
overall. The study also points to better attendance and fewer discipline issues
as signals of these schools’ success.) Skeptics of their success note that they are
“opt-in” academies (as are charter schools) that serve more motivated students
(and fewer trouble-makers) than regular public schools.
The pilot school approach was not originally developed as a way to conduct
turnaround of under-performing schools; like charter schools, and like other
initiatives such as Edmonton’s school-level autonomy approach, New York City’s
Empowerment Zone, and Oakland’s Results-Based Budgeting program, it reflects
the idea that decentralizing some forms of decision-making authority will ensure
that “those closest to the students... get to make the key decisions” (to quote from
New York’s description of its Children First initiative, announced in January 2007).
If all of this sounds a bit like the site-based management wave of reform that had
its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that’s because it is a descendent in
many ways of that movement, but with more careful attention being paid, generally,
to the mix of “tight” (centralized) and “loose” (decentralized) authorities across
the various domains in which schools operate: instruction, assessment, human
resource management, facilities management, transportation, policy compliance,
etc. We study the loose-tight blend of authority in our discussion of a potential
state and district framework for school turnaround in Part 4, and in the profiles
of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami-Dade in the Supplemental Report.
Boston’s Pilot School model has recently become the centerpiece of a new experi-
ment by the Massachusetts State Board of Education – one that merits close atten-
tion. Seeking ways to motivate districts to pursue more dramatic, transformational
turnaround of failing schools, Board chair Christopher Anderson invited three
districts (Boston, Springfield, and Fitchburg) to use a new Commonwealth Pilot
(or “Co-Pilot”) turnaround option to avoid having the “chronically under-perform-
ing” label pinned on four schools. The schools were essentially given two alterna-
tives: take ownership of a substantial conversion process into a Co-Pilot School, or
accept much more intensive state intervention. All four schools elected, with union
support and 80% faculty votes, to enter into Co-Pilot status and submitted plans
that met the state’s ten “enabling conditions” (see page 74) and other criteria.
They were to reopen in the fall of 2007 as Co-Pilots with many of the autonomies
described here, supported by their district and a Co-Pilot network managed by
the Center for Collaborative Education. It’s an interesting experiment in achieving
the right balance of local control/buy-in, state-specified turnaround criteria, and
network support. The keys to success will lie in adjusting the Pilot model to suit
a turnaround context – which would mean firmer support and direction from the
network – and ensuring that the network provider has the necessary resources
to provide the required external capacity.
A.4 System Redesign A.3 People Change A.2 Program Change A.1 School Intervention to Date
107
©2007 MASS I NSI GHT
A Demanding Strategy
Two broad points about conditions
change as a key element in turning
around low-performing schools
appear warranted from our examina-
tion of what’s been tried. First: the
nature of this principle and the
newness of its application within a
turnaround context point to the need
for much more research into which
authorities can effectively be decen-
tralized and which should more logi-
cally remain the province of a cen-
tralized network operator – in most
cases, a school district – and how this
loose-vs.-tight equation should be
adjusted for higher, lower, or the
most chronically poor-performing
schools. “Loose-vs.-tight,” in our
view, may well become the critical
school reform research question of
this decade. (For a compelling analy-
sis already published, see Colby,
Smith, and Shelton, 2005. Mass
Insight is planning an in-depth
research-and-development process
to produce a set of recommendations
on this issue for school networks.)
Second: districts and states need
substantial capacity of their own
to engage in successful conditions
change, even if it is part of a strategy
that devolves authority to schools
or to outside providers. It is tempting
to think of changing conditions as
a low-investment strategy, one that
involves changing rules and policies
but otherwise not requiring the sub-
stantial funding and related support
associated with such approaches as
providing guidance via school assis-
tance teams. Research and experience
with conditions change, however, tell
another story. Chartering and con-
tracting, for example, require signifi-
cant investment in systems to recruit
and develop providers, select quali-
fied operators, design RFPs and
contracts that reflect research-based
reform criteria, monitor contract
performance, and take action when
contract performance falls short.
Failure to develop such systems
underlies many of the problems that
have emerged with chartering and
contracting approaches nationally.
(Kowal and Arkin, 2005; Arkin and
Kowal, 2005) The importance of such
systems would be doubled when a
district or state wants to undertake
conditions change for the purpose
of school turnaround – and doubled
again when turnaround is undertaken
at scale, across a number of schools
and districts simultaneously.
The Five Autonomies of Boston’s Pilot Schools
Staffing: Teachers who work in Pilot Schools are exempt from teachers’ union contract
work rules, while still receiving union salary, benefits, and accrual of seniority within
the district. Teachers voluntarily choose to work at Pilot Schools; when hired, they sign
what is called an “election-to-work agreement,” which stipulates the work conditions
for each school for the coming school year. The agreement is revisited and revised
annually with staff input.
Budgetary: Rather than receiving most of their budget through staffing allocation
formulas set by the district, Pilot Schools receive a lump sum per pupil amount equal
to other BPS (Boston Public) schools that each Pilot School is able to allocate as they
see fit. As well, Pilot Schools can decide whether or not to purchase discretionary
central office services from the district. If a service is not purchased, the per pupil
amount for that service is added to the school’s lump sum per pupil budget.
The total amount of central discretionary services is approximately $500 per pupil.
Curriculum and Assessment: Pilot Schools… are not required to follow district-man-
dated curriculum or assessments. Pilot Schools often create or modify curriculum to fulfill
each individual school’s mission. For example, one Pilot School is focused on expedi-
tionary learning, and staff planned a whole curriculum around the idea of survival. Staff
engagement [reportedly has] increased with their increased decision-making capabilities.
Governance: Several different decision-making bodies exist in Pilot Schools, drawing
on the voices of staff, students, and families. Staff decision-making groups may include
leadership teams, curriculum teams, and committees. Governing boards in Pilot Schools
have more authority than traditional school site councils. Pilot School governing boards
consist of the principal, staff (at least four), family representatives, community mem-
bers (including from higher education, business, community organizations), and for
middle and high schools, students. Their respective peers elect staff, family, and student
representatives, while the overall governing board selects community members.
Scheduling: Schools vary the length and schedule of instructional periods, which
allows staff more flexibility in their teaching. Many Pilot Schools choose to increase
the length of instructional blocks to improve teaching and learning. Extra time allows
staff and students to pursue a subject more deeply. Teachers also have the possibility
of teaching an interdisciplinary curriculum and team-teaching. Pilot Schools are [also]
able to modify the school schedule and calendar. High schools may determine start and
end times for their schools (elementary and middle schools are still constrained by the
district bus schedule); as a result, most Pilot high schools start later in the day than
regular BPS schools.
Excerpted from The Essential Guide to Pilot Schools, Center for Collaborative Education; available at www.cce.org
A.4
108
THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE
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Appendix B: References
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109
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Mass Insight Education & Research Institute (project organizer)
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent non-profit
that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly
improve student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scale
depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice; and that only dramatic
and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will produce significant achievement gains.
The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform
model now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using Advanced
Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transform
school culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108
617-778-1500 Fax: 617-778-1505
For more information about Mass Insight and for additional
resources and tools relating to the turnaround of under-performing
schools, please find us on the web at www.massinsight.org.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (lead funder)
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works
to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In developing countries, it focuses
on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public
libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great
education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving
the lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer
and Co-chairs William H. Gates Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.
www.gatesfoundation.org
Copyright © 2007 by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, a 501c3 non-profit
organization. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy this report for non-commercial use.
Mass Insight Education
& Research Institute Funders
Leadership Sponsors
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Barr Foundation
The Boston Foundation
National Math & Science Initiative
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
NewSchools Venture Fund
Major and Contributing Sponsors
Analog Devices
Bank of America
Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation
EMC Corporation
Genzyme Corporation
Goodwin Procter
IBM
Intel Corporation
Liberty Mutual
Mass High Tech Council
Mass Mutual Insurance
Microsoft Corporation
The Noyce Foundation
State Street Corporation
Teradyne
Verizon Communications
Public Sources of Funds
Federal/State
• Massachusetts Department of Education
• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership
• Comprehensive School Reform
• Massachusetts Board of Higher Education
Districts/Schools: Membership fees
and earned revenue for field services
Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independent
non-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state
government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closing
achievement gaps.
Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that
change at scale depends on the practical integration of research, policy, and practice;
and that only dramatic and comprehensive change in high-poverty schools will
produce significant achievement gains. The strategies that Boston-based Mass Insight
implemented to help make Massachusetts a reform model now inform the organiza-
tion's national work on two high-impact goals:
• using Advanced Placement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science
achievement and to transform school culture, and
• the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.
We are:
Synthesizers and providers of research. Mass Insight is a national resource for
practical information on how to effectively implement standards-based education.
The Turnaround Challenge represents a new form of educational policy research:
highly graphical, presented in varying user-formats (print, presentation, web), and
expressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our Building
Blocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-
practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep the
Promise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classes
subject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies for
serving them.
Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,
informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and its
predecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role in
shaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insight
consults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recently
helping to design school turnaround programs in Illinois and Washington State.
Leaders in standards-based services to schools. We provide practical, research-
based technical services, staff and leadership development programs, and consulting
services to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great Schools
Coalition, a 10-year-old partnership of nearly 30 change-oriented Massachusetts
districts. Our field services have focused on math and science, and over the next five-
to-ten years will revolve principally around using increased access to AP® courses and
improved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructional
change in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through the
National Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 million
as the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.
See www.massinsight.org for more details.
Why America’s best opportunity to
dramatically improve student achievement
lies in our worst-performing schools
Prepared through a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
New Research, Recommendations, and a Partnership Framework for States and School Districts
The
Turnaround
Challenge
Mass Insight Education and Research Institute
18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108 • tel: 617-778-1500 • fax: 617-778-1505 • www.massinsight.org
School Turnaround: a dramatic and
comprehensive intervention in a low-performing
school that produces significant gains in student
achievement within two academic years.
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