The Turnaround Challenge | Mass Insight

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

TheTurnaround

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.

The Turnaround

Challeng

eM

ass Insight

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 significantlyimprove student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.

Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scaledepends 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 reformmodel now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using AdvancedPlacement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transformschool culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.

18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108617-778-1500 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 publiclibraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a greateducation 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 Stonesiferand 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 SponsorsBill & Melinda Gates FoundationBarr FoundationThe Boston FoundationNational Math & Science Initiative• Exxon Mobil Corporation• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation• Michael & Susan Dell FoundationNellie Mae Education FoundationNewSchools Venture Fund

Major and Contributing SponsorsAnalog DevicesBank of AmericaIrene E. and George A. Davis FoundationEMC CorporationGenzyme CorporationGoodwin ProcterIBMIntel CorporationLiberty MutualMass High Tech CouncilMass Mutual InsuranceMicrosoft CorporationThe Noyce FoundationState Street CorporationTeradyneVerizon Communications

Public Sources of FundsFederal/State• Massachusetts Department of Education• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership• Comprehensive School Reform• Massachusetts Board of Higher EducationDistricts/Schools: Membership fees and earned revenue for field services

Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independentnon-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closingachievement gaps.

Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: thatchange 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 Insightimplemented 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 forpractical 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), andexpressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our BuildingBlocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep thePromise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classessubject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies forserving them.

Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and itspredecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role inshaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insightconsults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recentlyhelping 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 consultingservices to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great SchoolsCoalition, 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 andimproved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructionalchange in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through theNational Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 millionas the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.

See www.massinsight.org for more details.

i


TheTurnaround

Challenge



By Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash

ii THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE

The authors and Mass Insight Education & ResearchInstitute would like to express our deep appreciation to the researchers, policymakers, reform experts, superin-tendents, principals, and teachers who contributed to thedevelopment of The Turnaround Challenge. The conclu-sions reached in this report are our own, but they reflectextensive input from a broad range of project participants.Thanks also go to our partners at the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation, whose support made the project possible. Weowe a deep debt of gratitude, as well, to our core advisorson the project, particularly Irving Hamer of theMillennium Group (www.the-m-group.com), who asDeputy Superintendent was the architect of Miami-Dade’sImprovement Zone; and Bryan Hassel, noted researcherand writer on No Child Left Behind and school reform(www.publicimpact.com). NewSchools Venture Fundprovided funding for a separate research project thatproved extremely valuable to our work on this report.Finally, this project drew inspiration and evidence from awide body of research focused on under- and over-per-forming schools, change management, and the impacts ofpoverty on learning. Special thanks go to KarinChenoweth, author of It’s Being Done (Harvard EducationPress, 2007); David Berliner (“Our Impoverished View ofEducation Reform,” Teachers College Record, 2006); andAbigail and Stephan Thernstrom (No Excuses: Closing theRacial Gap in Learning, Simon & Schuster, 2003), all ofwhose work gave us confidence that The TurnaroundChallenge can in fact be met.

AuthorsAndrew Calkins is Senior Vice President of MassInsight Education & Research Institute. He was former-ly the Executive Director of the nonprofit organizationRecruiting 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 InsightEducation & 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, aself-paced learning division at Reed Elsevier Publishers.

Dave Lash is a strategy and innovation consultant withexpertise in designing and implementing new initiatives.Principal of Dave Lash & Company(www.davelash.com), he helped develop the conceptualmodels and visual orientation of this report.

Mass Insight Education and Research InstituteSenior management and project-related staff:William Guenther, PresidentAndrew Calkins, Senior Vice PresidentMelanie Winklosky, Vice President, Development & OperationsAlison Fraser, Great Schools Campaign DirectorJoanna Manikas, Design and Production DirectorGrace Belfiore, Senior EditorCharles Chieppo, Senior WriterChris Tracey, Researcher/WriterDeb Abbott, Finance ManagerJulie Corbett, Program AssociateElizabeth Hiles, Research AssociateLinda Neri Watts, Contributing EditorDonna Michitson, Graphic DesignerDanielle Stein, [former] Program Mgr., Building Blocks

Project and editorial consultants:Ethan Cancell, Brockton Public SchoolsBryan Hassel, Public Impact, Inc.Irving Hamer, Millennium GroupRichard O’Neill, Renaissance School ServicesAdam Kernan-Schloss, KSA-PlusJennifer Vranek, Education First ConsultingAnne Lewis

Project partners:Michael Cohen and Matt Gandal, Achieve Inc.

National project advisors and focus group participants:Richard Elmore, Harvard UniversityTokes Fashola, American Institutes for ResearchLauren Rhim, University of MarylandDouglas Sears, Boston UniversityKen Wong, Brown UniversityTim Knowles, University of ChicagoBarbara Byrd-Bennett, Cleveland State UniversityVicki Phillips, [formerly] Portland, OR Public SchoolsKati Haycock, The Education TrustAndrew Rotherham, Ed SectorRichard Hess, American Enterprise InstituteAmy Starzynski, Holland & KnightScott Palmer, Holland & KnightAna Tilton, NewSchools Venture FundRenuka Kher, NewSchools Venture FundAnthony Cavanna, American Institutes for ResearchRobin Lake, Center for Reinventing EducationMonica Byrn-Jimenez, UMass BostonBrett Lane, Education Alliance at Brown UniversityCheryl Almedia, Jobs for the FutureCeline Coggins, Rennie Center for Education ReformDavid Farbman, Mass 2020Jamie Gass, Pioneer InstituteFred Carrigg, New Jersey Department of EducationRon Peiffer, Maryland Department of EducationJoAnne Carter, Maryland Department of EducationDane Linn, National Governors AssociationFritz Edelstein, U.S. Conference of MayorsJulie Bell, National Conference of State LegislaturesSunny Kristin, National Conference of State Legislatures

Massachusetts project advisors and focus group participants:Juliane Dow, Massachusetts Department of EducationLynda Foisy, Massachusetts Department of EducationSpencer Blasdale, Academy of the Pacific Rim, BostonSally Dias, Emmanuel CollegePeggy Kemp, Fenway High School, BostonKen Klau, Massachusetts Department of EducationMatt Malone, Swampscott Public SchoolsEarl Metzler, Sterling Middle School, QuincyPaul Natola, Boston Public SchoolsBasan Nembirkow, Brockton Public SchoolsKiki Papagiotis, Salem High SchoolAnn Southworth, Springfield Public Schools

Acknowledgements

1©2007 MASS INSIGHT

Introductory Material and Executive SummaryAcknowledgements.......................................................................................................................................iiContents.......................................................................................................................................................1Foreword ......................................................................................................................................................212 Tough Questions: A Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround ...................................................3The Main Ideas in The Turnaround Challenge................................................................................................4Executive Summary of the Report..................................................................................................................8

Part 1: The Challenge of School Turnaround 1.1 The Goals, Methodology, and Organization of This Report...................................................................141.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge ....................................................................161.3 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 Conditions2.1 Understanding the DNA We Must Replicate at Scale...........................................................................242.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor Children......................................................262.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learning.....................................................................................282.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness Model..........................................................302.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP Schools ...............................................................................................38

Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Odds for Turnaround Schools3.1 Moving Beyond Marginal to Fundamental Change .............................................................................403.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective Turnaround.....................................................................443.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround ....................................................................483.4 The Third C: Clustering for Support .....................................................................................................52

Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools4.1 Towards a Framework that Offers Good Support for Good Design.......................................................564.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School Intervention......................................................................................584.3 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 ImpactA.1 School Intervention to Date: Goals, Strategies, and Impact..................................................................90A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of Turnaround .................................................................................92A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of Turnaround....................................................................................96A.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 forUnder-Performing Schools

Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii,Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia

Profiles of Four School District Strategies forUnder-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 BlocksEffective-Practice Research

Poverty's “Perfect Storm” Impact on Learningand 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 SupplementalReport can be downloaded from the web atwww.massinsight.org.

Table of Contents

2 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE

In Time magazine’s recent analysis of the impact of the No Child Left BehindAct (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 theoverall judgment down was the F, by far the lowest grade, given to the categoryHelping Schools Improve. “Even the Department of Education,” Time wrote, “con-cedes that its remedies for chronic schoolfailure 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 alongsideof others lauding individual school successstories. In fact, higher standards and testinghave helped to demonstrate, more clearlythan ever before, that schools serving highlychallenged, high-poverty student enrollments– the kind of schools most likely to bedeemed “chronic failures” – can succeed. Butwe have clearly not developed ways to extendthat success, or to apply successful schools’strategies to help struggling schools improve.

It is a poignant and troubling irony. Just aswe discover that demographics need notdetermine destiny, the nation’s new school-quality measurement tools reveal that forstudents attending our worst-performingschools… 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 whatNCLB 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 askills 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 inSeptember, 2005: examine the landscape of current effort to turn around thenation’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 InsightEducation & Research Institute representeda compelling choice for the foundation toconduct this work: a non-profit organiza-tion that has been deeply involved in policyfacilitation, education reform advocacy,effective-practice research, and intensiveschool-improvement services simultaneous-ly at the state level for ten years. All of thesecapacities informed this report, as did thefact that our home and our work over thatdecade has been in Massachusetts – anational model, in many ways, for effectivestandards-based reform.

But on the issue of school turnaround thereis much to be done, here in theCommonwealth and in every state, barnone. There are no easy answers – exceptone. 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, wehope, will help educators, school reformers, and policy leaders across the countrydevelop a new generation of turnaround strategies that carry, at the very least, thepossibility of success.

William Guenther and Andrew CalkinsMass Insight Education & Research Institute, Inc.

Boston, Massachusetts

Foreword

2005-2006 2006-2007

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Turning Around the Bottom Five Percent:5,000 Schools in Restructuring by 2010

2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010

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School Turnaround: a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in alow-performing school that produces significant gains in studentachievement within two academic years.

Chart projections are based on actual 2005-2006 data for schools in Restructuring Status under NCLB with the assumptionthat the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constant over the next four years. Source of 2005-06 data: Center onEducation Policy (2006).

©2007 MASS INSIGHT 3

12 Tough QuestionsA Self-Audit for States Engaged in School Turnaround

Use this self-audit to measure the probable impact of your state’s approach to schoolturnaround. A corollary tool for school principals charged with turnaround can befound 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?


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 DisciplineTurnaround requires dramatic changes that pro-duce significant achievement gains in a short peri-od (within two years), followed by a longer periodof sustained improvement. Turning aroundchronically under-performing schools is a differ-ent and far more difficult undertaking than schoolimprovement. It should be recognized within education – as it is in other sectors – as a distinctprofessional discipline that requires specializedexperience, training, and support.

There is little track record of turnaround successat scale. A few large urban districts such asChicago, Miami-Dade, and New York City haveundertaken promising turnaround strategies, butmost are in their early stages and developing thecapacity to fully implement them continues to bea challenge.

Broader implementation of the lessons learnedfrom these turnaround pioneers will require stateaction on a number of fronts:

• Require failing schools and their districts toeither pursue more proactive turnaround strate-gies or lose control over the school.

• Make fundamental changes in the conditionsunder which those schools operate.

• Develop a local marketplace ofpartner/providers skilled in this discipline.

• Appropriate the $250,000-$1,000,000 per yearrequired to turn around a failing school.

A Special Zone for School TurnaroundComprehensive turnaround will be most effectivewhen it is actively initiated by districts and schoolsin response to state requirements and with statesupport. States must work to create an appealing“space” or zone for failing schools that provideshigh-impact reforms such as control overhiring/placement, scheduling, and budgeting, andincentive pay to draw experienced teachers. Statesmust also create distinctly unappealing alterna-tives that include consequences like school closureor state-directed restructuring.

Within the Zone: The Three ‘C’ Strategies,Supporting a Strong Focus on PeopleTurnaround 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 ofstruggling schools and students.

The Main Ideas in The Turnaround ChallengeWhy America’s best opportunity to dramatically improve student achievement liesin our worst-performing schools


Three basic elements, this report proposes, arerequired to make that strategy succeed:1. Change conditions. Create a protected space

free of bureaucratic restrictions and overlystringent collective bargaining agreements.Provide incentives to challenge and motivatepeople to do their best work.

2. Increase capacity internally on school staffs,especially among school leaders, and externallythrough a strong marketplace of localproviders with the experience and ability toserve as lead turnaround partners (see below).

3. Organize clusters of schools – either within adistrict or across districts – with their own leadturnaround partner providing comprehensiveservices focused on turnaround. These clusterscan be grouped by need, school type, region, orother characteristics.

New State Agency and CommitmentTo facilitate the three ‘C’s, states must create avisible, effective agency that – like turnaroundschools 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 tocreating a management agency with the necessaryauthority 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 championtheir 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, thenonprofit/foundation community, and the media.

New Model of Turnaround PartnersFailing schools need skilled outside assistance tomount a comprehensive, sustained turnaroundinitiative. That will require a far stronger resourcebase of partners than the patchwork of individualconsultants (mostly retired educators) now assist-ing with intervention in most states. It also willrequire development of a special category of leadturnaround partners – providers that act as inte-grators of multiple services. The absence of suchintegrating partners leaves teachers, schools, anddistricts enmeshed within a confusing array ofdisconnected outside providers.

Lead turnaround partners would integrate multi-ple services either as a contractor for schoolmanagement or on a consulting basis, in con-junction with the district. Lead partners wouldprovide a comprehensive set of integrated aca-demic (and perhaps some back-office) services.

The Benchmark: High-Performing,High-Poverty SchoolsA small number of schools throughout the coun-try successfully serve high-poverty populationssimilar to those that typically attend our lowestperforming schools. HPHP schools exhibit threeoverarching characteristics. Together, they makeup what the report calls the Readiness model – aset of strategies that turnaround efforts shouldemulate. 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 towardsthe most extreme category of underperformance(“Restructuring”) under No Child Left Behind by2009-10, states have little time to waste beforemounting retooled initiatives with the compre-hensiveness and imagination necessary to suc-cessfully turn around those failing schools.

The Turnaround Challenge is being releasednationally, with the assistance of a number ofeducation organizations. The Mass InsightEducation & Research Institute plans to follow upon this report with a national research-and-devel-opment initiative to produce step-by-step blue-prints, tools, and sample policy language forstates and districts committed to pursuing moreproactive forms of turnaround. The initiative alsowill examine ways that states and the federal gov-ernment can spur the development of a muchstronger 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 befound 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 failingschools 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 schoolsMassachusetts, 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.


THE PROBLEMFive 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; insome states, the percentage will significantly exceed 50%. But agood portion of these schools will be so designated because oflagging gains in one or more student subgroups, under the fed-eral No Child Left Behind Act. These schools face challengesthat may be solved by fairly modest forms of assistance.

But the 1,100 schools already in Restructuring – the mostextreme 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 aresubstantial; 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 skillexpectations is largely the same as that used throughoutAmerican public education, a model unchanged from its originsin the early 20th century. This highly challenged student demo-graphic requires something significantly different – particularlyat 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 entirelynew 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 servingserving similar student populations (see The Benchmark, nextpage) – should ignite exactly the public, policymaker, and profes-sional outrage needed to justify dramatic action. If status-quothinking continues to shield the dysfunctions that afflict theseschools, there can be little hope for truly substantial reformthroughout 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 Forward1. The Problem – and the Vision8 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 greatopportunity to bring about fundamental change.

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For more information on themagnitude and nature of theturnaround challenge, see Part 1of this report. For more on thestrategies and lessons offered byhigh-performing, high-povertyschools, see Part 2 and theSupplemental Report.

The BenchmarkA small but growing number of high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP) schools are demonstrating that differ-ent approaches can bring highly challenged studentpopulations to high achievement.

How do they do it? Extensive analysis of HPHP school practiceand effective schools research revealed nine strategies that turn thedaily turbulence and challenges of high-poverty settings intodesign factors that increase the effectiveness with which theseschools promote learning and achievement. These strategiesenable the schools to acknowledge and foster students’ Readinessto Learn, enhance and focus staff’s Readiness to Teach, and expandteachers’ and administrators’ Readiness to Act in dramatically dif-ferent ways than more traditional schools. This dynamic “HPHPReadiness Model” is represented in the graphic above.

A “New-World” ApproachAs understanding of these Readiness elements grows, it becomes clearthat HPHP schools are not making the traditional model of educationwork 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 (withlittle success in high-poverty settings) to keep up with.

The New-World model evokes instead the sense of a medical teamrallying 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 arrowssymbolizing this "New-World" model of education lie at the center ofthe Readiness Triangle. What happens in classrooms betweenteacher and student is the most critical moment in the delivery of theeducation service. But the quality of that moment depends entirelyon the readiness of the system and the people who are part of it toteach, 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 TRIEDThe research on turnaround of failing schoolsreveals some scattered, individual successes,but very little enduring progress at scale.

Most schools in Restructuring (the federal designation forchronic under-performance) are like organisms that have builtimmunities, 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 allcontribute 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 schoolstoday represents an incremental-change effort or anincomplete attempt at wholesale change.

“Light-touch” efforts that redirect curriculum or provide leader-ship coaching may help some average-performing schoolsimprove, but they are clearly not sufficient to produce successfulturnaround of chronically poor-performing schools. This is notsurprising, given that high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP)schools have evolved such fundamentally different strategies toachieve success, and that turnaround initiatives need additionallyto break through existing inertia.

Turnaround, as we are defining it here, is different from schoolimprovement because it focuses on the most consistently under-performing schools and involves dramatic, transformativechange. Change that, in fact, is propelled by imperative: theschool 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. Mostreform efforts focus on program change and limitthemselves to providing help. Some also allow forchanging people. A very few also focus on changingconditions and incentives, especially the degree of lead-ership authority over staff, time, and money.

Analysis of school intervention efforts to date confirms that theyare generally marked by:

Inadequate design: lack of ambition, comprehensiveness,integration, and networking support

Inadequate capacity: fragmented training initiatives, insteadof an all-encompassing people strategy and strong, integratedpartnerships that support the mission

Inadequate incentive change: driven more by compliancethan buy-in

Inadequate political will: episodic and sometimes confusingpolicy 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, despiteits intended objectives, has effectively endorsed and supportedrisk-averse turnaround strategies through its open-ended fifthoption for schools entering Restructuring. The net result: littletrack 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 theSupplemental Report.

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2. The Challenge of Change 3. The Way Forward1. The Problem – and the Vision

What Success Requires:A “Zone” for Effective TurnaroundStates 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 toreflect characteristics of highly entrepreneurial organizations.That makes sense. These schools are succeeding either by workingoutside of traditional public education structures (charters); or byworking around those structures, internally (in-district charter-likes); or by operating exceptionally well against the system – withemphasis on exceptionally. Lessons from these schools indicate aneed for the following elements in any school turnaround effort –all of which reflect characteristics that are not norms, broadlyspeaking, 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 anoverall “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 servicesthat are specifically designed, personalized, and adjusted toaddress students’ academic and related psycho-social needs

A handful of major school districts – Chicago, Miami-Dade, NewYork City, Philadelphia – are experimenting with turnaround zones inan effort to establish protected space for these kinds of approaches.(See graphic at right.) The opportunity for states is to create this kindof protected space for turnarounds on behalf of all school districts.

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Applying Outside-the-System Approaches, Focused Inside the System


FIGURE B

Building the Turnaround Model:

In order to enable school-level reform that incorporates the three “readiness” dimensions ofhigh-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – eitherwithin or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibitreform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a frameworkof strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.

3. The Way Forward

A CALL TO ACTION FOR STATESEffective turnaround at scale calls for bold,comprehensive action from the state, workingtogether 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 undertakethe dramatic changes required for successful turnaround on theirown. But while states may have the responsibility to ensure equi-table intervention across district lines, they clearly do not havethe capacity to implement turnaround on the ground at the scaleof the need. Their role is to require fundamental, not incremen-tal change; establish operating conditions that support, ratherthan 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 indysfunctional settings.

The Three ‘C’s of Turnaround at Scale Our research suggests that a coherent, comprehensivestate turnaround initiative would incorporate threekey elements: Changing Conditions, BuildingCapacity, and Clustering for Support.

Changing ConditionsTurnaround requires protected space that dismantles commonbarriers to reform. Chronically under-performing schools offer apolitically defensible opportunity to create such a space. A fewentrepreneurial school districts (Chicago, Miami-Dade, NewYork) have created such condition-changing zones or “carve-outs”for their neediest schools. But others (Philadelphia, Oakland) haveneeded 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 districtleaders to create the protected space they need for turnaround tobe effective. The best regulations change the incentives for localstakeholders, motivating the development of turnaround zones inorder 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 withturnaround partners and the state, must be able to install newprincipals if needed; principals must in turn have control overwho is working in their buildings, along with the allocation ofmoney, time, and programming (including curriculum and part-nerships with social services). Schools must be freed to take onprofessional norms, including differentiated roles for teachersand differentiated compensation. Decision-making must be freedso that it revolves around the needs of children, not adults. Atthe same time, each turnaround school cannot be expected todesign and manage its own change process; its latitude for deci-sion-making lies within a framework of strong network supportand turnaround design parameters established by the state, andcarried out by districts and/or turnaround partners.

Building CapacityOrganizational turnaround in non-education-related fieldsrequires special expertise; school turnaround is no different. It isa two-stage process that calls for fundamental transformation atthe start, managed by educators with the necessary training anddisposition, with steady, capacity-building improvement to fol-low. Neither schools and districts, nor states, nor third-partyproviders 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 –


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3. The Way Forward2. The Challenge of Change1. The Problem – and the Vision

must be the state’s responsibility, as school districts lack themeans and expertise to do so on their own. Moreover: turn-around represents an opportunity to redesign the ways schoolswork with outside partners. The fragmentation that characterizescurrent school/provider relationships needs to be replaced by anintegrated approach that aligns outside support around the turn-around plan, organized by a single “systems integrator” partner.

Clustering for SupportTurnaround has meaningful impact at the level of the school build-ing, but turnaround at scale cannot be accomplished in ones andtwos. States and districts should undertake turnaround in clustersorganized around identified needs: by school type (e.g., middleschools or grade 6-12 academies), student characteristics (very highELL percentages), feeder patterns (elementary to middle to highschool), or region. Clusters should be small enough to operateeffectively 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 RoleTurnaround 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/communityleader) or some agency must create an advocacy coalition ofpolitical, education, corporate, foundation, university, and non-profit leaders. To ensure broad commitment to turnaround atthe community level, states can blend the leverage of accounta-bility-based sanctions (you risk losing authority over this schoolif 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 linkedto the state department of education.

For more on the three ‘C’s and the state role, see Parts 3 and 4 ofthis report, along with the proposed Framework in Part 5.


FIGURE C

From Fragmented Improvement Projects to Integrated Turnaround Strategies

The 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 chronicallyunder-performing under No Child LeftBehind or state accountability systems.Our research leads us to believe thatturnaround of this kind is achievable,and furthermore, has the potential toopen the door to more widespread dra-matic education reform.

Transformation of this kind is, how-ever, untested and unfamiliar territoryin school reform. There is no realprecedent for the threat of closuredue to under-performance – a newconcept in public education. There isno clear consensus as to the distinc-tions between turnaround, takeover,restructuring, reconstitution, andredesign. Finally, there is no blue-print: despite the nation’s longstand-ing struggle and angst over failingschools, there is simply no consistent,reliable, and enduring track record ofturnaround success at the district orstate level anywhere in the country.

Accordingly, the study was designednot only to learn as much as possiblefrom past and current reform efforts,but to broaden the analysis by looking

at specific root causes and at thoserare schools that defy the odds inaddressing them. This included:

• Researching the nature of under-performance in schools serving dis-advantaged, high-poverty enroll-ments (which represent the bulk offailing schools);

• Examining the well-documentedpractices of individual high-per-forming schools serving theseenrollments and distilling the strate-gies they use to achieve their results;

• Analyzing a wide spectrum ofscaled-up school intervention, fromthose simply providing guidanceand added capacity to more exten-sive initiatives involving staff orprincipal replacement,closure/reopening, and the establish-ment of special turnaround “zones”with altered operating conditions;

• Isolating the key elements, intensity,duration, resources, and fundingrequired for turnaround of under-performing schools to take root; and

• Developing a framework for statepolicymakers and school districtleaders 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 UseThe project has produced several dif-ferent tools for your use. They include:

• Main report: This summary of ourmajor findings, conclusions, andrecommendations, divided intofive Parts and Appendices A and B.

• Supplemental report: Additionalsupport for the most importantpoints made in the main report,along with profiles of ten represen-tative state intervention initiativesand four district efforts, with arti-facts and resources from several ofthose initiatives. Available in printand at www.massinsight.org.

• Downloadable presentations andresources: Also available atwww.massinsight.org are presenta-tion decks you may download andcustomize to make the case forcoherent, well-supported turn-around action in your state or dis-trict. In addition, our websiteoffers a directory of available turn-around resources which we will becontinually updating.

1.1 The Challenge of School TurnaroundHow 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 SchoolTurnaroundHow this report works, and whatyou can get out of it

1.2 The Magnitude and Natureof the Turnaround ChallengeMany schools need assistance. Thebottom 5 percent need much,much more

1.3 A Turning Point forTurnaround – and an EntryPoint for Real Reform?Failing schools offer a chance to dothings differently. Will we take it?

P A R T 1


15

Research Methodology

This Project Map presents the research questions at the core of this project and theorganization of our answers in this report.Research methods across a year’s worth ofinformation-gathering included the following:

• Literature analysis: More than 300research reports, news articles, and otherresources on school intervention, relatedfederal and state policymaking, effectiveschools, poverty impacts, change manage-ment, and organizational turnaround

• Individual and group interviews withpractitioners, researchers, leading policy-makers, and reform experts in more than a dozen states

• Extensive interviews with directors of school intervention in six major urbandistricts and with 50 school managementand/or support organizations, through a related research project supported bythe NewSchools Venture Fund

• Review of the report’s major findingsand recommendations by more thantwo dozen national reform leaders andproject partners (see Acknowledgementsin the Introductory Material section of the report)

©2007 MASS INSIGHT

FIGURE 1A

Research Investigations Report Elements

Map of The Turnaround Challenge

Part 1: The Challenge of School TurnaroundUnderstanding the nature and scale of the nation's turnaround challenge; the reasons for hope; and thepresent opportunity to make the practice of school turnaround a model for change in public education

Part 2: How High-Performing, High-Poverty SchoolsIgnite Learning Under Adverse Conditions

Three dimensions – Readiness to Learn,Readiness to Teach, Readiness to Act – in which exemplary high-poverty schoolsexcel, and what we should learn from them

Part 3: What Success Requires: Changing the Oddsfor Turnaround Schools (See also: Appendix A)

Key lessons from existing, inadequaterestructuring efforts, resulting in a focus on three critical elements of turnarounddesign: conditions, capacity, and clustering.

Part 4: Organizing at the State Level for Turnaroundof Under-Performing Schools

Why NCLB has failed to catalyze effective,high-impact intervention strategies; how stateleaders can marshal the support required toimplement comprehensive turnaround

Part 5: A Framework for Turnaround of Under-Performing Schools

The core elements of a suggestedstatewide framework for effective turnaround at scale

1.1

1.2 The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround ChallengeMany schools need assistance. The bottom five percent need much, much more.

The challenge for states and dis-tricts seeking to turn around

chronically under-performing schoolsis one of scale and of strategy, havingto do with the nature of these schools,their students, and the systems ofwhich they are a part. The difficulty ofthe 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 SharplyIn 2005, the latest year for whichcomplete data are available, morethan 12,000 schools nationally (out ofroughly 100,000) fell into NCLB’s “InNeed of Improvement” category.Some of these schools narrowlymissed their targets for a single year;

others missed the mark within justone demographic subgroup (forexample, Latino students or pupils inSpecial Education). Both the numberand 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 acrossthe landscape of American publiceducation. Most relevant to our pur-poses here: the concern that the ever-increasing number and percentage ofschools falling into the NCLB watch-lists are masking a deeper crisis in asmaller set of schools – those in whicha large proportion of students havefailed to meet state standards for mul-tiple years in a row.

These are not schools that have beenlabeled “low performing” because ofissues with a single student sub-group. These are schools that anyreasonable observer would agree are

chronically failing to provide theirstudents with an adequate education.While states can establish differentdefinitions of “chronic failure,” suchas 50% of students failing for two ormore years in a row, the schools in

question are schools in which per-formance has been so low for so longthat they would fall within practicallyany definition of chronic failure astate could devise.

Although inexact, projections ofschools identified for Restructuring,the ultimate NCLB school-perform-ance category, provide some estimateof the number of these chronicallyunder-performing schools. As Figure1B shows, if current trends persist,

some 5,000 public schools – about fivepercent of all public schools national-ly – will be in Restructuring by 2009-10 as a result of failing to makeAdequate Yearly Progress (AYP) formultiple years.

The Roots of School FailureThese schools fail because the chal-lenges they face are substantial;because they themselves are dysfunc-tional; and because the system of

2005-2006 2006-20070

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Nearly 5,000 Schools Are Projected to Be in Restructuring by 2010FIGURE 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 underNCLB with the assumption that the rate of schools leaving that status will remain constantover 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 Turnaround1.1 How This Report Works16 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE

17

which they are a part is not responsiveto the needs of the high-poverty stu-dent populations they tend to serve.

This report will discuss all of theseissues, but we begin with the firstand the third. Failing schools servemostly poor children. As charts fromeight states on page 27 amplydemonstrate, there is a strong corre-lation between the family incomecharacteristics of schools and theirachievement outcomes. That’s notnews. What’s noteworthy about thosecharts is the message they send aboutthe power of some high-povertyschools to make big differences instudent achievement – and the jointfailure of public education and publicpolicy to adopt and extend what’sworking in those schools.

Poor children arrive at the school-house door with deep learningdeficits. The neuroscience of disad-vantage is clear: By age 3, childrenborn in poverty have acquired, onaverage, only half the vocabulary oftheir higher-income counterparts.(Hart and Risley, 2003) By kinder-garten, there is a significant deficit inreading. (NCES, 2005) Being poor faroutweighs race/ethnicity, family struc-ture, and other factors as causes ofcognitive disadvantage. (Lee andBurkam, 2002)

Far from mitigating the achievementgap, the experience of most childrenin our public schools appears toexacerbate it. As indicated in Figure1C, by grade 4 children eligible forfree or reduced-priced lunch trail

their counterparts by two to threegrade levels in reading – the essentialskill for future learning. (NCES,2005) By the time they reach grade12, if they do so at all, poor andminority students are about fouryears behind other students in read-ing. (Haycock et al, 2001)

As we will explore in Part 2, a child’seconomic circumstances are far fromthe only factors inhibiting achieve-ment in high-poverty schools. Thevarious risk factors have been well-

documented: higher absenteeism andbehavioral challenges, lower parentinvolvement and different parentingstyle, higher student migration and

teacher turnover rates, school budgetinequities, higher percentages of newand under-prepared teachers, and aprevailing culture of low expectationsfor achievement, among others.

Furthermore, our poor and minoritystudents are highly concentrated inhigh-poverty schools, and our minori-ty and immigrant child populationsare soaring. (Fix and Passel, 2003)Our failure, as a society, to interruptlow achievement patterns in high-poverty schools has significant conse-quences not only for the childreninvolved, but also for society in gener-al (see box, page 19).

Poverty Has an Early and ContinuingImpact on Achievement

FIGURE 1C

Being poor far outweighsrace/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; andbecause the system of which they are a part is not responsiveto the needs of the high-poverty student populations theytend to serve.

©2007 MASS INSIGHT

1.2


The Magnitude and Nature of the Turnaround Challenge(continued)

The Inadequacy of Current InterventionGiven the nature and complexity ofthese root causes for under-perform-ance, it should not be too surprisingthat existing, fairly marginal reformefforts have generally failed to turn theschools around. These are schools thatcontinue to fail students at rates that

are double their state averages, andquadruple (or more) the failure ratesat the highest-performing schoolsserving similar student populations.For a variety of reasons, “first-genera-tion” interventions – those promptedsince the crystallization of the higher-standards movement in the early1990s – have left these schools seem-ingly untouched. Their achievementrates are static. Their failure is com-pounded, with interest, when theirgraduates enter middle school or highschool or the workplace with skill setsthat are breathtakingly insufficient forthe 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 dowith the nature of public policy,which tends to be long on the rhetoricof immediacy but short on actionsthat fundamentally alter the status

quo. And nowhere is that tendencystronger than in education-relatedpublic policy.

The standards movement, codifiednationally in 2002 with the passage ofNo Child Left Behind, was andremains today an effort billed as achallenge to the status quo. NCLB andthe many partially overlapping stateaccountability systems set in placeover the past decade have brought thechallenge of chronically under-per-forming schools squarely into the pub-lic limelight. Spurred in part by a kindof sports-pages fascination with rank-ings and lists, newspapers and other

media have enthusiastically embracedthe school-performance ratingsreleased by state education agencies,splashing them with gusto across theirfront pages. Lawmakers and policy-makers across the country have initiat-ed waves of regulation in response tothe (often) bad news in the rankings.The new regulations have advanced anumber of different dimensions ofstandards-based reform, including thedetermination of the performancestandards themselves, performancemeasurement in the form of testing,and accountability systems designed to

categorize struggling schools. (SeeFigure 1D, A “Pacing Guide” toStandards-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 capitalsacross the country has mostly blinked.Compared to the scale and immediacyof the need, failing-school interven-tion policy and the actions it has pre-cipitated over the past decade can becharacterized 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’sstandards-based reform movement.

Compared to the scale and immediacy of the need, failing-school intervention policy and the actions it has precipitatedover 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 Turnaround1.1 How This Report Works

FIGURE 1D


The seven-year timeline, presented inthe Call to Action on page 7 of thisreport, for Massachusetts’ response tothe first school to nudge its way intothe state’s Chronically Under-Performing category is, unfortunately,

far too typical. Intervention intostruggling schools and districts is theleast-developed and least-understooddimension of the nation’s standards-based reform movement.

Indeed our analysis of state and dis-trict intervention efforts (presented inPart 3 and in detail in Appendix Aand the Supplemental Report) con-firmed that the vast majority of theseefforts 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 hasbeen consistently under-funded andprovided with inconsistent politicalsupport. While most involve only

changes in programs, some alsoinclude changes in people; only ahandful address changes in conditionsthat would allow the kind ofapproaches used by high-performing,high-poverty schools.

Nonetheless: it appears to us that thetime for more dramatic interventionhas come. Ironically, in making visi-ble the indefensibility of the statusquo, failing schools’ well-documentedand chronic under-performance mayturn out to be the critical trigger foreffective reform.

Why It MattersWhen Public Schools Consistently Fail the Children They Serve

It is difficult to overstate the importance of solving the challenge of chronicallyunder-performing schools. Within two years, schools in NCLB’s Restructuring cat-egory will represent more than one million students nationally. Many of thesestudents will move to the next level without developing foundational skills thatare essential for success, particularly considering the higher-level capabilitiesincreasingly demanded by the knowledge economy. Many are destined to jointhe ranks of high school dropouts, documented most recently in The SilentEpidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts (Bridgeland et al, 2006), neverobtaining 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 theU.S., graduation rates are below 50%, and none of the nine has a rate higherthan 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 decentmiddle class wage requires at a minimum a high school education that equipspeople to pursue post-secondary education successfully. (Murnane & Levy, 1996)The consequences of poor education ripple through society in the form of highercrime rates, higher costs of public assistance, and lower tax revenues. No com-munity can thrive when many of its public schools consistently and thoroughlyfail 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 InadequateEducation 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


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 Turnaround1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge

On a cloudy, atypically chilly daylast November in Washington,

DC, more than a hundred educationreform leaders from across the countrycrowded into a conference convenedby the American Enterprise Instituteand the Fordham Foundation. Oneafter another, panels of experts – edu-cators, researchers, public officials,

foundation leaders – took center-stageand decried the lack of progress beingmade under President Bush’s No ChildLeft Behind Act in turning aroundachievement in the nation’s poorest-performing schools.

“This was a roomful of the country’sbiggest champions of standards-basedreform,” said one participant after theconference concluded, “reflecting onNCLB’s impact on our neediestschools, five years after its enactment.And I can tell you it was a relentlesslydiscouraging day.”

It’s easy to be dismayed by the resultsof the nation’s most vigorous effortever to significantly raise achievementamong all public school students.Reading and math scores on theNational Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP) have nudgedupwards, but not so much as toinspire optimism that NCLB’s goal of

proficiency for all by 2014 is evenremotely within reach. (See Figure1E.) For the 2005-6 school year, morethan one-quarter of the nation’sschools failed to make AdequateYearly Progress; a total of 29 statessaw an increase that year in the num-ber of schools not making AYP. Andthe results to date of state and districtefforts to turn around chronicallyunder-performing schools, spurred byNCLB’s accountability requirementsand “toolbox” of restructuringoptions, is inconclusive at best andsubstantially disappointing at worst.

And yet.

And yet our research over the pasteighteen months has convinced usthat a confluence of factors has creat-ed a window of opportunity for muchmore dramatic approaches to schoolreform, focused (at least at first) onthe 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 fewmajor urban districts on behalf oftheir struggling schools

• The growing sense of urgency andacceptance that in these schools,the status quo is indefensible andeverything has to be on the table.

The Promise of High-Performing,High-Poverty SchoolsIt’s a primary benefit of standards-based reform: our ability to identifywith confidence schools that demon-strably outperform their peers. It’s whatgives ballast to two truisms of modern-day school reform: no excuses and allkids can learn. We all know the pattern:virtually all of the worst-performing

schools serve high-poverty enrollments.Yet in every state, some high-povertyschools perform significantly betterthan others, and a few perform nearlyas well as schools serving much moreaffluent student populations.

Can good schools, by themselves,break the cycle of diminished expecta-tions and quality of life that rules inimpoverished neighborhoods – or dopoverty and its related issues need tobe addressed first? The answer, wewill argue over the course of thisreport, is that the two are inextricablylinked, and that success lies in creat-ing good schools that are also well-tuned to the nature and needs ofhigh-poverty student enrollments.Some inner-city schools are alreadydemonstrating this, creating newmodels designed specifically to meetthe needs of this student population.

As Paul Tough (2006) wrote in a NewYork Times Sunday Magazine coverstory that appeared the same week asthe conference in Washington DC,“The divisions between black andwhite and rich and poor begin almostat birth, and they are reinforced everyday of a child’s life.” But, he contin-ued: “A loose coalition of schools, all

A small number of high-performing, high-poverty schools aredemonstrating that different approaches can bring highlychallenged student populations to high achievement.


of them quite new… provide evidence that… the achievement gapcan be overcome, in a convincingway, for large numbers of poor andminority students, not in generationsbut in years.”

While effective school practiceresearch stretches back 30 years, thehigh-poverty school (and especially,high-poverty high school) that hasturned chronic under-performanceinto consistent high achievement isexceedingly rare. Still, there is strongevidence to conclude that a smallnumber of high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP) schools are bringinghighly challenged student populationsto high achievement. A number ofthese schools operate outside of tradi-tional school district structures (ascharters or as in-district charter-likes)

– and the others tend to be led bystrong, entrepreneurial principalswhose vision and effectiveness aren’tconstrained by public education’sconventions and embedded organiza-tional challenges. They produce stu-dent achievement outcomes that vast-ly exceed urban norms.

Educators and reformers have longused effective-practice research as abasis for school improvement pro-grams. But in Part 2 of this report, weargue that most of this work has takenplace within a fairly narrow band,focused on technical solutions involv-ing curriculum, data analysis, andstaff development. Important work –but insufficient by itself. HPHPschools are able to generate such highachievement because they confront, inspecific, comprehensive, on-going

ways, the systemic effects of povertyon their students’ learning. In Part 2of this report we extract the essentialmethods and strategies they use to dothis – a tailored set of effective prac-tices we distill in the “HPHPReadiness Model,” and which consti-tute a de facto set of design factors forschool turnaround. Taken together,they illustrate, as Tough noted in hisNew York Times article, “the magni-tude of the effort that will be requiredfor that change to take place.”

The Promise of District Experimentsin Comprehensive InterventionThe HPHP Readiness model requiressome fundamental changes in the

operating conditions of turnaroundschools – how much authority, forexample, principals and turnaroundleaders have in shaping and workingwith their school’s teaching staff. Ahandful of major districts – Chicago,Philadelphia, New York, Miami-Dade– have begun to experiment over thepast couple of years with more com-prehensive forms of intervention thatincorporate such thinking. These ini-tiatives variously provide:

• Authority to turnaround leadersto make choices about allocatingresources – 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 invariablyuse methods that are radically different and more intensivethan those employed in most American public schools.”

– Paul Tough, The New York Times

500

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’92 ’94 ’98 ’02 ’05

FIGURE 1EWhat Marginal Change Has Wrought: Static Achievement Since 1992

Trend in 12th-grade average NAEP reading scores

Souce: U.S. Department of Education, 2007Accommodations not permittedAccommodations permitted

1.3


A Turning Point for Turnaround (continued)

1.3 A Turning Point for Turnaround1.1 How This Report Works 1.2 The Nature of the Challenge

• Waivers of some collective bar-gaining requirements and workrules, collaboratively developedwith teachers’ unions

• Resources to compensate staffaccording to professional norms (i.e.,for extra responsibility, duty in high-need areas, or for performance)

• Resources for additional time inthe school day and/or school year

• Extensive outside assistance fromproviders and intermediary organ-izations, often supported by foun-dation grants.

It is too soon to tell whether these ini-tiatives (detailed in Appendix A andthe Supplemental Report) will pro-duce exemplary results. But it’s clearthat they come far closer to providingan environment conducive to HPHPReadiness-style strategies than themore common, traditional forms ofincremental intervention have done.

The Promise of Growing UrgencyRegarding Failing SchoolsThe accountability timetable set inmotion by No Child Left Behind hasnow delivered us to the doorstep ofintervention. We are at the end of aline of public policy dominos set inmotion by a commitment to higheracademic standards – achievementgoals, resource supports, accountabili-ty, and assessment. (See the stan-dards-based reform “Pacing Guide” inFigure 1D on page 18.)

But NCLB and state accountabilitysystems are only two of the factorsfueling a growing sense of urgency toaddress the nation’s chronicallyunder-performing schools. Dim com-parisons of American achievement tothat of students in most other coun-tries and fears connected to the out-sourcing of American jobs, amongother developments, have been wake-up calls for federal and state policy-makers on the critical importance ofeducational attainment to society.

At the same time, awareness of theHPHP schools, variously called“Dispelling the Myth schools,”“Vanguard” schools, “90-90-90”schools or any number of othermonikers, is undercutting the long-held dogma of education-by-zip-code. “The evidence,” as Tough(2006) concludes in his New YorkTimes story, “is becoming difficult toignore: When educators do succeedat educating poor minority studentsup to national standards of proficien-cy, they invariably use methods that

are radically different and moreintensive than those employed inmost American public schools. So asthe No Child Left Behind law comesup for reauthorization, Americans arefacing an increasingly stark choice: is the nation really committed toguaranteeing that all of the country’s

students will succeed to the samehigh level? And if so, how hard arewe willing to work, and whatresources are we willing to commit,to achieve that goal?”

Turnaround of America's poorest-performing schools represents anopportunity to take up Tough's chal-lenge, to use these schools as a gate-way towards the "radically different,""more intensive" methods so visiblein high-performing, high-povertyschools. (See chart, facing page.)

The Turnaround Challenge offersanalysis and a framework to guidethat work. The first step in definingthe turnaround solution is to extractthe “DNA” from the HPHP schoolsthat already bring under-performingstudents up to high standards. This iswhere we turn next.

In the challenge represented by America’s most poorly performing schools lies an opportunity for dramatic, accessible, and achievable change.


Educators and reformers aiming for fundamental, not incremental, change in publicschooling have essentially three avenues: replacing the entire public education systemwith a new one, reforming that system from within, or circumventing the system withwork-around schools (otherwise known as charters). Chronically under-performing schoolsand 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-managedpublic education system in the United States was the recommendation of the NewCommission on the Skills of the American Workforce in its recently released report,Tough Choices or Tough Times. Radical changes of the nature recommended by theCommission – eliminating the school district as we know it now, making states theemployers of teachers, creating K-10 “common schools” that send graduates to uppersecondary 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, TheTurnaround Challenge suggests that the crisis in America’s most poorly performingschools provides an even more urgent and a more accessible opportunity for dramaticand achievable change. Urgent and accessible because the standards movement has

provided incontrovertible evidence of these schools’ failure; dramatic because that isclearly what’s needed to turn these schools around; and achievable because otherschools 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 urbandistricts, 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-performingschools. The “zone” strategies now being undertaken in some districts, and recom-mended in this report, provide the opportunity for a fresh-start proving ground, achance for districts and external partners to essentially reinvent the district modelfrom within.

Create New-Design Schools: “Charterizing” failing schools, meanwhile, is one ofNCLB’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 pointof more relevance here is the adoption of charter-like rules and authorities for schoolswithin a district’s turnaround zone. Such a zone thus could become the long-awaitedvehicle 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

As 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 highexpectations, all children can learn, noexcuses, or for that matter, no childleft behind may signal important val-ues but do little to illuminate the chal-lenging circumstances of high-povertyschool environments or the methodsand strategies that HPHP schoolsemploy in meeting them. (Haberman,1999; Thomas & Bainbridge, 2001)Fortunately, as reform researcherRonald Brady (2003) points out,HPHP schools “are a phenomenon ofsufficient import to receive significantscholarly attention.” (For our detailedanalysis of this, see Part 2.4.)

In addition, emerging research froma variety of fields is rapidly reshapingour knowledge of high-povertyschool ecology and why HPHP prac-tices are successful:

• Researchers studying nationaldatabases of school achievementdata, indexed with school povertyand minority attributes, areunlocking the black box of school

performance and describing suc-cess patterns that are reshapingeducation reform as well as teach-ing. (The Education Trust, 2005a;Reeves, 2003; National Center forEducational Accountability/Just forthe Kids, 2006)

• Child poverty researchers are pin-pointing how a multitude of factorsassociated with socioeconomic sta-tus (SES) affect a child from birth toadulthood, concluding amongmany findings that even relativelyminor mitigations can translate intomeaningful improvement in studentachievement. (Berliner, 2006;Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997)

• Cognitive scientists report that“there is a gulf between low andmiddle SES children in their per-formance on just about every testof cognitive development” (Farahet al, 2006), with sweeping implica-tions for early childhood and edu-cation policy, but also illuminatingkey causal mechanisms that mightaid remediation.

• Developmental psychologists havebegun to focus “on the factors thatenable at-risk students to ‘beat the

odds’ against achieving academicsuccess. Borrowing primarily fromthe field of developmental psy-chopathology, a growing body ofeducational research has identifiedindividual attributes that promoteacademic resiliency.” (Borman &Rachuba, 2001)

Also augmenting and informingHPHP research are studies of urbanprincipals (Orr et al, 2005), theimportance and dynamics of achiev-ing teacher quality (Ingersoll, 2004;Policy Studies Associates, 2005), thelinkage between student engagementand academic achievement (Finn &Owings, 2006), and the importancefor poor students of close adult rela-tionships and positive role models.(Shear et al, 2005; The EducationTrust, 2005; Brooks-Gunn et al, 1993)

For this report, our research teamsurveyed the voluminous researchliterature, analyzed the most promi-nent studies, and drew deeply onMass Insight’s own Building Blockseffective-practice research(www.buildingblocks.org), which wehave conducted since 2001. (For thefull analysis, see the SupplementalReport.)

2.1 How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools Ignite Learning Under Adverse ConditionsUnderstanding the DNA we must replicate at scale

Part 2 examines:

2.1 How High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools IgniteLearning Under AdverseConditions Understanding the DNA we mustreplicate at scale

2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: FailingSchools Serve Mostly PoorChildrenBut: so do some successful schools,proving that school quality canovercome zip code

2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm”Impact on LearningUnderstanding the deficits is a pre-requisite to designing the solutions

2.4 How HPHP Schools AchieveTheir Results: The ReadinessModelNine interlocking elements ofschools that serve challenged students well

2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP SchoolsChange begins with the courage to break patterns

P A R T 2

24 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning 2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model


We were persuaded by the research ofthree points:

1The ecology of high-povertyschools is inherently much more

unpredictable, variable, and irregularthan that of low-poverty schools. Thisturbulence is foundational: lying belowsymptoms like poor teaching and stu-dent misbehavior, it reflects the vastlydisparate backgrounds and prepared-ness of students; personal and familycrises; the churn of students and staffentering and exiting individualschools; and the shortage of family andcommunity supports. Students andstaff in high-poverty schools face morecurveballs in a week than their col-leagues in low-poverty schools see in a year. Accounting for this turbulencein academic and organizational design,as well as in operations and training, is a prerequisite to successful schools.

2Our most common approaches donot help, and in fact sometimes

do harm. Not only is our traditionalmodel of public education largelyunable to cope with unpredictabilityand turbulence that disrupts itsreliance on grade-by-grade advance-ment, but in addition, common tech-niques of teaching, testing, and disci-plining frequently “introduce

additional stressors and adversitiesthat place [poor] students at evengreater risk of academic failure.”(Borman & Rachuba, 2001)

3It seems clear that what we areobserving in the phenomenon of

HPHP schools is the evolution of anew species. Largely through on-the-scene improvisation and innovation,HPHP schools have morphed intohighly adaptable organizations whosestaff are expert at igniting learning foreach child in spite of the surroundingturbulence. They mitigate the adverseconditions of poverty and overcomethe unpredictable changes and crisesthat sink other high-poverty schools,not by making the traditional model ofeducation work better; instead, theyare, in essence, reinventing whatschools do.

When students enroll in one of theseschools, they are often several gradelevels behind. As Paul Tough (2006)observed: “Usually they have missedout on many of the millions of every-day intellectual and emotional stimulithat their better-off peers have beenexposed to since birth. They are, edu-cationally speaking, in deep trouble.The schools reject the notion that allthat these struggling students need are

high expectations; they do need those,of course, but they also need specifictypes and amounts of instruction, bothin academics and attitude, to compen-sate for everything they did not receivein their first decade of life.”

To advance each student’s learning,regardless of background and ability,HPHP schools have largely abandonedthe Old-World model of educationitself, supplanting the “one-conveyor-belt-for-all” thinking with a New-Worldmodel placing each student at the centerof a set of coordinated services (Figure2A) – a model very similar to the prac-tices Michael Fullan and his co-authorsdescribe in their provocative book,Breakthrough (2006).

HPHP schools are still a nascent andevolving species – almost always theproduct 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 inmultiple schools, districts, and circum-stances. Parts 3 and 4 discuss how thatmight be accomplished.

But first, Part 2 continues by examin-ing the patterns of school proficiencyand poverty, explaining why poverty isplaying an increasingly significant rolein American education, and summa-rizing a “perfect storm” of poverty-induced challenges that face our high-poverty schools – and very activelyshape how high-performing, high-poverty schools have responded. InPart 2.4, we introduce the HPHPReadiness Model, which describes nineelements that comprise HPHP school-ing. Finally in Part 2.5, we concludewith implications of HPHP schoolingfor 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.

2.1FIGURE 2A

2.5 Applying the Lessons

The most compelling case for a newmodel of high-poverty schooling

lies in the achievement numbers. As aresult of NCLB, it is now possible totrack the achievement of students atevery school in every state. The pat-terns are sobering – and illuminating.

The research team studied state by statescatterplots, like those on the facing page,showing school achievement vs. povertyat the eighth and fourth grade levels (highschool data is not yet readily available).The patterns of the eight states displayedhere are strongly representative of thepatterns found in other states, and acrossother test subjects and grade levels. Inaddition to the overall patterns shownhere, we reviewed similar data for high-minority versus low-minority schools.

Here’s what the data show.

Proficiency drops steadily as schoolpoverty rises: This pattern is by nomeans a surprise, but it remains dis-heartening to see just how strong thecorrelation is between poverty andchronic under-performance: The samepattern appears in state after state,implying deep, systemic deficienciesrather than occasional managementbreakdowns. Schools that fail, year afteryear, almost always reflect this profi-ciency-poverty linkage, which is whythis report focuses on interventions

capable of breaking the cycle. Note thatthe poverty drag on proficiency beginsright away: Schools comprised of just10 or 20 percent poor students trailschools with negligible poverty, andthat pattern continues along the x-axisas the percentage of school povertymounts. The bottom line: Povertyerodes proficiency and poor studentsare underserved in virtually all schools,although our recognition of dysfunc-tion and breakdown is generallyreserved for our most urban and high-est-poverty schools and districts.

School performance varies signifi-cantly at every income level, andextensively among high-povertyschools: In most states, the proficiencyof schools becomes increasingly scat-tered as school poverty rises: the rangeof high performance and low perform-ance among high-poverty schools tendsto be significantly greater than amonglow-poverty schools. This variabilityexists among both high-minority andlow-minority schools and among bothurban and non-urban schools. Note thedramatic variability of performanceamong 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 overcomepoverty are scarce: No single, one-yearsnapshot can determine an HPHPschool, but we can draw neverthelesstwo conclusions from these data: Thereare very few HPHP schools and theyare likely to mitigate, but not erase, theeffects of poverty. Look at the subset ofschools that are likely to include HPHP

schools: those schools in the lightlyshaded box within each plot. These areschools with at least 50 percent poorstudents who exceeded their state’sproficiency median for eighth grademath in 2005. (Each state has a differ-ent proficiency median, which is whythe height of the box varies – and whystate-to-state achievement comparisons

cannot be done with these data.) Theyare performing far above the high-poverty norm, and in some cases near-ly as well as schools serving muchmore affluent student populations.Some schools beat the odds, proving itcan be done and triggering the centralHPHP question: How do they do it?

To completely unpack that question,we need to go a step further with ourexamination of poverty’s impact onlearning. In the next section, Part 2.3,we will examine the complexity of thechallenge that all high-poverty schoolsface – and that only HPHP schoolsmanage to mitigate.

2.2 Patterns of Proficiency: Failing Schools Serve Mostly Poor ChildrenBut: so do some successful schools, proving that school quality can overcome zip code


Interpreting the Scatterplots (Figure 2B)Each dot represents one school. All public schools serving the eighth grade ineach of eight sample states are shown.

It is important to note that each state establishes its own achievement standardsand assessment system; therefore, the proficiency scores of one state cannot bedirectly 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 whoseschool poverty data were not reported or lost appear as “data noise” along theleft axis.

The shaded boxes in the top right of each plot highlight the high poverty schoolsthat were performing above their state’s median on this math test. See furtherdiscussion of these schools in the paragraphs above.

2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning

School Quality Can Meet High-Poverty Challenges – and Does, Though RarelyIn 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

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27©2007 MASS INSIGHT2.5 Applying the Lessons

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2.2


Clearly the patterns of proficiencyand poverty demand a new

approach. If understanding the prob-lem is half the solution, then dissect-ing poverty’s role in exactly whyschools fail establishes a checklist ofdesign conditions from which solu-tions and innovations can be forged.

Anatomy of a storm: what povertyresearch tells us. The term “perfectstorm” was coined in 1991 to describethe phenomenon of three major weathersystems combining in the Atlantic toproduce a storm of devastating propor-tion. Similarly, poverty’s force comes inthree mutually-reinforcing forms: indi-vidual and family risk factors, communi-ty and environment effects, and resourceinequality. Each compounds the others,increasing the risks and obstacles forpoor students in high-poverty schools inhigh-poverty neighborhoods. The pover-ty-related effects are substantial andmeasurable even before kindergarten,underscoring the importance of effectiveearly intervention.

Drawing on an extensive review of theliterature on poverty, we identified andanalyzed the risk factors with the great-est implications for student learningwithin each of three poverty “arenas.”Brief summaries are provided on thefacing page and much more detail isavailable in the Supplemental Report.

Gathering force: child poverty onthe rise. Poverty’s perfect storm isbuilding in strength and, as a society, weare in a high-stakes race to find solu-tions. Space does not allow us to includedetailed statistics on poverty trends inAmerica, but they are shocking. Already35 percent of all students attend high-poverty schools, including over two-thirds of all minority students. (Orfield& Lee, 2005) The figures are on the riseacross the board: Child poverty in theU.S., already higher than in any otherdeveloped country, increased by morethan 11 percent between 2000 and 2005.(NCCP, 2006) The LEP (LimitedEnglish Proficiency) child populationmore than doubled from 1990 to 2000from 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 factorsinto design elements. Understandinghow poverty affects students and theirlearning helps to explain why existingmild interventions in chronicallyunder-performing, high-povertyschools have not produced muchimprovement in student performance.“Schools do not achieve high perform-ance by doing one or two things dif-ferently. They must do a number ofthings differently, and all at the sametime, to begin to achieve the criticalmass that will make a difference in

student outcomes – in other words,high-poverty schools that achievegains in student performance engagein systemic change.” (CPE/CaliberAssociates, 2005)

That change is rooted in a broad cam-paign to counter poverty-induceddeficits. Figure 2C demonstrates the“field of play.” The three forms ofpoverty effects we identified for thisstudy are each shown with their respec-tive impact on the set of key learningfactors described by Walberg (1984).

In the next section, Part 2.4, we intro-duce our HPHP Readiness Model,which describes the nine elements webelieve are most crucial to ignitinglearning under adverse conditions.

2.3 Poverty’s “Perfect Storm” Impact on LearningUnderstanding the deficits is a prerequisite to designing the solutions

Poverty Effects Have Moderate to Substantial Impact upon Key Learning FactorsFIGURE 2C

Individual & family risk factors

Community & environment effects Resource inequalityKey Learning Factors

Student AptitudeAbility or prior achievement Substantial Moderate ModerateDevelopment by age or maturation Substantial Moderate SomeMotivation or self-concept Substantial Moderate ModerateInstructionThe amount of time students are engaged Moderate Substantial SubstantialThe quality of instruction Substantial SubstantialEnvironmentThe home SubstantialThe classroom social groups Substantial SomePeer groups outside of school Moderate SubstantialUse of out-of-school time Substantial Substantial Some

2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning

Adapted from Walberg (1984) and other sources (see Supplemental Report)

29©2007 MASS INSIGHT2.5 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 factorsThe factors in this arena, ranging from health and braindevelopment and family economic hardship to parentingstyle and student motivation, are particularly interrelated.The children of poverty are not as prepared as the non-poorto enter the classroom, and before kindergarten, already testlower in cognitive skills. They come from families that facegrave 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 canovershadow development of higher order thinking skills, andparent and familial modeling often fail to encourage childrento focus on school. Students of poverty can be susceptible to poor self-image, or attempt to live up to stereotypicbehaviors 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 environmentCompositional 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 increasesthe odds of student involvement in gangs, of childrendeveloping 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 fallbehind more frequently than poor students attending low-poverty schools. (Kennedy et al, cited in Lippman et al, 1996, p35) Conversely, research shows that childrenwho grow up in poverty (and thus carry the same cognitivelags 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 inequityThe distribution of resources between poor and non-poorschools, and between urban, suburban, and rural schools,has been a source of controversy at both the local andnational level for years. Research confirms that poor, urbanstudents 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 areteaching, to have passed tests of basic skills and to behighly qualified. Resource inequity is also much more likely to fuel the “revolving door” of teacher turnover.

Retention and quality problems reinforce each other to theextent that in “schools where more than 90 percent of thestudents are poor – where excellent teachers are neededthe most – just one percent of teachers are in the highestquartile.” (Peske & Haycock, 2006)

2.3


We were meeting with leadersfrom a partner district of Mass

Insight’s, working through the fourdimensions of effective reform practicewe’d identified through years ofresearch in Massachusetts (www.build-ingblocks.org). “All of that makesevery kind of sense,” said one curricu-lum director. “But tell me how this oneschool of ours is supposed to eventhink about all of that when onMonday this week, they got 20 newELL students from Vietnam, Tuesdaythey had two unscheduled fire drills,and Wednesday there was a knife-fightin the parking lot?”

Disadvantage, turbulence, and unpre-dictability are part and parcel of manyhigh-poverty communities and a per-manent condition of the vast majority

of high-poverty schools. Yet somerare, high-performing, high-poverty(HPHP) schools manage to organizethemselves to counter the perfectstorm of disadvantage that accompa-nies many of their students in thedoor each morning.

Here is what emerged from our analy-sis: HPHP schools do not try to solvethe problem of poverty, nor do theyuse it as an excuse for lower achieve-ment. They do respond with innova-tive strategies that acknowledge andaddress the daily disturbances causedby student mobility, learning deficits,disruptive behavior, neighborhoodcrises, and a host of other poverty-related circumstances. They start withthe premise that their students canlearn at a high standard, and thenthey do whatever is necessary toremove barriers to learning as well ascreate new paths for students to pur-sue achievement.

The strategies they use to do thesethings 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 schoolstoday. The nine elements we have

identified as hallmarks of high-per-forming, high-poverty schools, infact, diverge in important ways fromthe many lists of “effective-schoolelements” available today.

The Readiness TriangleThe New-World model of HPHPschooling is a dynamic system thatenables schools to:

• Acknowledge and foster students’Readiness to Learn,

• Elevate and focus staff’s Readinessto Teach, and

• Exercise more Readiness to Act indramatically different ways than istypically possible in public schools.

These three essential and interlockingdimensions of HPHP schools aredescribed in the HPHP ReadinessModel on the facing page, and thesections that follow this one. Mostreaders will immediately find familiarterritory in the Readiness to Teach legof the triangle, and in fact, that area iswhere the vast majority of educationreform has focused. The elements thatmake up Readiness to Learn andReadiness to Act have had their shareof attention too, but often as part ofreform efforts designed to circumvent

the regular public school system (suchas charter schools, or special in-dis-trict school clusters with unusualoperating conditions).

On the whole, most HPHP researchhas concentrated with a fair degree ofsingle-mindedness on strategies wehave placed in Readiness to Teach. Itis all important, vital work: aligningcurricula 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 tomeet the challenges that educators –and students – face in high-povertyschools. Or, for that matter, to turnaround a failing high-poverty school.

Taken together, the Readiness to Teachstrategies represent what’s widely beenknown as “whole-school reform.” It’sclear that the concept of whole schoolreform has played a critical role inemphasizing the importance of inte-gration – of comprehensive strategiesinstead of reform projects. But in gen-eral, our collective definition of“whole” has not been whole enough.

On the next pages, we explore thethree Readiness elements and theirassociated elements in greater detail.

2.4 How HPHP Schools Achieve Their Results: The Readiness ModelNine interlocking elements of schools that serve challenged students well

The nine elements we have identified as hallmarks ofHPHP schools diverge in important ways from the manylists of “effective-school elements” available today.

2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning


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, wesuggest, represents a departure from the linear, teaching-driven model of the 20th centuryand 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 beingtaught. Think of the new-world model as something more like a modern hospital: awhole system of skills, processes, and technologies organized to analyze, diagnose, andserve. Its essence lies in what’s being learned.

The delivery of good healthcare is all about readiness. The impact of the service dependsentirely on the quality of the people providing it and the training they’re given, the toolsat their disposal, the latitude they have to make appropriate decisions, their ability toform and re-form into teams to provide the highest-capacity response, and (of course) thereadiness 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 inthe 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 effectivelyand in accordance with the mission.

FIGURE 2D


High-Performance, High-Poverty Education: The HPHP Readiness Model 2.4


Readiness to LearnAt HPHP schools, whatever stands inthe way of learning is fair game to beaddressed. Reorienting the focus fromwhat’s being taught in schools towhat’s being learned, HPHP schoolsproactively address the challengesaccompanying their students as theywalk in the schoolhouse door: fromsomething as basic as finding animpoverished child socks or a coat, toassisting where possible with trans-portation or health services and attack-ing the significant cognitive, social,cultural, and psychological barriers tolearning that many students of povertytend to experience. Good learnersmust develop “underlying persever-ance, strong will, and positive disposi-tion.” (Borman & Rachuba, 2001) Atthe same time, “staff in many [old-world] schools are products of a train-ing model that ignores the importanceof child development…. In fact, thewhole school structure is not set up tosupport development.” (Comer, 2002)

Readiness to Learn is the dimensionon which the HPHP schools differmost appreciably from other schools.While all high-performing schools payattention to relationships and environ-ment, the lengths to which HPHPschools go to address these concernsfor their student populations set themwell apart. Those efforts focus on thethree elements shown to the right.

The HPHP Readiness Model: Readiness to Learn

Spray Painting SafetyGranger (WA) High School principal Richard Esparza began his principal-ship with a frontal assault on gang-related graffiti. A storage hut behindthe school was a prime target and every day Esparza would drive to thehut, take out the spray paint he kept in his car for just this purpose, andrepaint the door, which had been tagged during the night. “I can’t havegangs announcing that they control the school,” he said. (The EducationTrust, 2005b)

Engagement Pays DividendsIn Norfolk, VA schools, teachers took the unit on Mali, home of many ofthe students’ ancestors, “out of the shadows of the final week of schooland infused it throughout the school year,” using dance, literature, his-tory, song, and other engaging, cross-disciplinary activities. Researchersreported, “It is hardly an accident that these students also displayedastonishing improvements in their performance on state social studiestests.” (Reeves, 2003)

1. Safety, Discipline, & Engagement “A calm and orderly environment [is] a prerequisite for learn-ing, reducing the stress and distractions for students andteachers, and creating norms and confidence to enable deeperstaff and instructional changes to occur.” (Orr, 2005) Thissense of safety is the first rung on the ladder, particularly inschools and neighborhoods where crime and chaos are part ofeveryday life. Clear codes of behavior and well-defined butflexible routines must be applied consistently and transparent-ly to students, parents, and staff.

At the same time, HPHP schools also seek ways to engage theirstudents 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 vitalcore of the HPHP approach (see the Personalization ofInstruction section under Readiness to Teach), researchers alsohighlight “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 theinvolvement of these seemingly peripheral subjects in academ-ic achievement is neither serendipitous nor insignificant.”(Reeves, 2003) The engagement created in this way produces avirtuous cycle on which the rest of the entire school modeldepends: where students are first engaged and inspired, thenmotivated and learning, and finally positive contributors them-selves to a safe, orderly, and supportive environment.



Establishing ExpectationsGranger (WA) High School had a high dropout rate. When the principal arrived heorganized 50 teams of adults from the school and community to visit the 400 homesof 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 hasimproved markedly since then. (EdTrust, 2005)

The School as FamilyUniversity 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 structureallows students to grow with the school for six years, students are looped with thesame 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 largelybecause, as one student remarked, “the teachers are like family” whom they arereluctant 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 inhigh-performing schools. (CPE/Caliber Associates, 2005; Haberman, 1999) The movetoward small learning communities is partly intended to enable such relationships.Indeed the most significant positive change reported by students and staff in theextensive evaluation of the Gates Foundation small high schools initiative was animprovement in interpersonal relations. (AIR/SRI, 2005) Students reported feelingbetter 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 continuitythrough a number of specific practices, including looping of teachers with studentsfor multiple years, the adoption of “early start” grade six or seven through twelveschools, home visits, and intensive advisory systems. As the principal of the widelystudied 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 AdversityHPHP schools make themselves proficient at addressing poverty effects head-on.Research shows that “school-based initiatives that actively shield disadvantagedchildren from the risks and adversities within their homes, schools, and communi-ties are more likely to foster successful academic outcomes than are several otherschool-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 humanservice needs, offering breakfast, eye exams, and parent training. They connect witha broad range of partners and social service providers to address these needs. HPHPschools even provide explicit guidance and guidelines for the development of behav-ior and values that have been shown to support learning: teaching how to looksomeone 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 awillingness to examine a new way of thinking, an organizational readiness to fill inthe gaps in protective processes through use of effective instructional programs andinvolvement of parent and community partners, and a way of assessing student fac-tors related to resilience.” (Nettles & Robinson, 1998)


The School as Gang ReplacementThe required enrichment Saturday School at Codman Academy Charter School inBoston, 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 MegCampbell explains, “We’re competing against a lot of negative pressures these kidshave in their lives – crime, drugs, gangs. So in a way, we’re trying to make Codman bethe gang.“ (www.buildingblocks.org, Codman strategy)

Enhancing Student ResilienceLowell Middlesex Charter School, which serves a population of high school drop-outsaged 15-21 in Lowell, MA, ensures that all of the full-time faculty have experienceand/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-violentconflict resolution, parenting, and men’s and women’s groups. (www.buildingblocks.org,LMACS strategy)

2.4


Readiness to TeachThis leg of the Readiness Model encom-passes most of the work of school reformover the past 15 to 20 years, at least interms of scale and investment. Higherexpectations and curriculum standards,building capacity to teach to those stan-dards, using data effectively to driveinstruction, and developing interventionsfor students who need special help –these are the core elements of standards-based reform. They represent not onlythe main ideas driving school improve-ment processes nationwide, but also theprimary (and often exclusive) focus ofthe vast majority of the effective-practiceresearch we reviewed for this report.

HPHP schools address the length andbreadth of these now-common, stan-dards-based reform practices. However, itis clear from our research that HPHPschools approach the Readiness to Teachdimension with more intensity than otherschools. 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 expressionsof Readiness to Teach that we highlighton these pages: their ability to generateshared responsibility for achievementamong every adult in the school; the pre-cision with which they use frequentassessment to personalize instruction;and the priority they give to the develop-ment of a professional, collaborativeteaching 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 theverb “to teach” properly. That is, they do not say what many teachersaround the country say: “I taught it, but the kids didn’t get it.”Although common, this formulation actually makes no sense. If I wereto say “I taught my child to ride a bike,” you would expect that mychild could ride a bike. She might be a bit shaky, but she should beable to pedal and balance at the same time. If she can’t do that, youwould expect me to say something like, “I tried to teach my child toride 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, ifteachers say that they taught something, that means their studentshave learned it. (Passage quoted from Chenoweth, 2007)

4. Shared Responsibility for Achievement Virtually every “schools that work” report we reviewed for thisproject began its discussion of essential reform elements withthe importance of “establishing a culture of high expecta-tions.” We deliberately chose not to use this phrase, which hasbeen over-used, mis-used and (sadly) often used simply as arhetorical device. Sometimes it is so broad as to becomemeaningless; at other times it acts as shorthand for expecta-tions of student achievement and teacher performance thatare 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 forachievement. This commitment is intense and conveys a sense ofownership, more than bar-setting. It is inclusive, involving all stu-dents and all adults in the building (including custodians andnurses, for example, in school-wide professional development), aswell as parents (sometimes involving home-school contracts), andoften community members. It is highly focused on learning and

student behaviors that directly affect learning. The 90-90-90schools analysis of researcher Douglas Reeves, for instance,declared that “first and most importantly, the 90/90/90 schoolshave a laser-like focus on student achievement.” (Reeves, 2003;“90-90-90” refers to schools that score in the 90th percentile, are90 percent minority, and are 90% free and reduced-price lunch.)

These responsibilities also included accountability for studentsand for teachers, but approached in a flexible way that accountsfor the unsettled nature of high-poverty communities. The HPHPprincipal’s response to a student who says “I got no sleep. Mydad got taken to jail last night” was: “ I’m sorry, study somemore and we will give you the opportunity to retake the test.”(The Education Trust, 2005b) In the same way, teachers atanother HPHP school, according to Haberman (1999), “demon-strate a strong willingness as well as an expectation that theyas teachers should be held accountable for their children’slearning.” They do not let their students use limitations in lifeexperience or language problems as an excuse; neither do theyuse them as a way of avoiding responsibility as teachers.



Standing PD on its HeadAt Brighton High School in Boston, professional development has been redefined in away 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 teachersacross and within curriculum areas to examine data-driven, achievement-gap prioritiesthat they themselves identify. Brighton expanded the CCL model by extending it acrossall curriculum areas, allocating a full-time coach, and budget funds for “CCL subs” tofree 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 improvinginstruction, diagnosing student learning challenges, and helping each other improvetheir practice. At its best, this role is a highly professional one – that of an expertworking within a team to coordinate a variety of resources and capabilities to solveproblems and achieve results. (The hospital metaphor for “new-world” schoolingthat we described at the outset of Part 2.4 is relevant here.) To continue to addvalue 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 groupreviews of student work. The emphasis within the HPHP new-world model on form-ative assessment and adaptation of instruction provides additional imperatives forworking together, in order to pool expertise and capacity for problem-solving. Themost effective schools make time for collaboration very frequently, every week oreven every day. Mostly, the time is carved out of administrative meeting time andprofessional development allocations.

HPHP teachers also see themselves as lifelong learners about instruction and learn-ing. School leaders reinforce this focus through their professional developmentofferings. “Professional development at high-performing schools differs distinctivelyfrom the norm. It is directly linked to changing instructional practice in order toimprove student achievement. It is often team-based and school-wide, and itreflects 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 itto address the work they’re doing.

5. Personalization of InstructionMuch more so than their peers, HPHP schools are organized to personalize eachstudent’s road to academic achievement. This is the practice that most directlyfuels the “new-world” approach they use to reach high performance. When wesaw it in action in the HPHP schools we researched directly, we recognized that wewere seeing a “new-world” for public education, one that has been described wellby Michael Fullan and his co-authors in Breakthrough (2006).

Many schools emphasize data-driven instruction or differentiated instruction. Butwhat HPHP schools do is something much more individually-oriented and muchmore precise. The HPHP schools organize instruction around a short feedback loopof formative assessment, adapted instruction, further formative assessment, andfurther adapted instruction. The evidence from HPHP effective-practice research onthis strategy is overwhelming: Chenoweth’s recent case studies (2007), theCPE/Caliber Associates research review (2005), Marzano’s meta-analysis ofresearch on student achievement (2000), and most individual studies cite this kindof feedback-based instruction as having profound impact on student achievement.

Its implementation in the HPHP schools we studied was intentional and specific. (Formore 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 togenerate a grade) are given as often as weekly or bi-weekly.

• Analysis and feedback is immediate. The assessments are often brief (forweekly tests, 4-5 questions), so that teachers or coaches can analyze the resultswithin 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 thediagnostic data: for example, performance “walls” to strategize for individualstudents, small-group classroom learning, and individual tutoring.

• Teachers are provided with the time and flexibility to address theissues. HPHP schools have not only increased instructional time, but also recon-figure it to construct sometimes dramatically different daily schedules (longblocks, extended days, ”re-teach or enrich” time slots) to suit the needs of theirstudents 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) Whenassessment 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 raisedon the instant feedback of video and computer games) thrive on the instant feed-back and opportunity to see their own progress.


2.4


Readiness to ActRarely does reality on the ground alignwith theory as well as in this dimensionof HPHP schools. James Thompson(1967) revolutionized organizationaltheory by showing that organizationsfacing “the expectation of uncertainty”– as virtually every urban high-povertyschool does – “must resort to a differ-ent sort of logic.” Thompson prescribeda highly responsive, flexible organiza-tion in which a variety of methods areavailable, “but the selection, combina-tion, and order of application” aredetermined by constant assessmentand feedback.” Savvy, timely adjust-ment of this kind is exactly what wefind in HPHP schools where educatorsdeftly respond to all manner of crisis.

Agility in the face of turbulence is partof what we call Readiness to Act. Thisagility is part of an insistence amongHPHP schools on organizing anddeploying every resource at their dispos-al entrepreneurially and strategically. Attraditional public schools, bureaucraticimperatives frequently impede actionthat is truly best for students. In HPHPschools, operating conditions alteredeither by regulation (e.g., charters) or byfiat (maverick principals) allow deci-sions to be focused on student needs,and incentives to become re-integratedwith the “children first” mission.

Open Posting AdvantagePrincipal Michael Fung at Charlestown (MA) High School used fine printwithin the Boston teachers’ contract to achieve open-posting (i.e., theability to disregard seniority and recruit the best candidate from inside oroutside the system) for certain teaching positions, such as those involvingstipends and not requiring regular certification. Fung had to get facultyapproval, involve a screening committee, and proactively head-hunt can-didates. But he credits open posting as a major contributor to his school’simpressive 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’sethos. (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 continuallytailor instruction for individual students, maneuver againstdaily turbulence, and improve their staff. Most public schoolscurrently 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, orspecial district schools with charter-like conditions), or elsethey manage to manipulate very unusual combinations of cir-cumstances (outstanding, entrepreneurial school leadership, orunique partnerships with universities or other outside forces)to act as if they had such freedom.

HPHP schools’ resource authority shows up across the fullgamut of school operations: the daily schedule, often the annu-al school calendar, the way teachers collaborate with eachother and participate in school decision-making, the allocationof the school’s budget, the very nature of instruction. It also

shows up in the extensive care that school leaders put intochoosing staff members who are best-suited to the model andtheir mission. Research overwhelmingly confirms that “teach-ing quality is the most dominant factor in determining studentsuccess.” (Reeves, 2003) But most schools serving high-povertystudent populations do not have control over teaching and (tosome extent) administrative staff. HPHP schools almost uni-formly say that recruiting excellent staff members is the mostimportant thing they do. The charters and the charter-likes havethat unquestioned authority; the regular public schools that areboth 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 moretraditional high-poverty school settings: financial incentives,differentiated and performance-based compensation, moreflexible 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



A Virtuous CycleRather than living within typical resource allocation limits, the MATCH Charter School inBoston has moved to an atypical “resource-raising” approach – expanding adult supportand raising additional financial resources. They developed their MATCH Corps of recentcollege graduates to fulfill the need for intensive tutoring. They entered into partnershipswith local universities and nearby high schools. They also looked to a range of publicfinancing options (such as leveraging Federal Tax Credits to secure funding for a newconstruction), and drew additional funds from private sector companies and private phi-lanthropies. Promotion of their successes initiates a “virtuous cycle” that leads to furtherinterest and funding. (www.buildingblocks.org; MATCH strategy)

Converting Excuses into ChallengesSterling Middle School in Quincy, MA used to have a reputation as a tough school, andwas considered dysfunctional by many of its own faculty members. Then the faculty andstaff stepped closer to perceived obstacles to confront them as problems that could besolved. The paradigm shift, fueled by Principal Earl Metzler’s “no excuses” mantra, wasfrom a passive “We can’t because ...” to an active: “We can, by ...,” and the enemy wasno longer the district, the budget, the parents, or the students. The key to success was inidentifying areas where they could make a difference and in incorporating externallymandated challenges [like the state standards assessments] into internal mechanismsfor improvement. (www.buildingblocks.org, Sterling strategy)

9. Agility in the Face of TurbulencePart 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 constantunsettledness that is fundamental to the ecology of high-poverty schools and a fac-tor that principals and teachers must overcome – not through rigid standards andcontrol, but through flexibility and persuasion; the ability to adapt, improvise, andtriage on the fly; and the skill to build a resilient organization and culture thatprides itself on high performance despite the turbulence. Not an impossible chal-lenge, as the HPHP schools demonstrate – just different from the old-world modelof conveyer-belt curriculum for all. It takes this agility, together with ResourceAuthority and Resource Ingenuity, for a school to have any hope of supporting theirstudents’ readiness to learn and their teachers’ readiness to teach – because everyday 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 inurban low-performing schools, most of which are also high-poverty. They paint a pictureof turbulence at the institutional level, characterizing urban districts as loosely struc-tured, with unclear expectations and uneven service to school leaders. Principals ofurban 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-changingbalance of skills, experience [and] intuition.” The HPHP research concurs, citing overand 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 tothe guidelines and requirements of individual programs. (Orr et al, 2005)

Affirming the MissionBenwood 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 Benwoodteachers to get low-interest mortgages. (Chenoweth, 2007)

8. Resource IngenuityIngenuity is the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful. Our researcherscan’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. Noone 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 maintainingsafe passage through dangerous neighborhoods; social workers embedded in teach-ing teams; computer funds redirected to hire additional teachers; free matinees atarea cultural events; and schoolwide teams organized to visit every student’s home.

2.5 Applying the Lessons2.5 Applying the Lessons

2.4


In this concluding section of Part 2,we place the lessons of HPHP

schools in the context of the turn-around challenge.

High-performing, high-povertyschools are an innovation of incalcula-ble value. Much studied, they provideessential insight into what it takes toignite learning in high-poverty schools.

Lacking an effective and replicableschool turnaround model anywhere inthe country, individual HPHP schoolsare our trailblazers – the vanguard thatextinguishes the debate about unteach-able kids, demonstrates best practices,and sets a benchmark against whichreform efforts can be measured.

Because they are so important to keepin mind as we build a model for turn-around, the major points from Part 2are worth reiterating here:

1The ecology of high-povertyschools is inherently much more

unpredictable, variable, and irregularthan that of low-poverty schools.Accounting for the constant unsettled-ness as well as the wide range of stu-

dent challenges and learning deficitsinduced by poverty is a prerequisite tosuccessful schools.

2Our most common approaches donot 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 thatplace [poor] students at even greaterrisk of academic failure.” (Borman &Rachuba, 2001)

3 It seems clear that what we arewitnessing in the phenomenon of

HPHP schools is the evolution of anew species. HPHP schools have mor-phed into highly adaptable organiza-tions whose staff are expert at ignitinglearning for each child in spite of thesurrounding turbulence; in essence,they are reinventing what schools do.

4 The “new-model” of HPHPschooling evokes the sense of a

team rallying to each student. Adults,programs, and resources encircle thestudent, ready to analyze, diagnose,

and serve his or her needs in a flexibleand ongoing way.

5Income-vs.-performance datareveal that school proficiency

drops steadily as school poverty rises.Just as important: proficiency variessignificantly at every income level, andextensively among high-povertyschools, underlining the vital roleschool quality plays.

6Dissecting poverty’s role in exactlywhy schools fail establishes a par-

tial checklist of design conditionsfrom which solutions and innovationscan be forged. Poverty’s “perfect storm”is comprised of three mutually-reinforc-ing forms: individual and family riskfactors, community and environmenteffects, and resource inequality.

7The methods used to combat thesefactors are summarized in the

HPHP Readiness Model, a system ofnine elements that enable schools to:

• Acknowledge and foster students’Readiness to Learn,

• Elevate and focus staff’s Readinessto Teach, and

• Exercise more Readiness to Act indramatically different ways than istypically possible in public schools.

Reframing Our Thinking:A Precursor to Real ReformHPHP schools break convention intwo pragmatic yet significant ways:

• They are replacing the traditionalold-world, conveyor-belt modelwith a new-world model with eachchild at the center and designed tocounter poverty’s perfect storm; and

• They discard many centralized andbureaucratic management methodsin favor of a highly adaptableReadiness to Act, much better suit-ed to the constant unsettledness thatmarks high-poverty schooling andto targeting precious core resourceson real gains in student learning.

What will it take for our educationthinking 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, childpoverty, cognitive development, andpsychological resiliency. If “facts arefriendly” and “knowledge is power,”the new insights emerging fromresearch place solid new under-

2.5 Applying the Lessons of HPHP SchoolsChange begins with the courage to break patterns

2.3 Poverty’s Impact on Learning 2.4 The HPHP Readiness Model2.2 Patterns of Proficiency 2.1 How HPHP Schools Ignite Learning

Lacking an effective and replicable school turnaroundmodel anywhere in the country, individual HPHP schoolsare our trailblazers.


pinnings and possibility under HPHPpractice and the turnaround of under-performing high-poverty schools.

Second, we must reframe our under-standing of HPHP schools and thelessons they offer. There has been astrong tendency in past HPHP effec-tive-schools research to set the char-acteristics of high-poverty school set-tings aside, and to focus on whatmight be called the “classic” stan-dards-based education reform cate-gories of high expectations, curricula,teaching methods, assessment tools,and strong leadership. Even in severalof the studies we found most useful inshaping the HPHP Readiness Model(see Figure 2E), you will see a greatdeal of attention focused on theseReadiness to Teach strategies, almostto the exclusion of the other twodimensions in the Readiness Model.That’s understandable, since mosteffective-practice research has gener-ally followed the most commonlyapplied reform strategies – and mostof those strategies have revolvedaround Readiness to Teach-stylereforms. The research, in other words,has followed the path of reform. Yetall three Readiness elements are pow-erful themes among principals andteachers in HPHP schools and in thesignificant 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 inthese schools have been telling us.

Third, we must reframe ourapproach to education reform itself.The rest of this report is predicated onthe assumption that what HPHPschools 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 vehiclefor fundamental change. However,change will take rethinking ourapproach to education reform. To thatvital task, we turn next.


Major Effective-Practice Research Informs and Supports the HPHP Readiness Model

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Readiness to LEARN

Safety, Discipline, & Engagement l ll ll ll l ll ll l ll ll

Action Against Adversity ll ll ll ll ll ll

Close Student-Adult Relationships l l ll l l ll ll ll l ll

Readiness to TEACH

Shared Responsibility for Achievement l l l l l l l l l l l

Personalization of Instruction l l l l l l l l l l l l l

Professional Teaching Culture l l l l l l l l l l l l l

Readiness to ACT

Resource Authority l l l l l l ll l

Resource Ingenuity l ll ll l ll ll l ll

Agility in the Face of Turbulence l l ll

Strong support = l

Some support = ll

Note: For complete references and information on these sources, see Appendix B.

FIGURE 2E

2.5

The high-performing, high-povertyschools described in Part 2 pro-

vide school intervention strategistswith a proof-point, a benchmark, anda vision. They demonstrate what’spossible, how far highly disadvan-taged kids can go, and what it lookslike to get them there.

The rest, to paraphrase educationwriter Karin Chenoweth (see box),is engineering.

That makes the task in front of ussound deceptively easy. Engineering,after all, is an historical Americantrademark. We designed and builtdemocracy as a form of government,invented peanut butter, the suburb,and the nuclear bomb, carved out thePanama Canal and put a man on themoon. Surely we can replicate thestrategies of successful urban schools.

But so far, after three decades or moreof effort – some of it involving billionsof dollars of federal aid – the results ofour various attempts to apply effec-tive-practice research to improvestruggling schools are meager at best.“Why do good ideas about teachingand learning have so little impact on

U.S. educational practice?” Harvardresearcher Richard Elmore asked thatquestion in 1996, at the outset of hismilestone essay, “Getting to Scale withGood Educational Practice.” He couldwell ask the same question, with addedimpatience, today.

For this project, we spent 18 monthsseeking to answer Elmore’s questionwith respect to state- and district-driven interventions in failing schools.Our complete analysis is included inthis report as Appendix A, but it boilsdown to the observations opposite:

3.1 What Success Requires:Changing the Odds for Turnaround SchoolsMoving beyond marginal to fundamental change

Part 3 examines:

3.1 What Success Requires:Changing the Odds forTurnaround SchoolsMoving beyond marginal to fun-

damental change

3.2 The First C: Conditions thatEnable Effective TurnaroundReform depends on the contextin which it’s applied

3.3 The Second C: Capacity toConduct Effective Turnaround Urgently needed: broader, deeperturnaround 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 folksin these schools can be likened to the Wright brothers, who proved once and for allthat manned flight was possible. Once Orville and Wilbur demonstrated how to answerthe challenges of drag and gravity, getting from their experimental plane in Kitty Hawkto the Boeing 747 was no longer a theoretical challenge but an engineering one. Inthe same way, the schools profiled here demonstrate that the job of educating kids tohigh levels – even kids traditionally considered ‘hard to teach’ – is theoretically possi-ble. The challenges these schools have overcome include the ideas that poverty anddiscrimination are insuperable barriers to academic achievement; that today’s kids areso damaged by television, video games and hip-hop music that they are impervious tobooks 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 youovercome 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 displayedby the Wright brothers, you get learning. The schools profiled here are not perfect, anymore 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)


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 vastmajority of what passes for intervention in failing schools can be understood as lightrenovation – the school-reform equivalent of wallpapering and new siding. What’sneeded is much more fundamental than repair work on an existing structure: we needinstead a thorough rethinking of how the house serves the people who live in it. Thatmuch is clear from our study of HPHP schools (see Figure 2E). It’s a big issue for schoolcommunities, 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 currentmodel of the school. Some also build in people change – installing a new principal orreplacing the staff, but rarely as part of a complete turnaround strategy. Very few gofurther and attempt to change the context of operating conditions and incentives inwhich all of the work (including the reform effort) takes place. Yet it is precisely thisconditions 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 integratedstrategies. A strong principal; a smaller learning community; a longer school day.Individual elements of turnaround may be critically important, but each by itself isnearly 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 inpart because their central support network (the district) has failed them. Supremelygifted principals may turn around a school, but turnaround at scale requires intensivesupport from a new network, organized within or across district lines.

Inadequate Incentive Change: Current efforts do too little to change thestatus 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. Interventionrepresents an opportunity for leverage to be applied to change behavior, which as

Fullan (among other researchers) points out, can then lead to changed beliefs. Butthat leverage – and the consequent sense of urgency – does not take place becausestate accountability systems have been weak or unclear in establishing firm timelinesand consequences for underperformance. Neither have most intervention strategiesunderstood 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 theall-encompassing people strategy and strong external partners they need

School intervention chronically under-values the importance of recruiting andplacing 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 interventioninitiatives include provisions for professional development, but most often, that is as faras it goes. The choices, changes, and comprehensive “people strategies” that mightcome from an honest appraisal of current personnel, management, and HR practicesincluding 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 onlynow 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 strongbase of outside turnaround partners clearly stems from lack of public investment inthis 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 nothelped. Its five restructuring options include one “wild-card” alternative that hasbeen used as a limited-change escape from the other, more dramatic options. TheAdequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions are moving so many schools into correctiveaction 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 ofintervention 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-suitedto 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 ofschool intervention address the short-comings described on the previouspage, and in the “map” of the inter-vention-design landscape on the fac-ing page? Together, they summarize aset of public policy and school reformstrategies that appear to have missedthe mark altogether on both thenature of the intervention required byfailing schools, and the scale of theintervention indicated by the magni-tude of the problem.

And yet: the turnaround challenge, webelieve, is an addressable public policyproblem. Moreover, as we argued inPart 1, we believe that turnaround offailing schools represents an opportu-nity to bring about fundamentalchange in education on a broad basis.

That is the focus of the remainder ofthis report: defining the differencebetween intervention as it has (most-ly) been done to date, and a morecomplete, ambitious form of interven-tion we call integrated, comprehen-sive turnaround design – or, “trueturnaround” for short.

The graphic below summarizes ourapproach.

• First, it is staked to our analysis ofthe HPHP schools in Part 2 andthe Readiness Model for high-poverty schools that resulted fromthat analysis.

• Second, it focuses (in Part 3) on theelements of turnaround design webelieve are critical to its success atthe ground level: Conditions,

Capacity, and Clustering, the three‘C’s of turnaround design.

• Third, it presents our view (in Part4) of how these elements can beenabled at scale, through the cre-ation of turnaround zones withspecial operating conditions andsupports, and a coordinated frame-work of state, district, and outsidepartner support.

None of this is simple to accomplish.We are fully aware, having beendeeply involved in Massachusetts edu-cation policymaking for ten years, ofthe complex political dynamics thatcan make the organization, launch,and successful implementation ofsuch a public policy initiative a daunt-ing challenge. But we have also seensuccess come to Massachusetts, first-

hand, from a sustained, statewidecommitment to real reform amonggovernment, business, community,and education leaders. Part 4 beginswith a discussion of these dynamicsand the need for states to build a lead-ership constituency for failing schools.But first, in Part 3, we elaborate onthe three ‘C’s.

What Success Requires(continued)


For More Analysis of…

• Current intervention strategies in gener-al: Appendix A provides an in-depth exami-nation of what’s been tried, organized intothe three categories introduced in Figure 3B:Program Change, People Change, andCondition Change. Appendix A also providesan analysis of No Child Left Behind and itsimpact on turnaround design.

• State and district intervention initiativesof particular interest: The SupplementalReport offers profiles of ten representativestate 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 StepsFIGURE 3A

This chart plots three current forms ofschool intervention on a graph indicatingthe comprehensiveness of each formagainst its scale.

• Program Change initiatives have represent-ed the vast majority of intervention initiatives,including the federal government’s massiveComprehensive School Reform (CSR) programand the New American Schools (NAS) models.This form of intervention provides help in avast array of ways – including whole-schoolmodeling – but stops short of changing thesystem in which the work is undertaken, orthe people who are undertaking it.

• People Change initiatives imply a judgmentthat turnaround of failing schools involvesmore than improving programs; it must includesome change in the people implementing thereform as well. Some school districts, notablyWashington DC and San Francisco, have experi-mented with total staff reconstitution: firingeveryone and building a new staff. Virginia isexperimenting with a Turnaround Specialistsprogram that replaces principals in failingschools with other school leaders who haveproven track records of effectiveness. These ini-tiatives go farther than the Program Changemodels, but still stop short of addressing barri-ers in the operating conditions that preventreform from fulfilling its potential.

• Conditions Change initiatives provide authorityto turnaround leaders to make choices regardingprograms and key resources including staff,schedule, and budget. They attempt to reconnectincentive structures to the school’s educationalmission (through, for example, professionalnorms for compensation and collaboration).

Comprehensive turnaround, we believe, inte-grates all three of these forms of change. Ahandful of major districts have begun to experi-ment with forms of intervention that try toaddress all three. The reforms are too new tohave produced definitive results. Turn toAppendix A and the Supplement for a more thor-ough treatment of this analysis and profiles ofsome of those intervention experiments.


FIGURE 3B Current Interventions: Some Scale, but Little True Comprehensiveness

3.1

44

Changing Conditions: Establishingthe operating conditions and newincentives necessary for school-leveldecisions to be made more on thebasis of what’s best for students andachievement than on the needs ofadults. That means flexible authorityover critical resources – people, time,money, and program – and profes-sional incentives that actively encour-age people to do their best work.

Supremely skillful principals withadequate resources pursuing com-

monly-held, research-based reformshave at least some chance of improv-ing a low-performing school. Buttheir success appears to come despitethe context of governance, decision-making systems, and operating condi-tions in which they do their work. Asour own seven years of effective-prac-tice research and our analysis of simi-

lar studies show, principals who suc-ceed in high-poverty, high-challengeschools tend to be strategy mavericksand resource entrepreneurs. Theyextract from the system what’s valu-able to their school, they find waysaround the most dysfunctional obsta-cles, and they enlist their staff intowillingly coming along with them.

It should not have to be that way, andit cannot if we are to meet the chal-lenge of failing schools at the scale ofthe need. The challenges presented byhigh-poverty schools are too great,and the supply of supremely skillfulprincipals is simply too small. Hencethe first of the three ‘C’s of effectiveturnaround at scale: Establishing thechanging conditions.

By “conditions,” we don’t mean work-ing conditions in the classic sense ofthe phrase: temperature in the hall-ways, rowdy students, number of kidsin a class. We mean the large set ofsystemic operating conditions thatactively shape how everyone – adultsand students alike – behave in theschool. This set of conditions is driv-en primarily by two forces: authorityto make choices (particularly regard-ing the key resources of people, time,

money, and program); and the natureof the incentive structure.

Authority to Make ChoicesOne thread that runs through theresearch on effective schools andhigh-performing high-poverty schoolsis the central importance of allocatinga school’s resources in ways that maxi-mize student learning. Four kinds ofresources stand out as most critical:1

People: Abundant research sup-ports the primacy of good teachingin determining student achieve-ment. (Hattie, 2003; Rowan,Correnti, & Miller, 2002; Sanders,Wright, & Horn, 1997) Schoolsseeking to raise student achieve-ment dramatically put the rightpeople in the right positions to dotheir most effective work, and thenenable that performance with oper-ating conditions and incentives(see below) that support it.Turnaround school leaders musthave the ability to shape the staff intheir schools, without regard toseniority or other contract bargain-ing restrictions.

Time: Schools that are effectivewith previously low-performing

students typically use time in sub-stantially different ways from thenorm. At the elementary level, theyincrease the time students spend incore academic instruction (manystudies, with Kannapel & Clements2005 a recent example). At the highschool level, HPHP schools areexceedingly deliberate about theuse of instructional time – arrang-ing available time to help “catchup” students who arrive behind(Education Trust, 2005) and insome cases rewriting the entireweekly and yearly school calendar.(Mass Insight, 2001-5) Effectiveschools also rework teachers’ timeto allow more monitoring, data-analysis, planning, and professionaldevelopment.

Money: Most intervention programleaders are handcuffed by their lackof control over school budgets,which in turn undercuts their abili-ty to implement the most impor-tant elements of their turnaroundplan. The charter schools amongthe HPHP schools we studied havethe necessary budget authority;principals at other HPHP schoolstend to be mavericks with district

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3.2 The First C: Conditions that Enable Effective TurnaroundReform depends on the context in which it’s applied

1It 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 CHALLENGE3.2 Changing Conditions 3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support3.1 What Success Requires

policy and “resource entrepre-neurs,” as discussed in Part 2, in order to gain at least a measureof flexibility.

Program: Turnaround leadersneed sufficient authority to shapetheir school’s teaching approachesand related services around themission and their local circum-stances – within a framework ofsupport and direction provided tothem by network partners (whichmay include their district).

Much of this “resource authority”may seem to pertain mostly to untra-ditional schools – schools organizedto conduct their work somewhat orcompletely outside of normal publicschool district structures. And this is,in many ways, the point: the nature ofschool turnaround work requires thatwe learn from these outside-the-systemapproaches and develop better ways ofapplying them inside the system. (SeeFigure 3C.) Without the ability toselect and place staff, structure time,and allocate funds, it becomesextraordinarily difficult for schools tosucceed, especially in a turnaroundcontext. Much authoritative researchsupports the importance of authorityover resources. In RAND’s researchon comprehensive school reform, forexample, 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 ofhigh-performing, high-poverty schools (see page 9), turnaround zones must be created – eitherwithin or across school district lines – that change traditional operating conditions that inhibitreform. The zones establish outside-the-system authorities inside the system, within a frameworkof strong support and guidance from the district and a lead turnaround partner.

3.2


freedom to implement their modelswere more likely to be successful.(Berends et al, 2002) RAND came tosimilar conclusions in its evaluation ofEdison Schools, which also hasachieved greater success when allowedthe autonomy to implement its pro-gram. (Gill et al, 2005) Studies of suc-cessful charter schools have pointed tofreedom and flexibility as critical to theschools’ success. “In effective charterschools,” one concluded, “in each casethe school program reflects the school’sfreedom to experiment, to be creativein terms of organization, scheduling,curriculum, and instruction.” (U.S.Department of Education, 2004)

Though these examples emphasizeschool-level autonomy, it is importantto note that the concept of “authorityto make choices” does not necessarilymean untrammeled school-level flexi-bility over all aspects of school opera-tions. It may well be sensible, forexample, for a district to deploy aresearch-based reading curriculum inall of its chronically low-performingschools, rather than allowing eachschool to select its own approach. Andit may also be sensible for policymak-ers to make school-level authority con-tingent on capacity; e.g., requiringschool-level leaders to earn authorityby showing their ability to lead well.

Simply granting unlimited powers toincapable school-level actors in such acontext is not a winning turnaroundstrategy. But even where school-levelauthority is not appropriate or desirable,someone still needs authority overresources in order to effect successfulturnaround. Someone needs the powerto allocate people, time, and money in away that supports the turnaround effort.

Incentives to Take ActionBy “incentives,” we mean all of theforces that shape behavior within aschool. Too often, incentives run inexactly the wrong direction insidechronically low-performing schools.The incentive challenge is in fact evi-dent at all levels of the system, fromthose shaping superintendent decision-making to those that define the dailywork of individual teachers andadministrators – and the engagementof students in their own learning, aswas discussed in Part 2.

First, turnaround leaders at all levelsneed incentives to act decisively insupport of fundamental change.Over the past two decades, local lead-ers have shown a marked preferencefor less dramatic strategies even whenthere is little or no evidence that sucha strategy will improve the educationits neediest students receive. (Brady,

2003; McRobbie, 1998; Wong & Shen,2003) This preference is predictable:dramatic strategies are by definitionmore likely to upset strong interests,necessitate policy changes, require thereallocation of funding and people,and otherwise disrupt the status quo.Without countervailing incentives totake bold action, district (and school)leaders can scarcely be expected to doso, though there always will be excep-tions. As Brady (2003) found: “While

39 states have the authority to takestrong actions, and while these same39 states contain dozens of failingschools that have not appreciablyimproved for years, we still findstrong interventions extremely rare.”

It is tempting to imagine that NCLBhas created such countervailing incen-tives, but the evidence suggests other-wise. Though NCLB requires districtsto “restructure” schools after five yearsof failing to make Adequate YearlyProgress, most restructuring appearsto be an extension of more incremen-tal reform strategies common in theearlier stages of NCLB intervention.

NCLB delineates four dramaticoptions: reopening as a charter school,contracting with an external manage-ment provider, replacing relevant staff,and state takeover. But it also includesa fifth “other” option, which is theroute most districts are taking. Often,“other” means using incrementalstrategies such as new curriculum pro-grams or staff development. Very fewdistricts seem to be employing NCLB’smore dramatic restructuring options.

(DiBiase, 2005) Until and unless therestructuring provisions of NCLB arerewritten, if state policy leaders wantdistricts to have strong countervailingincentives to take bold action, theywill have to create them. (See Part 4.2for more on NCLB’s impact on turn-around design.)

Incentives That Support ReformSecond, turnaround leaders and edu-cators in turnaround schools needpowerful incentives to act in waysthat boost student performance dra-matically. Current incentives producepersonal and organizational behaviorthat tends to undercut performance by

Changing Conditions (continued)

Dramatic strategies are by definition more likely to upset stronginterests, 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 Support3.1 What Success Requires


students – particularly disadvantagedstudents attending dysfunctionalschools. It would seem reasonable, forexample, that students in the lowestperforming schools should be taughtby the most able teachers. But undercurrent incentive and compensationstructures, it would be irrational toexpect the most capable teachers andadministrators to gravitate to the mostdysfunctional schools. New incentives– differential pay, low-interest mort-gages, loan-forgiveness, leadershiproles – must be developed if we are tomatch the neediest students with theteachers and leaders most capable ofhelping them.

There are several different kinds ofincentives that policymakers canmobilize to support school turn-arounds, including:

Resource incentives: Policymakerscan offer additional funding for dis-tricts or schools willing to under-take turnaround strategies that aremost likely to work, rather thenpursuing less promising strategies.

Positioning incentives: Toooften, systems stigmatize schoolsthat are identified for improve-ment. Instead, policymakers canseek to create an environment in

which being designated a “turn-around school” is valued due tothe attention, resources, condi-tion changes, and promise thatattach to the status.

Accountability incentives:Increasingly, No Child Left Behindand state accountability systemsare insisting on more dramaticinterventions in under-performingschools, 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, budgetauthority, and membership. Whilethese systems are imperfect in vari-ous ways, policymakers can usethem as levers to induce action atthe district and school level.

Parent and communityincentives: Parents and communi-ty members can mobilize in sup-port of these efforts or detract fromthem depending upon how theybecome organized relative to thechange. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005;Arkin and Kowal, 2005; Kowal andArkin, 2005) If change-orientedpolicymakers and system leaderscan harness that mobilization insupport of viable turnaroundstrategies, these incentives can run

in the right direction. Alternately,if opponents of change are moreeffective at capitalizing on thisforce, then the incentives will con-tinue to work against change asthey so often do.

Condition change may be the mostdifficult and contentious of the three‘C’s we propose as vital ingredientsfor effective turnaround. It confrontsestablished interests in the form ofbureaucratic state and district con-straints, teacher unions and, some-

times, parent and professional associ-ations. But altered operating condi-tions and incentive structures arehallmarks of the HPHP schools, anddistrict/union collaborating aroundturnaround zones in New York,Chicago, Miami, and elsewhere showthat it can be done. Turnaroundefforts that continuously requiredecision-making staked to the bestinterests of children, instead ofadults, 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). EmpowermentZone (New York City). Opportunity Zone (Houston). Superintendent’s Schools(Boston). Renaissance 2010 or “Ren-Ten” schools (Chicago). But they all reflectthe 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 theirgoals 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 andfrom outside partners, and – last but not least – to replace stigmatizing labelswith a strongly positive identity. Turnaround zones are efforts to actualize theReadiness to Act leg of the HPHP Readiness school model, and to enable schoolleaders to expand their staff’s Readiness to Teach.

Districts have led the way in creating such zones. (See Appendix A and theSupplemental Report for our analysis.) But states now have the opportunity tolearn from the district experiments and create statewide zones that bring thechanging conditions to every district and school undertaking turnaround. That isone of the foundation ideas in our proposed Turnaround Framework, which isdescribed in Part 5.

3.2


Building Capacity: Enhancingschools’ ability to recruit, train,assign, and support people with theright skills for the right jobs; andbuilding, in particular, new capacityamong internal school leadershipteams and external turnaround part-ners in the specialized skills of schoolturnaround management.

Turnaround is, at its core, a peo-ple strategy. No matter how good

a new curriculum is, or how solid thedata analysis is, or how imaginativelythe school day is organized, or hownew the technology is – no matterabout all of that – schooling is funda-mentally a human enterprise. High-performing, high-poverty schools givetheir highest priority to recruiting thebest staff possible and enabling themto do their best work. Failing schools,on the other hand, are a painfullyclear reflection of public education’sgeneral failure to understand and

adopt professional human resourcemanagement systems and strategies.

In the realm of capacity-building,effective turnaround requires:

• A fundamental rethinking ofinternal HR approaches – includ-ing recruitment, induction, devel-opment, allocation, and evaluation– in order to enable people current-ly in the system to perform at thehighest levels and to attract highlydedicated, highly skilled newcomersto the mission. This is true not justat the level of the classroomteacher; it’s just as true at everylevel in the system of supports forthat teacher, including principalsand coaches, district and schoolmanagers of turnaround efforts,and framers and implementers ofturnaround policy at the state level.

• A fundamental rethinking of howexternal capacity is applied – howschools, districts, and states workwith outside partners, who have animportant role to play that wouldnot be supported by the nature andstructure of most current school/dis-trict/provider relationships.

• A clear understanding of turn-around management as a disci-

pline with a distinct skill set; theinadequacy of current turnaroundmanagement capacity everywherein the system; and the state’sresponsibility to address that gap.

• Finally: the provision of sufficientfunding and resources. The vastmajority of any investment thatstates and districts make in turn-around will go to building thecapacity required to implement thestrategies comprehensively. Partialimplementation because of insuffi-cient funding will produce, pre-dictably, a dimmer result.

Revitalizing Internal HRLeaders of outside-the-system schoolssuch as charters and charter-likeschools say that perhaps the mostimportant authority they have – thedefiner of what’s different in theirschools from the traditional model –is the ability to shape their school staffinto the high-performance team thatschooling in high-poverty environ-ments requires. (Mass Insight for theNewSchools Venture Fund, 2007)Principals of regular, in-district publicschools generally lack the same kindof authority – a crippling blow to anyserious turnaround effort. But as theresearch presented in Part 2 and the

Supplemental Report shows, princi-pals leading high-performing, high-poverty (HPHP) schools find ways toexercise that authority, even whenthey have to work around contractualrequirements and longstanding oper-ating habits. “Effective leaders used allavailable discretion and opportunityto hire the ‘right’ people,” researchersin Massachusetts found, “and maxi-mized staff effectiveness by placingthem in the right roles. This some-times meant pushing people out oftheir comfort zones.” (UMassDonahue Institute, 2007)

This is the intersection of the first twoof our three ‘C’s of effective turn-around, Changing Conditions andBuilding Capacity. The objection toproviding school and district leaderswith more authority over hiring, fir-ing, placement, responsibilities, andevaluation is usually that it will lead tounfair practices or to the school’s“managers” taking advantage of its“workers.” In fact, the HPHP schoolsdemonstrate exactly the oppositeeffects. A central finding of the UMassDonahue Institute study cited above,which studied matched pairs of high-and low-performing schools in thesame urban district, is fairly typical:“Teachers in higher performing

3.3 The Second C: Capacity to Conduct Effective TurnaroundUrgently needed: broader, deeper turnaround capacity at every corner of the system


CHANGING CONDITIONS

BUILDING CAPACITY


3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support3.2 Changing Conditions3.1 What Success Requires


schools frequently characterized theirprincipals as demanding, but also asextremely supportive of teachers whoare trying to meet those demands.There was a motivational aspect toprincipals’ support – a sense that theyshare a common commitment – andthis often equated to high morale andenergized staff within higher perform-ing schools.” Effective HR manage-ment is vastly more difficult than itshould be in most public schoolstoday. (The Education Partnership,2005-7) Changing the operating con-ditions to allow leaders to lead is thefirst step towards assembling theground-level capacity required to turnaround a failing school.

Redefining External PartnershipsAt a meeting of Massachusetts’ lead-ing school improvement serviceproviders a couple of years ago, MassInsight and about twenty other organ-izations were asked to pin cardsdescribing our initiatives onto sepa-rate posters representing the state’slargest school districts. This innocentexercise produced a fascinating (anddiscouraging) result. Many posterslooked like pincushions, and manyproviders – including Mass Insight –were taken aback at the number ofother providers who were hard atwork in their best partner districts.None of us had any real idea how

much “providing” was going on, andnowhere was there any degree ofcoordination among partners workingin the same district.

It is little wonder that teachersfamously say, as various streams ofreform and partner organizationsfloat overhead, “duck and cover – thistoo shall pass.” Where school cultureis weakest, in chronically under-per-forming schools, this syndrome isdeeply felt. In order for turnaroundschools to have a chance at success,their relationship with outside part-ners needs significant restructuring –and the pool and capacity of potentialturnaround partners needs to bewidened and deepened considerably.

That is the central idea behind Figure 3D: the reorganization of the current, highly fragmentedschool/partner model into a new one,for turnaround schools, that buildson the “systems-integrator” approachnow being used successfully in manyother sectors including business andhealthcare. In this model, lead turn-around partners take on the respon-sibility of integrating other providersinto a coherent whole. The currentmodel assumes that someone in theschool or district will accomplish thisintegration, but that appears to bemore 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 assystems integrator and coordinates the providers. The “New-World” model illustrated herealso reflects the greater capacity required for turnaround throughout the system: particularlyat 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


Lead partners can maximize thevalue that all outside providers bringto the task of turnaround.

The same logic applies to turnaroundschools’ need to build strong connec-tions with social services – the otherlarge-scale public investment in disad-vantaged communities, which toooften takes place without much if anyintegration with the schools. Throughsheer determination and the “resourceingenuity” element of our HPHPReadiness school model, effectiveprincipals in high-poverty settingsalready pursue these connections. Thekey is lowering the bar so that theseconnections happen without requir-ing exceptional leadership.

The final point to make regardingturnaround partners is connected tothe need for turnaround capacity-building throughout the system.There is exceedingly little capacity,currently, in the supply of outsideturnaround partners. Most statesseeking to apply outside expertise tounder-performing schools end up hir-ing recently retired educators as indi-vidual consultants, who then mostoften perform their responsibilitieswith very little training or coordina-tion with their fellow consultants, or,for that matter, results. There is animportant time consideration for

states in considering how they mightexpand provider capacity for turn-around – in effect, playing a role onthe demand-side to stimulate thedevelopment of higher-capacity turn-around organizations. Just as NCLBtriggered an enormous (and some-what chaotic) expansion of theprovider network for SupplementalEducation Services on behalf ofunder-performing students, so may it,soon, trigger dramatic expansion ofturnaround assistance for under-per-forming schools. That expansion,inevitably, will also be somewhatunmanaged and chaotic. But statescan maximize provider effectivenessthrough intentional, highly developedcollaborations with outside partnersand districts and an explicit strategyto expand provider capacity. Somedistricts – notably New York andChicago – are already showing theway in working with foundations andlocal organizations to expand outsidepartner capacity. It is not a role thatstates are familiar with, for the mostpart. But it is a vital one.

Building Turnaround Management CapacityDecades of research on schools hasfirmly established the central impor-tance of school leadership quality,

accounting by one prominent estimatefor 25% of differences in studentlearning. (Waters et al, 2003) Theimportance of leadership appears evengreater in a school requiring dramaticimprovement. American Institutes forResearch and SRI International’s eval-uation of the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation’s high-school reform ini-

tiative, for example, found that leader-ship was one of the key determinantsof 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 topmanagement. (Hoffman, 1989)

Capacity to Conduct Effective Turnaround(continued)

3.3 Building Capacity 3.4 Clustering for Support3.2 Changing Conditions3.1 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 attainmentof 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 developingand 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 fillingboth kinds of roles in different schools. See the Supplemental Report for more information.


Turnaround requires more than justgood leadership; it requires leadershipthat is adept at the particular challengeof turnaround. A wide range of researchsuggests that leaders who will be effective in efforts to achieve dramaticimprovement are likely to have characteristics that are very differentfrom those of typical school leaders andtake actions that diverge significantlyfrom those required in more stable lead-ership situations. (Kowal and Hassel,2005; Arkin and Kowal, 2005; see box)

Though the research is fairly clear onthis point, policy and practice have yetto apply it on any kind of scale. Somestates, major school districts, founda-tions, universities, and non-profitorganizations have put new energy intorecruiting and training new principalsfor urban schools. But very few pro-grams are specifically preparing leadersfor the challenge of school turnaround.The Virginia School TurnaroundSpecialist Program, created by the edu-cation and business schools at theUniversity of Virginia at the behest ofthen-governor Mark Warner, is oneexception. States making a commit-ment to turnaround will need toaddress this capacity gap at the statelevel, because few districts have theresources necessary to do it themselves.

Finding the Money for Turnaround Reforms significant enough to generatedramatic improvement in chronicallylow-performing schools will in mostcases require substantial investment offinancial resources. To the degree possi-ble, system leaders will want to find thisinvestment by reallocating existingresources first. As Harvard researcherRichard Elmore (2002) argued: “Theevidence is now substantial that there isconsiderable money available in mostdistrict budgets to finance large-scaleimprovement efforts that use profes-sional development effectively. Themoney is there. The problem is that it’salready spent on other things and it hasto be reallocated to focus on studentachievement… Adding money to a sys-tem that doesn’t know how to manageits own resources effectively means thatthe new money will be spent the sameway as the old money.” Miami-Dadepursued this strategy in funding its 39-school Improvement Zone in its firstyear (2004-2005), finding reportedlyclose to $1 million per school fromexisting line items in the budget (seethe profile in the Supplemental Report).

A reallocation-first strategy also exertsdiscipline on system and school lead-ers to focus initially on the highest-value-added changes. This kind offocus is one of the hallmarks of suc-cessful turnarounds across industries.

That said: the costs of school turn-around (including money for newstaff, incentive and responsibility-based compensation, new programmaterials, outside partner services andsupport, and especially additional timein the school day or year) range from$250,000 to a million dollars perschool, per year over three years, withdeclining investment in subsequentyears. (See the “Sample TurnaroundCosts” box in Part 5.) On strictly

financial terms, these investments aremore than justifiable. It’s probable thatsuccessful turnaround, viewed as apercentage increase of overall schoolspending, would more than pay foritself in terms of savings on social serv-ices and the increased productivity ofsuccessfully maturing students. Wedon’t know this for sure only becauseit hasn’t yet been done.

How Effective School Turnaround Leaders WorkFor 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 studentswithout 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 anddiscuss 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


Clustering for Support: Organizingturnaround for effectiveness andefficiency in school clusters by need,type, or region. Educators engagedin turnaround need particularlystrong support networks, locatedeither within their district or (inlow-capacity districts) across districtlines. These mini-district clusters,created in conjunction with districtleaders and turnaround partners,provide specialized support toschools engaging in turnaroundunder special operating conditionsestablished by the state.

Schools need networks. They needthem for reasons of both efficiency

and effectiveness. Regular publicschools, of course, have been organizedinto district networks for better than ahundred years. Even notoriously inde-pendent charter schools have begun toorganize networks of like-mindedschools, and charter managementorganizations are creating new schools

in clusters – witness KIPP Academies’recent announcement of its goal toopen a total of 42 schools in Houston.

Failing schools have been failed bytheir networks. By NCLB’s definition,schools in restructuring have failed tomeet their goals for at least six years.The presence of failing schools in adistrict does not necessarily mean thatthe district is incapable. (Boston, theBroad Prize winner for urban schooldistrict effectiveness in 2006, hasmore than two dozen schools inwhich more than half of the studentshave failed either English/LanguageArts or math over multiple years.)

But something needs to change, fairlydramatically, in order for schools thathave been failing for six years to turnaround. In our three ‘C’s model, wehave argued that the operating condi-tions need to change, and that variouscapacity challenges need to beaddressed. We are convinced thatanother, equally important part of theanswer lies in a third C: clustering forsupport. In other words: intentionallyorganizing for school turnaround atthe network level.

Clustering for EfficiencyAs Irving Hamer, the educator whocreated the 39-school Improvement

Zone in Miami-Dade underSuperintendent Rudy Crew, has con-tinually reminded us in his role as anadvisor on this project, turnaround “is

past the time for onesies and twosies.”The number of schools in need is toogreat – and the advantages of cluster-ing are too compelling.

Virtually all of the most far-reachingdistrict turnaround efforts underwaytoday are using some sort of clusterapproach. (See Attachment A and theSupplemental Report for profiles ofthe initiatives in Miami-Dade, NewYork, Chicago, and Philadelphia.) Theclustering is often tied together witheach district’s “portfolio” of interven-tion strategies, involving differentforms of school management: oneturnaround cluster being organized bythe teachers’ union, other clustersbeing managed by universities orother intermediary organization, andother clusters managed by a turn-around office within the district itself.

State intervention efforts, on the otherhand, appear to have largely refrained

from clustering. Many states offerstaff and leadership development pro-grams to selected high-need districtsand schools; many provide guidance

and change coaches to schools inRestructuring or Corrective Action.But few take a more managedapproach to creating networks ofschools along strategic lines: vertically(focusing on successful transitions forstudents from their elementarythrough their high school years), orhorizontally (by type – for example,urban middle schools or alternativehigh schools for at-risk students anddropouts). Organization of the workcan take several forms, as shown inFigure 3E:

• Cluster Example 1: across a largernumber of districts, each of whichhas just one or two chronicallyunder-performing schools, orwhere the state wants to encourageimplementation of particularschool models and approaches –for example, grade 6-12 academies.

3.4 The Third C: Clustering for SupportIt’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.


CHANGING CONDITIONS

BUILDING CAPACITY


3.4 Clustering for Support3.3 Building Capacity3.2 Changing Conditions3.1 What Success Requires


How Different Clusters Support the Work of Turnaround Differently

Clusters are small (5- to 20-school) reformnetworks organized with intention around acommon 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 supportin part around the nature of that attribute.

This graphic presents three possible clusters. Theycan be loosely grouped as “horizontal” (schoolsby type) or “vertical” (schools by feeder patterns).

• Cluster 1 (horizontal) could serve a set ofspecialty schools – grade 6-12 academies, mid-dle college schools, Montessori elementaries –across several districts

• Cluster 2 (horizontal) could serve middleschools in three continguous, small-city school districts

• Cluster 3 (vertical) could represent a specialturnaround “carve-out” or zone within a largeurban district, serving schools at all K-12 levelsand potentially following district feeder patterns

We could find no research that points to an opti-mum size for school clusters. New York City caps itsschool cohorts at 25. In the words of one advisorto this project: they should be large enough to bean enterprise, and small enough to be successful.

FIGURE 3E

3.4


• Cluster Example 2: two to fourdistricts, organized and supportedby the state, where combined turn-around work makes sense becauseof geographic proximity or becausethe work focuses on schools thatshare particular attributes.

• Cluster Example 3: within singledistricts conducting turnaround onbehalf of a cohort of under-per-forming schools (or multiplecohorts, in districts pursuing aportfolio of different approacheswith different governance and/ormanagement structures).

Clustering for EffectivenessEffective turnaround at scale requiresa transparent, deliberate blending of

“loose” and “tight” in implementa-tion and design. The loose/tightdynamic has come under some studyin recent years, most notably in areport funded by the Bill & MelindaGates Foundation and prepared byleaders from the foundation,NewSchools Venture Fund, and theBridgespan Group, a Boston-basednon-profit. (Colby et al, 2005)“Loose” refers to latitude in manage-ment or design, with decisions beingmade out in the field; “tight” in thiscontext means more centralized con-trol. Questions of looseness andtightness can be applied across thefull range of school management anddesign dimensions (see Figure 3F) –as, in fact, they always are by districts

on behalf of their schools, in quiteoften a fairly constant source of orga-nizational tension.

The loose/tight dynamic deservesmuch deeper study, as it is a linchpinof reform across clusters of schools.There is no one right “blend” that willserve every circumstance; higher-capacity schools and districts deserveand sometimes even get broader lati-tude (or looseness) to make their owndecisions, while clusters of somekinds of schools – new 6-12 acade-mies, for example – might insist ontighter control while implementing anew model.

Applying the loose/tight dynamic inthe turnaround context presents an

immediate contradiction in terms.The changes in operating conditionsoutlined earlier in this report are nec-essary to allow the people closest tothe work to have a strong say in howit is done. The HPHP schools vividlydemonstrate the importance ofschool-based decision-making author-ity and school-wide commitment toreform. But leaving all decision-mak-ing authority up to the schools – as inthe charter model – makes little sensein a turnaround context. Turnaroundrequires a careful balance that doesn’tundercut the power of site-based deci-sion-making but provides strong sup-port, backed by shared authority, forthe work from the cluster-networkprovider 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 conductingexperiments 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 generallytightly managed cluster might look like this, in extremely simplified form.

Overall Design & Approach Curriculum

Recruiting/ Hiring

StaffDevelopment /Evaluation Budgeting Scheduling

PerformanceAssessment

Back-OfficeServices

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 Support3.3 Building Capacity3.2 Changing Conditions3.1 What Success Requires

FIGURE 3F

"What's gone around has come around. After a decade or so spentlargely on setting academic standards against which to holdschools accountable, states are themselves being held accountablefor 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 LevelFor Turnaround of Under-Performing SchoolsTowards a framework that offers good support for good design

How can states most effectivelyorganize a school turnaround

initiative that reflects everything wehave learned about what works – andwhat doesn’t?

That is the central question of thisreport, and the focus of Part 4.

The graphic for the proposed “New-World” turnaround framework thathas emerged from our research, shownat right, is where we will end up. Onthe way there, we will discuss elementsin the framework that have less to dowith the business of turnaround (that’saddressed by the three ‘C’s) in Part 3,and more to do with the business ofplanning, launching, and managing astatewide initiative campaign.

For that is what’s needed to tackle thechallenge posed by failing schools: aninitiative that looks less like compli-ance with state and federal accounta-bility mandates, and more like aninclusive, high-visibility, entrepre-neurial partnership aimed at solvingan urgent public dilemma.

The Current Landscape of State-Led InitiativesProfiles of ten representative stateintervention efforts appear in the

Supplement to this report. In each stateinitiative, there are elements of prom-ise. But none of the states we looked at(which have all been at the forefront ofthis issue, in one way or another) hadbeen able to marshal the broad leader-ship commitment, sustained publicinvestment, and comprehensiveness ofstrategy required to bring about effec-tive turnaround at the scale of the need.

Generally, with some caveats forprogress being made in some states,current state intervention initiativesappear to lack:

• Sufficient intensity, comprehensive-ness, and sustainability. We saw lit-tle state engagement in changingoperating conditions within turn-around schools; little attention tohelping schools develop an overallpeople strategy, as opposed to provid-ing limited forms of staff develop-ment; little clustering of schools withsimilar attributes or turnaroundstrategies; insufficient engagement inbuilding, statewide, capacity for turn-around management both insideschools and districts and amongturnaround partners; and only limit-ed connections between school-level

turnaround efforts and parallel efforts toimprove struggling districts.

• Incentives powerful enough todrive major change. We saw fewstates establishing clear, aggressiveperformance targets for restructur-ing schools that carried equally clearterminal consequences; and far toolittle emphasis on positive incen-tives that can motivate buy-in tomore fundamental kinds of reform.

• Strong public and private sectorcommitment to turnaround. Wesaw individuals (the occasional gov-ernor, commissioner, or state boardchair) or state policymaking bodiestaking the lead in advocating forturnaround, but not many signals ofthe kind of public/private consensusthat has produced real impact inother areas of school reform, suchas higher standards. In a few states,courts are playing a role in focusingattention to the issue, but business,community groups, and universitieshave for the most part not beendeeply engaged.

• Willingness to think outside ofthe box regarding managementof the initiative. With a couple ofexceptions, school intervention

Part 4 examines:

4.1 Organizing at the State Levelfor Turnaround of Under-performing SchoolsTowards a framework that providesadequate support for good design

4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School InterventionNCLB has forced the issue,but has not catalyzed an adequate response

4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not EnoughA state turnaround initiativerequires entrepreneurial manage-ment and broad coalition-building

P A R T 4

56 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact 4.3 State Turnaround Management4.1 Organizing at the State Level

initiatives primarily have beenorganized and operated throughthe most traditional channel, mean-ing the accountability or technicalservice wing of the state educationagency. Virginia and Alabama aretwo states that have tried (in verydifferent ways; see SupplementalReport) to address the turnaroundchallenge with a different kind ofmanagement approach.

The Way ForwardMuch of this is understandable, giventhe nascent nature of accountability-driven school turnaround. It is only inthe past couple of years that under-performing schools have begun hit-ting No Child Left Behind’s mostextreme categories – CorrectiveAction or Restructuring. But there is agrowing recognition in the states westudied that 2007 and 2008 are water-shed years for state responsiveness onthis issue. The dimensions and com-plexity of the challenge are clearenough, and so now is the urgency asmore and more schools move intoeach state’s category for the most dra-matic forms of intervention.

Can it be done? We are convinced thatit can – if states approach the chal-lenge with commitment and inven-

tiveness. The framework we presentin this section of the report encom-passes, at the tactical level, the three‘C’s discussed in Part 3. But it alsoincludes two other elements webelieve are fundamental to success:

• Statewide and community coali-tion-building: Creating a con-stituency and leadership consensusfor turnaround that is strongenough to sustain the effort andretain a focus on what works forstudents, more so than adults.

• Freedom and authority to managethe initiative creatively: Providingthe same degree of operatingauthority to the statewide manage-ment of the initiative that theframework insists school turn-around leaders need – perhapsthrough the creation of new kindof coordinating agency.

These elements are explored in Part4.3 and in the proposed frameworkthat follows. First, in Part 4.2, we dis-cuss the state policymaking context inwhich this – or any – kind of turn-around framework would be imple-mented, one shaped more than any-thing else by the impact of No ChildLeft Behind.

Can it be done? We are convinced that it can – if statesapproach 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 buildingof statewide and community coalitions necessary to sustain support;and providing for effective coordination of the initiative.


Preview of the ProposedState Framework for School Turnaround

FIGURE 4A

4.1


T he federal No Child Left BehindAct has brought accountability to

public education, as its framershoped. A critical element of that newemphasis on accountability is thelaw’s provisions for schools that fail tomeet their achievement targets. Theurgency produced by solid, unar-guable performance data identifyingstruggling schools, coupled with a setof mandated, escalating interventionstrategies, was supposed to usher in anew “no-excuses” era of state-driventurnaround in our most chronicallyunder-performing schools.

That’s not the way it has turned out.At least: not yet.

NCLB’s unfulfilled impact on schoolturnaround is a classic example ofunintended consequences. Threeaspects of the law, in particular, haveproduced responses at the state andlocal levels that are different fromwhat supporters of the legislationwere undoubtedly envisioning. Theyrelate to the timing and sequencing ofNCLB’s consequences for underper-formance; the nature of the interven-tion options presented by the law; andthe scale of the schools headingthrough the accountability pipeline.(A fourth aspect – the lack of targetedfunding for the more intensive forms

of intervention – has more to do withpolitics and budget-making than withpolicy design, and may improve withNCLB’s forthcoming reauthorization.

Seven Years to ActionFigure 4B shows the sequence andtimeline for the steps required ofunder-performing schools underNCLB. The steps provide for a gradu-ally escalating series of measuresdesigned to improve strugglingschools, serve currently enrolled stu-dents with additional help, and offerthem the opportunity to switch to adifferent (presumably better) school.

Some aspects of the steps in years 3-5 ofthe series have come under scrutiny forfailing to produce desired results,including the Supplemental EducationalServices programs and the schoolchoice provisions. But our principalfocus here is on the “final step” –NCLB’s provisions for schools that havefailed to improve despite the interven-tions set in place by interim steps.

On paper, the escalating conse-quences for under-performing schoolsmight seem logical and appropriate.In practice, though, a chronically fail-ing middle school could pass twocomplete generations of studentsthrough grades 6-8 before NCLB’s

most intensive forms of interventionare introduced. While those studentsare muddling their way through theiryears at the school – developing nei-ther the skills nor the knowledgerequired to succeed in high school –the school undergoes, in most states,

an extensive series of reviews andlight-touch forms of planning assis-tance that have little significantimpact. The “Call to Action” chart onpage 7 provides a vivid portrait ofpolicy “fiddling” while studentachievement lags.

4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact on School InterventionNCLB has forced the issue, but has not catalyzed an adequate response

The NCLB Intervention Timeline: Seven Years to Intensive InterventionFIGURE 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 studentsImprovement (Year One) Develop and implement improvement plan

4 In Need of Continue choice Improvement (Year Two) Supplemental educational services (SES)

to low-income childrenDevelop and implement improvement plan

5 In Need of Continue choice Corrective Action Continue SES

Implement corrective action plan (may includereplacing 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 SESImplement 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 Management4.1 Organizing at the State Level


This is the first installment in our Intervention Taxonomy, designed to help clarify school-intervention’sterms 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 foldertabs 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 isanother option, though, being undertaken by some districts – most notably Chicago, under itsRenaissance 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 ChangeTAXONOMY 1

FIGURE 4C

For a brief explanation of the NCLB Restructuring options, see box on the following page.

4.2


The “Other” RestructuringCategory: Taking the Easy Way OutThe box on this page spells out thefive options for restructuring thatNCLB requires of schools enteringtheir sixth consecutive year of under-performance (defined as not makingAdequate Yearly Progress, their annu-al achievement target). The optionsalso appear on the Intervention

Taxonomy 1 and 2 charts on pages 59and 61. Three of the options involvemanagement change; the schoolwould be turned into a charter school,or taken over by the state, or assignedto an independent contractor. Oneoption, widely referred to as reconsti-tution, calls for the replacement ofschool staff and (potentially) leader-ship; and the fifth option provides forthe implementation of “any othermajor restructuring of the school’sgovernance arrangement that makesfundamental reforms.”

This fifth option, which we callRevision on our Taxonomy charts,has achieved a degree of notorietyover the past several years as moreand more schools have movedthrough NCLB’s intervention steps. Ahost of policy studies produced by theCenter for Education Policy and othergroups has shown the extremepropensity of schools in restructuring(or their district leaders) to choosethis “wild card” option – the leastintrusive, by far, among the five. Outof 200 Chicago public schools thathad entered the restructuring plan-ning phase in 2005, for example, 195chose this option. (See Figure 4D.) InCalifornia, 76% of schools in restruc-turing in 2005 had chosen the option(see Taxonomy 2, facing page).

The fifth NCLB option, manyresearchers suggest, has been usedessentially to extend the reliance uponincremental strategies common in theearlier stages of NCLB intervention –new curricular programs or additionalstaff 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 teachingand learning, in other words, hasmost often stayed comfortably withinthe realm of incremental reform. Weexamine these strategies more closelyin 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 NCLBSchools in restructuring under No Child Left Behind (see sequence, page 58) mustundertake 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 educationalagency, if permitted under State law and agreed to by the State”

Revision: Engage in another form of major restructuring that involves fundamentalreforms, 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 ChooseIncremental 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 schoolsin Chicago in NCLB-mandated planning for restructuringor in restructuring itself. The state allows only four of thefive NCLB options for restructuring: chartering, reconsti-tuting staff and principal, contracting, and the fifth “anyother major restructuring” category. Illinois does notallow for a school to be turned over to the state. Ofthose schools, none chose to charter, 1 replaced the staffand principal, 4 replaced only the principal, none choseto contract, and 195 chose “other major restructuring.”

195 Schools choosing“any other major

restructuring”


FIGURE 4D


This chart, adapted from one that appears in the Winter 2007 issue of Education Next (“The EasyWay 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 schoolsin 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 involvechanges in management or governance, or that fundamentally alter operating conditions (authorityover staff, time, and money). California data 2005-6 and Michigan data 2004-5 are from the Centeron Education Policy 2005 , as cited in Mead.

Schools’ Response to NCLB’s Options: The Less Change, the BetterTAXONOMY 2

FIGURE 4E

4.2


The Scale Problem: Too ManySchools in the PipelineNCLB has had another unintendedeffect on turnaround design, particu-larly in states that already had devel-oped intervention efforts as part oftheir own standards and schoolaccountability systems. To begin with,NCLB’s mandates (and the federal

government’s unwillingness to beflexible about compliance, in the yearsafter the law was passed) createdanother layer of regulations, labels,timelines, and consequences forunderperformance in states that had

already created their own system.Trying to ascertain exactly what eachstate is doing in the area of schoolrestructuring is a challenging exercisein itself; some states appear to havecreated parallel school accountabilityplans (one of their own design, onedesigned for compliance with NCLB),while others have tried to merge the

two, with sometimes conflictingresults. One California policymakerlast year counted five separateaccountability systems in place atonce in that state, creating confusionat every level.

But, even more discouraging: in somestates, NCLB has propelled so manyschools through the accountabilitypipeline that policymakers – wary ofpromising a level of intervention farbeyond what their current budgetscould possibly support – have begun

watering down restructuring plans,severely curtailing the degree andduration of state intervention support.(See Figure 4F, opposite.) California isperhaps the most visible example ofthis trend; its extensive, thoroughly-

considered intervention plan of sever-al years ago has more recently (in theface of the now more than 700 schoolsstatewide facing restructuring)become a pale imitation of its formerself. (See the Supplemental Report formore information on California andother states.)

NCLB, one could argue, cannot beheld to blame for the rising tide ofschools entering restructuring – thatwould be akin to holding the weight-scale responsible for the ten poundsgained over the holidays. But largenumbers of schools are movingthrough that accountability pipelinebecause they are not making AYP onbehalf of a student subgroup –English Language Learners (ELL), forexample, or Special Education stu-dents or one or more demographicgroups. While these schools clearlycan use some help in serving the stu-dent subgroups in question, in somestates they may be overloading theaccountability and intervention sys-tem, with the result that the truly dys-functional, under-performing schoolsdon’t receive the more fundamentalrestructuring 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 schoolsbegin to undertake restructuring activities, the effectiveness and viability of Arizona’s team-based and aggressive approach to centralizingschool 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 ofscale, California has changed course dramatically, adopting an approach to NCLB restructuring that focuses heavily on local control ofschool turnaround efforts. In fact, California does not require approval of restructuring plans and primarily provides technical assistanceto 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 privaterestructuring programs. One official indicated her belief that the system was slowly moving toward a scenario in which all Hawaii schoolswould enter the restructuring phase….

Note: These are excerpts from state profiles included in the Supplementary Report. See that report for more.



From upper-right to lower-left: the mag-nitude of the turnaround challenge isforcing states to weaken the anticipat-ed state role. This chart places selectedstate plans for restructuring, based on pub-licly available information, within a nine-cellgrid. State plans that are in the lower leftcell specify a minimal state role, both interms of restructuring design (the Y axis)and in terms of involvement in implementa-tion (the X axis). State plans that are in theupper right cell, on the other hand, call for amuch more significant state role.

States’ original restructuring plans forunder-performing schools were in manycases more “interventionist” than they havebecome in recent years – since the passageof NCLB and the burgeoning number ofschools entering the restructuring pipeline.That migration towards a limited state roleis reflected by the arrows in this chart,showing states that appear to have movedfrom the center and upper right downtowards the lower left.

Two caveats. The chart is somewhat subjec-tive, as many state plans call for a range ofintervention options and roles that couldplace them in multiple cells; we have placedthese states as accurately as we could, as ofthe winter of 2006-7. Secondly: this chartdepicts state plans for restructuring, and inmany cases there is some distance betweenthe plans and the subsequent follow-through. States were selected because theyappeared to be broadly representative ofvarious types of approaches to restructuring,discussed in Appendix A of the report and indetail in the Supplementary Report.

NCLB’s Impact on State Planning for Intervention: Diminished State Roles in Design and Implementation

FIGURE 4F

4.2


4.3 Proactive Policymaking Is Not EnoughA state turnaround initiative requires entrepreneurial management and broad coalition-building

4.3 State Turnaround Management4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact4.1 Organizing at the State Level

State leaders eager to create a moreeffective initiative to turn around

failing schools will find, as we did,guidance on what turnaround mightlook like at the ground level, based inpart on the strategies of high-per-forming, high-poverty schools. Andthey’ll find an emerging research baseon the impact – or more accurately,the lack of impact – of most stateintervention efforts to date on chroni-cally under-performing schools.

They won’t find much guidance at allon two aspects of the work we viewas critical to the success of any seri-ous state-led effort to turn aroundfailing schools:

• The need to free up state govern-ment’s management of the turn-around initiative from typicalpublic-agency constraints; and

• The need to build coalitions ofleadership support for turnaroundat the state and local levels.

The first is required to provide thestate (and districts) with the sameoperating flexibility to manage schoolturnaround as that which schoolsneed in order to implement it success-fully on the ground. The second isrequired in order to create a con-

stituency for turnaround that isstrong enough to upset the status quo– and sustain sizable and continuingstate investment.

Freeing Up State Government toLead Turnaround EffectivelyPolicymakers often chafe (often jus-tifiably) when business principles areapplied to the affairs of state. So dopublic school educators. Discussionsquickly devolve into argumentsabout why producing successful stu-dents is different from producingsuccessful widgets.

At the classroom level, the differencesmay be important. But at the level ofmanaging and implementing change atscale, the differences remain relevantonly if one assumes that education can-not conduct its business any differentlyfrom the ways it always has. Businesshas learned, far better than education,how change happens and what pre-vents it from happening. When a fail-ing IBM sought to reinvent its businessmodel in the 1970s, it did so by identi-fying change agents and separatingthem from the structures and culturethat had brought the company to itsknees. The unit that produced the IBMPC was a “skunkworks” lab based inBoca Raton – far from company head-

quarters in Armonk, NY. The businessliterature, from Tom Peters (In Searchof Excellence, 1988) to Jim Collins(From Good to Great, 2001), is rife withexamples of companies that under-stood how to successfully incubate fun-damental change. Public policymakingand the implementation of new policy,for the most part, have been slow toincorporate these lessons.

State education agencies are thedefault managers for any turnaroundinitiative. But they are in many waysill-suited to conduct a dramatic-change strategy by using their cus-

tomary structures and approaches –just as IBM was ill-suited to redevelopits own business model from within.Restraints over hiring, salaries, andauthority in state agencies, coupledwith similar restraints over how workis conducted in schools, have con-spired to make it difficult for educa-tion policy and practice to duplicatebusiness’s occasional success at rein-venting itself.

What would a different model looklike? There is precedent in theapproach that some states have takenin creating public-private, semi-autonomous authorities to undertakeimportant public initiatives, includinginfrastructure improvements andtransportation management. A turn-around “authority” might well be con-nected with a state education agencyand its commissioner – but be grantedsufficient operating flexibility to beable to work effectively with turn-around schools implementing funda-mental change strategies. It would not

become a bureaucracy itself, with alarge staff of service providers, butwould take on the role of coordinatingthe central state functions in turn-around as defined in the proposedframework that begins on page 69:particularly, establishing and imple-menting the condition-changing crite-ria for turnaround design, and sup-porting the development of turnaroundleadership capacity among educatorsand turnaround partner organizations.

Like school leaders working on the ground, turnaround’sstatewide implementers need to be freed to do theirbest work.


As with the thinking behind the exist-ing public authorities, an agency tocoordinate a state turnaround initia-tive should be able to recruit the verybest leadership possible, and providethem with the tools and latitude nec-essary to complete an important pub-lic-service priority. The directors ofstate initiatives we spoke with whileproducing this report tended to feelthat their hands were somewhat tiedbehind their back. Like school leadersworking on the ground, turnaround’sstatewide implementers need to befreed to do their best work.

Building Leadership Coalitions of Turnaround SupportBeyond questions of state turnaroundmanagement is the matter of leader-ship commitment, at both the stateand local levels. Failing schools haveno natural constituency. They tend tobe situated in higher-poverty neigh-borhoods and communities that havefallen into a continuous cycle of lowexpectations. Low test scores do not,as they might in more affluent com-munities, spark activism from parents.There is little ground-level demand forstate or district intervention in strug-gling schools. What demand there is,comes from state policymakers moni-toring the economic and racialachievement 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 toinitiate and sustain strong state investment in intervention must be generated by statewide and local leaders whoare 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 CHALLENGE4.3 State Turnaround Management4.2 NCLB’s Mixed Impact4.1 Organizing at the State Level

Proactive Policymaking(continued)

revitalize communities throughimproved public education; and busi-ness leaders concerned about localeconomies, skill levels in their recruit-ment pools, or the social costs ofdropouts and unemployable highschool graduates.

There is logical precedent here; thesepotential supporters are the same coali-tion partners that, in many states(Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland,Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, andFlorida, to name just a few) champi-oned the cause of standards-basedreform, even before the federal govern-ment got into the act with No ChildLeft Behind. In Massachusetts, businessleadership along with rare bipartisanconsensus in the state’s legislative andexecutive branches led to theCommonwealth’s successful imple-mentation of an ambitious high schoolgraduation requirement in 2003. Theeffort received a vital boost from the

state’s urban superintendents, whosepublic support for the requirement andfor higher-standards reform (organizedin part by Mass Insight’s Great SchoolsCampaign) provided the “air cover”that policymakers needed to maintaintheir commitment during the years of

controversy before the requirement wasimplemented – and since.1

Figure 4G shows the roster of potentialactors in a statewide coalition to advo-cate for turnaround of failing schools.Proponents of a more proactive turn-around initiative need to consider theagendas 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 thekey instigators required to even geta coalition off the ground.

Urban superintendents’ public support for Massachusetts’graduation requirement provided the “air cover” thatpolicymakers needed to maintain their commitment during the years of controversy before the requirementwas implemented – and since.

Preparing a “Manifesto” for TurnaroundDrawn 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 whyturnaround is necessary, right now.

2. Speak to timeless human needs and aspirations: Here’s why you shouldcare about failing schools and the students they serve.

3. Draw clear implications for action: Here’s where the need suggests thatwe start.

4. Elicit support: Here’s how you can contribute.

5. Search for “data bombs”: Find memorable local statistics on failingschools that are strong enough to illustrate the need, and simple enoughto 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 focusenergy and resources on first?

11. Sometimes you need a stick: Identifying a bad outcome from status-quoapproaches can provide urgency and incentive.

1The 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 wascompleted in 2003-4. See www.massinsight.org for more information.

FIGURE 4H


• Conditional supporters: Statewidepolitical leaders including the gov-ernor, state board chair, chief stateschool officer, and legislative lead-ers; and local leaders, depending onwhether and how their communi-ties would benefit (or not) under aproposed state turnaround initia-tive. Support from this grouprequires a merging of multiple self-interested agendas.

• Potential opponents: The mostobvious candidates here are localschool boards and teacher unions,both caught up in concerns aboutlosing authority. But in fact, majorschool districts such as Chicago,Miami-Dade, Philadelphia, andBoston have demonstrated the fea-sibility of partnering with theirunion locals (with support fromschool boards) over turnaroundinitiatives focused on their moststruggling schools. Massachusetts’Commonwealth Pilot Schools ini-tiative (see Appendix A) wasdesigned in large part to encouragelocal collaboration around a major-change turnaround strategy, andwas modeled on a ten-year-oldagreement between the BostonPublic Schools and the district’sAmerican Federation of Teachersunion 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 willever show up in their communities.Perhaps most importantly, legislatorsand advocates for other investmenttargets (within the realm of educationreform or not) will oppose sizableincreases in public funding for under-performing schools, usually on thegrounds that the state money they’realready receiving is being ill-spent.

How to Start an InsurrectionInsurrection is an incendiary term notoften heard in public policy circles.But in his influential book, Leading theRevolution, researcher and businessstrategist Gary Hamel (2000) providesa blueprint for engineering dramatic

change that turnaround advocateswould do well to review. The “mani-festo” he describes (see box) as alaunchpad for “starting an insurrec-tion” within a corporation could servejust as well as an 11-point guide forbuilding the case for turnaround.Other relevant advice for coalition-builders and statewide turnaround

strategists from his book, which isbased on research into business turn-arounds and grassroots movements:

• Win small, win early, win often.In turnaround terms: Don’t try toaddress every failing school atonce. Choose to work intensivelywith a manageable group ofschools, districts, and clusters;establish some success first, andthen expand from there.

• Co-opt and neutralize. In the con-text of turnaround, this is true atthe tactical level, in schools, and atthe strategic and policy levels aswell. At both levels, in general,turnaround cannot succeed andendure without broad engagementand buy-in. “Researchers agree thatreform 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.’” (Cohenand Ginsburg, 2001) The key togaining buy-in at both levels isestablishing, at the outset, consen-sus that in these bottom-five-per-

cent schools, the status quo has notworked and urgently needs to bechanged. Important elements in theproposed turnaround frameworkbeginning on page 70 address thisissue of buy-in.

• Find a translator. The work ofturnaround is extraordinarily com-plex. Yet its basic principles – andthe needs among failing schoolsthat drive them – must be madeclearly and memorably to decision-makers and practitioners alike.Hamel describes the need for a“translator” to serve as a bridgebetween the strategists who areimmersed in the work and every-one else.

Coalition-building, as should be clearfrom the discussion above, needs tohappen at two levels – statewide andcommunity. Statewide leadership con-sensus can bring about productive pol-icymaking and investment, but suc-cessful, sustained implementation onthe ground requires support from edu-cators, municipal leaders, parents, andstudents. How the state can catalyzethat support, while requiring a level ofchange that upsets the status quo, isthe balancing act that lies at the centerof 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 unansweredquestions, 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.

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A Framework for Turnaround of Under-Performing SchoolsThis suggested framework for a state initiative to turn around chronically

under-performing schools draws from the findings and conclusions reachedby 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 overthe past ten years. The ten elements in the framework represent both a summaryof 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 serieson page 75. The research suggests avenues for turnaround that NCLB does not, atpresent, clearly and actively support. In particular: the turnaround strategy welabel “Superintendent’s Schools” in this chart reflects the thinking behind thestatewide 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 havebeen drawn from several state intervention efforts – chiefly Massachusetts and some-what from Florida, Maryland, and several of the other states profiled in theSupplemental Report – and from districts with pioneering intervention programsunderway, including Chicago, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia.

The political landscape, social/economic circumstances, and education reformexperience and structures of every state will make development of this kind of ini-tiative uniquely challenging. The proposed framework is an ambitious one. Butwe believe that commitment, organization, and inventiveness on this scale is whatthe research clearly suggests is required for any state that is serious about turningaround its most under-performing schools. The framework is intended – like theentire report – to jumpstart informed discussion and action around the vitalimportance of school turnaround, the opportunity it represents to bring aboutfundamental 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 toturn around the most chronically under-performing public schools.

Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive turnaround involve?SYSTEM REDESIGN: Changing the Whole School1. 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 Act3. 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 Programs4. 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 Change6. 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 aneffective, state-led turnaround initiative?STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS: The Necessary Leadership Consensus9. 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 Challenge10. The state must free itself to be able to undertake this work.

P A R T 5

70 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGEIntroduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State Role

SYSTEM REDESIGN: Changing the Whole School

1Turnaround is a dramatic, multi-dimensional changeprocess at a chronically under-performing school.Turnaround is understood to be distinct from school

improvement because it: a) focuses only on the most consistentlyunder-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 – areunlikely to produce the desired result. Turnaround is the inte-grated, comprehensive combination of fundamental changes inprogram, people, conditions, and (sometimes, but not necessari-ly) management and governance required to interrupt the statusquo 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 involvesmuch more than “fixing” organizational dysfunction; it requiresintensive tuning of strategy and culture to address learningdeficits, behavioral challenges, and the effects of environmentaldeprivation. This is (in part) turnaround’s larger role: providingexemplar strategies for the significantly increasing numbers ofhigh-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 programsto 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 Challengeand other sources. High-performing, high-poverty schools andpromising 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 interventionto much more dramatic changes that will turn failing schools intomodels for reform statewide.

Emphasis: on positive change, rather than negative labeling.s

ss

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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 thestatus quo and put a school on a new track towards high performance.

Defining the Approach: What does effective, comprehensive turnaround involve?


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2 Successful school turnaround produces significantimprovement in student achievement over a compressedtime 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 beseen 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 takeroot – in particular, providing for sufficient authority to allocatecritical resources (people, time, money) to support a turnaroundplan staked to the research-based practices of high-performing,high-poverty (HPHP) schools. It provides for placing people withthe right skills in the most critical positions: leadership withexpertise in school turnaround and teachers drawn to working inhigh-challenge (but high-reward) environments, all as part of aninnovative, highly collaborative reform initiative and a dynamicschool design. Reaching district performance averages in this firstphase – 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.


State turnaround initiative sets a specific, ambitious, but reasonable and understandable goal for significant achievementgains 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 extremeunder-performance criteria to become turnaround schools (i.e.: schools with undeniably, indefensibly poor achievementrecords over multiple years). The initiative invites less severelyunder-performing schools to volunteer into the program as ameans 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 aredenied; those schools are declared chronically under-performingand are subject to management and governance change asdirected by the state.

Emphasis: This is the last chance, over two years, for currentmanagers (district, teachers union) – with assistance from thestate and an external turnaround partner – to show they canproduce significant results.

ss

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s

Turnaround can be seen as a two-phase process, each phase requiring different (thoughcomplementary) elements and skill sets.


A Framework (continued)

Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State RoleIntroduction to the Framework

The Three ‘C’ Strategies: How can the statecatalyze effective turnaround at scale?

CHANGING CONDITIONS: The Authority to Act

3 Effective turnaround relies on widely-recognized programreform elements (curricular improvement and alignmentwith 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 forimproved achievement. The state can play a crucial role inenabling these conditions in turnaround schools.

• People: Flexibility to put people with the right skills in thebest 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 ofadults. 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 onlearning for students – in conjunction with other reforms.More time, by itself, is not a silver bullet, but it appears to be acritically important supporting element in schools that success-fully serve disadvantaged students. This expansion includes anextended school day and an extended school year. Additionaltime is similarly required for staff – for adequate professionaldevelopment and for common planning. Control over schedul-ing (double-block periods, special enrichment/remediationperiods, or more far-reaching options) is critical as well.

• Money: Authority to analyze current resources and allocatethem to budget lines that directly support the turnaround

plan. Turnaround design must include a willingness to makedifficult choices between competing priorities. There must berecognition, in addition, that comprehensive turnaround isexpensive. In particular, additional time and additional (oftenhigher-capacity) staff cost money. Estimates for the cost ofsuccessful turnaround run from $250,000 to $1 million annu-ally for three years (see box, page 79).

• Program: Authority to adapt and implement research-basedstrategies shown to be effective with the high-poverty, high-challenge students who attend most chronically under-per-forming schools. Leaders at HPHP schools and turnaroundexemplars say this flexibility over program approaches isimportant for several reasons: matching services with studentneeds and local circumstances, prioritizing scarce resourcesand time, and building staff buy-in around a vision for theschool. Turnaround school leaders need program flexibilitywithin a larger framework of district-wide consistency (wherestudent 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 acrossa network of schools rather than by individual school teams).

Gaining flexible control over the application of resources – andusing 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 changingprograms and providing help (i.e., planning assistance, training,and all forms of coaching). Chronically under-performingschools 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 addressthe conditions in which instructional reform is applied. Someschool districts (New York, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Philadelphia)already have moved in this direction.

©2007 MASS INSIGHT

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To ensure broad access to conditions supportive of effectiveturnaround, however, state governments and education agencieswill need to play the crucial role. They can do so by establishing(as Arizona, Florida, and Massachusetts have done) criteria forturnaround 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 tocharter school managers. By creating a statewide turnaroundspace with rigorous design criteria (such as Massachusetts’ first“enabling condition” – granting principals authority over staffwithout regard to seniority), state governments can clear asideroadblocks to reform and produce an intervention zone thateducation leaders actively want to join, instead of avoid.


State initiative codifies, in regulations, protected space forlocal “turnaround zones” that a) set requirements for schoolsimplementing turnaround; b) provide assistance, models, andcontract language for districts and unions to use in creatingnecessary waivers to collective bargaining rules; and c) provideother forms of assistance for turnaround as detailed elsewherein this framework.

Turnaround requirements define the elements identified by thestate as essential for effective, comprehensive turnaround. Theyspecify 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 elementsdeemed vital to the turnaround process, i.e., additional time forlearning and common planning time for teachers. (See box for onereal-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 ExampleThese 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 submitrestructuring 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 topartially implement the plan. But the approach and language can serve as a potential model for otherstates – 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 regardto seniority;

2) The school’s principal has control over financial resources necessary to successfully implement theschool 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 Englishlanguage 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 usesthose 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/readingand for mathematics, who are responsible to provide faculty at the school with consistent classroomobservation 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 contentknowledge 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 perweek 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



The Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State RoleDefining the ApproachIntroduction to the Framework

©2007 MASS INSIGHT

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 morecomplete set of turnaround options than simply the current five presented by NCLB. Twooptions (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 – includingchanges in operating conditions and incentives – initiated by the district (i.e., withoutmanagement or governance change). This option is unproven, but would appear to supportthe 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 transformingexisting schools or through a close-and-reopen “fresh start” strategy.

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BUILDING CAPACITY: People Before Programs

4Maximizing leadership and staff capacity is the mostimportant element in success – and the state’s mostimportant role. The task is multi-dimensional: creating

conditions that enable people to do their best work; leadingrecruiting, 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-needpositions in the schools. Developing the highly skilled principalsand teachers needed in turnaround schools adds another dimen-sion to this crucial state role. Most importantly: turnaroundrequires an infusion of specialized new leadership capacity. Theemerging research on high-performing, high-poverty schoolsand 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 turnaroundclearly requires a special skill set in education (as it does in other

fields). Most school districts, except for perhaps the largest 100or so, do not have the resources themselves to develop high-capacity school leadership – much less a specialized subset ofprincipals with expertise in turnaround – so it must be a respon-

sibility of the state, working with outside partners includinghigher education, foundations, and non-profits (such as NewLeaders for New Schools). The state must also address the needfor capacity development among high-impact positions inschools (e.g., coaches, lead teachers, and performance assessmentspecialists); among outside providers of turnaround and relatedservices; and among local policymakers including school boardmembers. This is not to imply a vast increase in state educationagency bureaucracy; the key is to build on the contracting andpartnering that SEAs are already doing, focusing on expandingcapacity 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 ofthe incentive structures that govern behavior in public schools.At the district, school, and student levels, during and long afterturnaround work is completed, the incentives and operatingconditions must drive a continuous focus on improved studentachievement. To be successful, turnaround initiatives must drawhigh-capacity educators and partners and must elicit the bestwork possible from staff who continue on at the school. Positiveincentives for different stakeholders in the system includechanges 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 oflocal union leaders, potential loss of union membership).

Most school districts... do not have theresources themselves to develop high-capacityschool leadership – much less a specialized subset of principals with expertise in turnaround– so it must be a responsibility of the state.

76 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGEThe Three ‘C’ Strategies Organizing the State RoleDefining the ApproachIntroduction to the Framework


State initiative’s requirements for turnaround design allow turn-around leaders much greater authority to shape school staff,through recruitment, hiring, firing, placement, development, anddifferentiated compensation.

State turnaround initiative is promoted nationally and in-state toposition 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 incurriculum mapping, data analysis, remediation, staff and leader-ship development, and social service connections, giving schoolsin 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 indirect 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 INSIGHT

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Building the Framework: The Three ‘C’ Levers of Fundamental Change

5

5 Fragmented, episodic assistance from outside partnersmust 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 separatereform programs and partners, with little or no integration hap-pening to form a coherent whole. That is due partly to fundingstreams that operate in separate “silos”; partly to schools’ (anddistricts’) habit of pursuing projects instead of sustained, inte-grated reform; and partly to organizational dysfunction. Theremost often is no one within a school’s leadership structure whosejob is to align its myriad partners – except the principal, wholacks the time to do so effectively.

The state must not only support the capacity of outsideproviders to assist with turnaround (or lead the process); it mustcreate the structures and policies necessary to ensure that singleproviders act as systems integrators, coordinating the roles andcontributions of other collaborating partners (see the graphic onpage 85). Turnaround partners can include non-profit and for-profit organizations, professional associations, and colleges anduniversities. 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 andagencies, which tend to play strong, visible roles in the commu-nities served by chronically under-performing schools.

These social services help provide important counterweights tothe 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 ofthese 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 managedthrough one lead partner organization, their work can play acritical role in high-poverty school success. Lead turnaroundpartners and school leaders need the latitude and the opportuni-ty to work with them effectively.


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 executingtheir plans.

State initiative supports capacity-building and practice-sharingamong turnaround partner organizations.

Emphasis: This isn’t a radical new idea by any means. It’s simply theturnaround corollary of contractual relationships schools and dis-tricts already have with outside providers (e.g., textbook publishers).

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By the time a school reaches NCLB’s restructuring stage, it has probably hosted literally dozens of separate reform programsand partners, with little or no integration happening to form a coherent whole.


©2007 MASS INSIGHT

Support PersonnelSupport personnel configuration would vary by school need, and include full- or part-time peoplewith 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 staffthan 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 bemore expensive than elementary schools – because of size and the complexity of the turnaroundwork 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 forthe 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, andmight well require districts to provide an annually rising share of the additional costs.

Incentive and Responsibility-Based CompensationTurnaround 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 extraresponsibilities; 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 necessarilythat 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 curriculumand program costs, would be provided on a percentage basis staked to student enrollment. Forthe purposes of this example, an average of $200,000 per school has been allotted.

Funding for Extended TimeIn 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, and37 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 OperationsThe cost of the state’s turnaround coordinating agency includes all costs of the administering ofthe work, including staff and operating costs, administering state policy, creating the turn-around models, supporting the turnaround partners, shaping the development of turnaroundleadership, and providing for program evaluation. (For more on the state turnaround initiativeadministration, see Part 4.)

Sources of Revenue for TurnaroundMany states, compelled by NCLB, are directing some funds to school intervention initiatives. Ourresearchers universally heard complaints that funding for the work was insufficient. The costsoutlined 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 forinnovation 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 ofthe required investment. States will need to justify the remainder on the grounds that moneyinvested here will be matched (as research has shown) many times over by savings in socialservice costs down the road; the need to build a high-skill workforce to remain nationally andglobally competitive; and as a civil rights obligation to provide an adequate education to allchildren, 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” islikely 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

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These costs reflect the following assumptions and factors:

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CLUSTERING FOR SUPPORT: Organizing the Change

6 Effective turnaround solutions focus on producing changeat 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 relentlessschool-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 ofschools, working in partnership with school districts andpartners, in order to meet the scale of the need. While turn-around solutions need to focus on instituting change at theschool level, a number of factors – the number of schools

requiring assistance; resource-efficiency; replication of success-ful models; and establishment of effective K-12 pathwaysthrough school-level feeder patterns – indicate the value andimportance of designing and implementing turnaround work inclusters of schools. (In these ways, clusters have all of the sameadvantages as school districts. They should be large enough tobe an enterprise, to paraphrase researcher and project advisorRick Hess, but small enough to succeed – and to avoid issuesthat can arise as bureaucracies grow.)

Clustered turnaround work can be approached vertically (focusingon successful transitions for students from their elementary throughtheir high school years), or horizontally (by type – for example,

urban middle schools or alternative high schools for at-risk studentsand dropouts). Organization of the work can take several forms:

• Within single districts conducting turnaround on behalf of acohort of under-performing schools (or multiple cohorts, indistricts pursuing a portfolio of different approaches with dif-ferent governance and/or management structures)

• Across two to four districts, organized and supported by thestate, where combined turnaround work makes sense becauseof geographic proximity or because the work focuses onschools that share particular attributes

• Across a larger number of districts, each of which has just oneor two chronically under-performing schools, or where thestate wants to encourage implementation of particular schoolmodels and approaches – for example, grade 6-12 academies.


State initiative, working together with district leaders, organizesturnaround schools into clusters as described above.

Clusters of turnaround schools implement their turnaroundstrategies under the operating conditions and other criteria setby the state for the statewide turnaround zone.

Clusters are served by lead turnaround partners assigned by thestate (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 thatmatch 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 – andnecessary.

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Individual school turnaround successes areheroic. Turnaorund success across multipleschools is strategic –and necessary.


7 Effective turnaround at scale requires a transparent,deliberate blending of “loose” and “tight” control inimplementation 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 HPHPschools and turnaround exemplars vividly demonstrate theimportance of school-based decision-making authority andschool-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 aturnaround zone like that described in #3, above, states have theopportunity to mix “loose” (providing latitude) and “tight”(controlling more systematically within the cluster, often throughthe application of leverage) in, for example, the following ways:

• “Loose” in allowing school/district leaders to develop theirown turnaround plans; “tight” in insisting on certain essen-tial elements and, in some cases, on working with an outsidepartner to produce the plan;

• “Loose” in extending to districts an opportunity to usealtered conditions and additional resources to intervene suc-cessfully in their struggling schools; “tight” in holding themaccountable for performance improvements within two yearsand reserving the ultimate authority to install alternate gover-nance in the school;

• “Loose” in enabling school leaders to shape their staff andimplement turnaround strategy as they see fit; “tight” ininsisting on certain parameters for the work and to organizesome aspects of turnaround centrally – either by the schooldistrict or by a systems-integrating turnaround partner lead-ing a cluster of schools across district lines.


State turnaround criteria (see #3 on page 73) empower school turnaround leaders to make ground-level judgments on designand overall approach, and in the execution of the turnaroundstrategies – but within the framework for turnaround establishedby the state.

Districts judged by the state to have sufficient capacity (in conjunction with a lead turnaround partner) and that havebeen 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 turnaroundzone – and the matching incentive to avoid the more unappealing alternative of deeperstate management authority.

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8 States should differentiate their support by the degree oflocal capacity – and allow districts and schools to volun-teer into a turnaround zone. Some districts and schools are

better equipped to undertake comprehensive turnaround – alongthe lines required by the state’s turnaround plan criteria – thanothers. Partly for reasons of scale and limited resources, partly toraise capacity for turnaround statewide, and partly on the princi-ple of “loose” where authority has been earned and “tight” whereit has not, states should match the degree of their involvement inthe 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 theturnaround zone to volunteer schools and districts ready toundertake “pre-emptive turnaround.” Superintendents clamor forthe ability to intervene more vigorously in schools before theyhave entered the most extreme categories of under-performanceunder state and NCLB accountability systems. Schools that arenot yet in the bottom five percent but that are proactively lookingto undertake fundamental change will improve the mix in theirturnaround 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 thecluster. The volunteer schools represent an important way forstates 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: firstby voluntary vs. mandatory participation, and then by manage-ment authority. “Shared Direction” means that management ofthe turnaround would be conducted by district, school, and turn-around partner personnel (through contracts that can includewhole-school management and charter conversion), but withinthe 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 undertakecomprehensive turnaround themselves. The keys are the positiveincentives in joining the turnaround zone – and the matchingincentive to avoid the more unappealing alternative of deeperstate management authority.


See the chart at right. State initiative has two broad categoriesfor participation: Voluntary and Mandatory.

Voluntary: for schools in NCLB’s “Improvement” or “CorrectiveAction” categories that want access to changing conditions of astate-protected turnaround zone – and can produce a turnaroundplan (potentially with a partner) that meets state criteria. Statewould not necessarily provide monitoring beyond regular AYPprocesses for these schools, though it might provide guidance andadditional resources and supports.

Mandatory: for schools in Corrective Action or Restructuringthat the state requires to implement turnaround with a lead part-ner. These schools would receive the full benefit of additionalresources and supports.

State makes every effort to support and enable local management ofturnaround within the turnaround criteria (“Shared Direction” in thechart); reserves the alternative of management change for schools thata) cannot produce a plan that meets the state’s criteria or b) producean adequate plan but then fail to meet achievement goals and otherbenchmarks over two years. State would mandate, at that point, use ofan outside partner for school management under contract or throughcharter 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 thetools they need to succeed.

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THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE82Organizing the State RoleIntroduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies


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) tocatalyze proactive local response on behalf of those schools – and the much largernumber of schools that have been identified for state intervention at lesser levels ofintensity. 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 implementthe process can opt into it, undertaking "preemptive turnaround" using the benefitsof the state's protected turnaround space. In both cases, state policy has catalyzed amore proactive local response.

How State Policy Can Activate and Shape a Strong Local Response

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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 thiswork. A visible agency within the Department ofEducation 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 andto implement more effectively the various roles the state wouldplay in organizing turnaround:

• Creating the changes in rules and regulations governingthe 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/orrisking the fracturing of local stakeholder relationshipsover their implementation

• Distributing targeted resources as appropriate and ensuringthat local districts are investing at least its average per-pupilexpenditure in these schools

• Investing strategically in capacity development, both inter-nally in districts and schools and among external providers ofturnaround assistance:

n Supporting the development of educational turnaroundleadership as a discipline with a particular skill set

n 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

n Creating an improved pipeline of high-capacity, well-pre-pared educators over the long-term.

• Ensuring the quality of school turnaround plans and thecapacity of the implementation team by providing modelsand monitoring the work

• Building a framework to provide these supports that isunfettered by the regulatory and bureaucratic weights thatsometimes handicap state government initiatives; that pro-vides differentiated support based on the assessed needs ofschool districts with chronically under-performing schoolsand their capacity to undertake successful turnaround; andthat can ensure that the work is scaled sufficiently to meet thestatewide need.

84 THE TURNAROUND CHALLENGEOrganizing the State RoleIntroduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies


Proposal for new coordinating agency is created as core elementin overall turnaround strategy for the state. (See Figure 5F.)

State education agency leaders enlisted as supporters as a wayof garnering the necessary authorities, flexibilities to undertakethe strategy.

Agency is included in legislative package and/or budget line itemas a requirement for increased funding for turnaround.

Emphasis: The state needs the same level of operating flexibilityto coordinate turnaround work as schools need to implement iteffectively 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-oftenconfusing array of projects, consultants, and related support from the state and community intoa coherent, achievable turnaround strategy.

Building the Framework: New Structures for States, Districts, and Providers

FIGURE 5F

The state needs the same level of operatingflexibility to coordinate turnaround work asschools need to implement it effectively onthe ground.

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STATEWIDE & COMMUNITY COALITIONS:The Necessary Leadership Consensus

10 Tough challenges require tough – and united –leadership. While some effective turnaround workmay take place in scattered locales, states under

NCLB cannot leave it to accidents of good fortune or geographyto assure the right of every child to receive an adequate educa-tion. The state can and should play an active role in enablingscaled-up turnaround of chronically under-performing schools.The politics here are challenging, because under-performingschools have no natural constituency; parents and local leadersgenerally tend to shy away from the dramatic restructuring oftraditional local schools. Turnaround advocates must thereforeseek 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, urbansuperintendents, and leaders from the state’s foundation, non-profit, higher-education, and business communities, as well asfrom the media. Such a coalition is necessary in order to producethe policy changes and sustained funding commitments (seeFigure 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 tobuild community connection to, and ownership of, the goaland process of building a higher-performing local school.Community buy-in is particularly essential in the secondphase of turnaround – the improvement phase, when newinvestments are reduced and change (along with achievementgain) is more incremental. In cities where long lists of parentswait 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.


Lead advocate for comprehensive turnaround of failing schools(governor, commissioner, state board chair, key legislator, leadingCEO or foundation head) initiates high-level discussions withpotential 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) inthe state.

Outreach to key superintendents, school board chairs, and may-ors in affected districts to secure their support, to statewideteacher union managers, and to other teacher leaders statewide.

Twin strategies, working with the state education agency andstate board of education, to generate necessary changes in stateregulations on school intervention and enlist state legislature tosupport the changes (if necessary).

Intensive lobbying effort during legislative budgeting cycle tosecure adequate funding for turnaround.

Emphasis: Turnaround of failing schools is a civil rights obligationand economic/social imperative of the state.

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Organizing the State RoleIntroduction to the Framework Defining the Approach The Three ‘C’ Strategies

Meeting the Turnaround Challenge: A Framework for Statewide Action


FIGURE 5G

The Complete Framework: A comprehensive state initiative depends on every one of thestructures 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 turnaroundzones, where the three ‘C’ reforms – changing conditions, building capacity, and clusteringfor 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 bealigned by lead turnaround partners. The schools need fundamentally new approaches,assisted by all of the agents.

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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 policymakersand turnaround advocates: Are the operating conditions and supports in place thatwould allow principals and leadership teams to successfully turn around a failingschool? It could (and should) also be used by principals being asked to undertakeschool turnaround: Do I have what I need – and what any turnaround manager wouldneed – 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 ImpactIntroduction to three categories of school intervention: ProgramChange, People Change, andSystem Redesign (includingConditions Change)

A.2 Why Program Change FallsShort of Turnaround Providing help to improve programs is vital – and insufficient by itself

A.3 Why People Change FallsShort of Turnaround Providing for new leadership and new staff is also vital – and also insufficient

A.4 System Redesign:Program, People – andConditions ChangeThe operating context for intervention is as important as the intervention itself

A P P E N D I X A

Line up 100 reform-experiencededucators and researchers in

a room, ask them to write down their own top ten elements of effectivestandards-based reform, and odds arethat you’ll see 80% agreement acrosstheir lists.

We haven’t proved that clinically –but it seems quite plausible from ourexhaustive scan of the effective-prac-tice and intervention literature.Adherence to standards and highexpectations; effective mapping ofcurricula to those standards; a profes-sional and collaborative teaching cul-ture; in-school, job-embedded profes-sional development; strong schoolleadership (individuals and teams);on-going formative assessment; data-based decision-making; proactiveintervention for students who needextra help; productive connectionswith social services, parents and com-munity… There is general consensuson the importance of these dimen-sions of effective schools, and anacknowledgement that within thispalette, actual implementation canappear in a wide range of colors.

In other words, we know it when wesee it. But getting there – the wholechange management process – ismuch more of a mystery.

Change management in education ischronically under-studied. That’s iron-ic, for an enterprise that is so focused

on human dynamics and personaldevelopment. Turnaround in otherdomains, especially business, is theobject of much careful scrutiny. Thereare lessons to be learned from thiswork – though with caution, becauseof the substantial differences betweenthe private and the public sectors.

Our Intervention Taxonomy (includ-ed in Parts 4 and 5) introduced thethree general categories we have

developed for this analysis of schoolintervention strategies. They are:

• Program Change: Providing help toimprove programs and performancewithin the current set of systemsand conditions. This constitutes themajor portion of school interven-

tion activity to date. This approachoffers consultants, assistanceteams, professional development,or new curricula and other pro-gram-related tools to help existingschool personnel improve theirstudents’ performance, primarily(though not necessarily) within thecurrent general model of teachingand learning employed by theschool.

A.1 School Intervention to Date:Goals, Strategies, and ImpactWe 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 failingschools that have not appreciably improved for years, westill 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 RedesignTHE TURNAROUND CHALLENGE90

• People Change: Reconstitution –the replacement of leadership andschool staff. The core idea here isthat the caliber of the peopleworking in the system is the mostimportant element to success(which may be the right idea,except when it also is the only ideabeing applied).

• System Redesign: Changing theconditions and incentives thatshape how work gets done – aswell as allowing for changes inprogramming and personnel. Thiscumulative category includes theother two, but also redesigns theoperating conditions in whichstaff and leadership implementprograms and reform strategies.

These categories mirror, in general,the several others that have beendeveloped and used by otherresearchers examining the emergingtrack record in school interventionsunder NCLB (among others: Brady,2003; DiBiase, 2005). Brady’s analysis,conducted for the FordhamFoundation in the early years of thelaw’s implementation, provides a use-ful grouping of intervention strategies

mandated by NCLB (see box). Ourgrouping, described in more detailover the following pages, emphasizesinterventions’ impact on the daily lifeof schools, more than on questions ofgovernance. We discuss governanceand management more fully in Part 4.

The interventions in the “Mild” and“Moderate” categories, these andother reports make clear, are con-ducted much more frequently thanthose in the “Strong” category forseveral reasons. There are great

political uncertainties and the riskof significant political costs associat-ed with them (witness Maryland’seffort to take over several under-performing schools in Baltimore in2005-6, which was undercut by themayor and the state legislature – seethe 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 stateshave the authority to take strongactions, and while these same 39states contain dozens of failingschools that have not appreciablyimproved for years, we still findstrong interventions extremelyrare.” (Brady, 2003) DiBiase’s studyfollows Brady’s by more than twoyears but it does not have impor-tantly different conclusions. Giventhe option to do so, people and

organizations (even those in somedistress) will tend toward lesschange, rather than more – withperhaps predictable results, as weshall see over the following pages.

©2007 MASS INSIGHT

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, longerschool year)

• Reorganize the school (voluntary)

• Comprehensive School Reform (CSR)

• Change the principal

• Strong:

• Reconstitution (replacing all or mostof a school’s staff and leadership)

• School takeover (state assuminggovernance of a school)

• District takeover (state assuminggovernance of a district)

• Closing of the school

• Choice (vouchers)

• Major curriculum change

• Outsourcing on a contract basis

• Redirecting, withholding school ordistrict 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


Program Change is by far the most common state and district

response to underperformance inschools. This category encompasses a range of approaches, but what tiesthem together is the idea of externalassistance 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 kindsof 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 AssistanceResearchers have posited that there arethree broad categories in which statesattempt to shape the content of schoolimprovement efforts. (Lane & Gracia,2005; Laguarda, 2003) These are:

• Needs assessments

• Improvement planning

• Implementation support.

States have chosen to organize thiskind of intervention work differently.Massachusetts has had a separateoffice conducting district and school

audits (the Office of EducationalQuality and Accountability) thatreports to a separate board (theEducation Management AuditCouncil). These reviews or audits arefashioned after the British inspec-torate system and are deliberatelydesigned to reflect or monitor a dis-trict’s or school’s condition but not toprovide direct assistance. (This systemregularly comes under fire from statebudget-setters and may in fact bemodified this year.) Other states, likeNorth Carolina or Kentucky, do notmake such distinctions between thosewho conduct audits and those whosupply assistance.

However organized, implementationsupport represents all of the effortsthat make up a state-approved schoolimprovement plan. Lane & Gracia(2003) provide a particularly usefuldescription and categorization ofthese supports. (The following isdirectly quoted from them.)

• School-based coaching: Facilitationof school improvement teams; lead-ership development and mentoringadministrators; job-embedded pro-fessional development; includingmodeling instruction

• School-based data analysis:Ongoing support to schoolteams/committees related to theanalysis of data planning

• Professional development:Professional development targetedtowards identified needs (forexample, curriculum developmentand 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 – representsthe most intensive version of this kindof providing help, since it involvesdirect, ongoing, hands-on work atschools by experienced individuals orteams. Perhaps the most prominentexample of this approach isKentucky’s Highly Skilled Educatorsprogram (HSE), formerly known asDistinguished Educators (DE). UnderKentucky’s accountability system,devised in the early 1990s, schools arerequired to achieve a certain level ofimprovement toward meeting profi-ciency. The lowest-performing schoolsreceive assistance from DEs, nowHSEs, beginning with a ScholasticAudit of the school. (David et al, 2003)Evaluators of the HSEs work have broken HSEs’ work into seven majorcategories: professional development,curriculum alignment, classroominstruction, test preparation, leader-ship, school organization and decisionmaking, and resource procurement.

The most recent available formal eval-uation (David et al, 2003) concludesthat while the HSE program has animpact on schools served, that impactis limited in two important respectsparticularly relevant to this analysis.

A.2 Why Program Change Falls Short of TurnaroundProviding help to improve programs is vital – and insufficient by itself

“Assigning Highly Skilled Educators for more years inthese schools is unlikely to increase HSE successunless other conditions change.”

– David et al, 2003

A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System RedesignA.1 School Intervention to Date


This graphic provides an informal, con-ceptual “map” of school interventionefforts that we will use over the courseof the analysis in this Appendix. Themap plots the degree to which differ-ent intervention efforts appear toincorporate 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 thescale of these intervention effortsalong the X axis. Interventions in theupper right quadrant are the goal; theywould represent the promise of botheffectiveness and scale. Interventions inthe other three quadrants, conversely,either lack scale-ability or, we wouldargue, all of the elements required tobe successful. The plotting on the mapis directional only, and is not staked tonumerical values; the intent here is toillustrate broad ideas, not closely com-parable data.Program change initiatives, as shownin this section, have not demonstratedeffectiveness in significantly improvingperformance – particularly in chronical-ly under-performing schools. Whilesome prominent programs, especiallythe federal government’s $1.5 billionComprehensive School Reform (CSR)program and the New AmericanSchools (NAS) initiative have certainlyachieved scale, they have not generat-ed the impact their framers envisioned.Nor, by and large, have much smallerprogram-change initiatives operated bystate education agencies. (See theSupplemental 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


First, on average, HSEs have beenmore successful at the elementarylevel than at the middle or high schoollevel. Though the researchers base thisfinding on a sample of HSE-assistedschools that included only one highschool, they do reach some conclu-sions about the limits of the HSEstrategy in the high school setting.Working closely with 10-12 teachersto improve instruction, they argue, isa plausible challenge for an HSE. Bycontrast, working closely with 40-50teachers (or more) is probably impos-sible for one person. An added chal-lenge is the need for an HSE to be acontent expert in the various disci-plines at the high school or even themiddle school level.

Second, the evaluation finds thatHSEs had less impact at schools withthe lowest capacity – exactly the sortof chronically under-performingschools that are the subject of thisanalysis. David et al (2003) write:“The impact of HSEs is considerablyweaker in schools with the mostsevere problems with faculty morale,school leadership, and district support– which also tend to be those in themost economically depressed areas.”In a sobering statement, the authorsconclude, “Assigning HSEs for more

years in these schools is unlikely toincrease HSE success unless otherconditions change” (p. 27).

Importantly, HSEs have had noauthority to change broader condi-tions. Their role is strictly advisory.There has been one exception in theprogram’s history: for schools labeled“in crisis,” due to steep declines in testscores, DEs had the authority to evalu-ate and recommend dismissal for staff.According to one of the program’sarchitects, however, that power wasnever implemented (Connie Lestorinterview, January 2006).

The Supplemental Report profiles anumber of state efforts that fall intothis broad category. States such asAlabama, Arizona, Florida, Michigan,Massachusetts, and North Carolinahave geared intervention-supportstrategies around regional schoolimprovement coaches, peer mentors,school improvement specialists, “solu-tions teams,” or “School-WideAssistance Teams” (also known asSWAT teams). There has been no rig-orous, performance-based analysis, atleast that we could identify, of theseprograms and similar initiatives inother states. But our survey uncoveredmuch dissatisfaction in these stateswith the outcomes of these interven-

tions to date. HSEs and programsmodeled after the Kentucky approach,it appears, can be helpful in schoolswith some level of pre-existing capaci-ty to improve, especially at the ele-mentary level. Their efficacy at higherlevels of schooling, and in the particu-lar subset of chronically under-per-forming schools that we are examin-ing here, appears to be much lesspromising. In these cases, simply pro-viding expert assistance without theability to make more substantialchanges happen falls short of themagnitude of the task.

Comprehensive School ReformThe other major way states have pro-vided help to under-performingschools is by offering funds to enableschools to adopt “comprehensiveschool reform” (CSR) models. Theidea behind CSR is that high-per-forming schools typically have a clear,coherent mission and design thatguides all of the schools’ activities. Ifschools are failing, they need a new

school design, and they need an exter-nal partner with expertise in thedesign to help them implement it.CSR achieved prominence in the1990s under the sponsorship of NewAmerican Schools (NAS), a nonprofitthat provided funding for the develop-ment and scale-up of research-basedschool designs such as Success For Alland Expeditionary Learning/OutwardBound. CSR received an enormousboost in the late 1990s when Congressbegan appropriating funds for a feder-al Comprehensive School Program –over $1.5 billion through FY2006.

Since these funds flow through statesto schools, every state now has a com-prehensive school reform office thatadministers the program and its brandof program change.

The impact of CSR, however, has beenseverely limited, especially on chroni-cally low-performing schools. Part ofthe challenge stemmed from the lackof research base undergirding many of

Program Change(continued)

American Institutes for Research… found only three out ofthe twenty-four whole school [CSR] reform models studiedhad strong evidence of increased student performance.

A.2 Program Change A.3 People Change A.4 System RedesignA.1 School Intervention to Date


the comprehensive reform modelsthemselves. American Institutes forResearch, for example, found onlythree out of the twenty-four wholeschool reform models studied hadstrong evidence of increased studentperformance. (AIR, 1999)

Equally troubling have been the diffi-culties schools have faced in imple-menting the reforms, even with themassive infusion of funding and sup-port related to CSR. After a decade ofimplementation and careful evaluationof the NAS effort, RAND researchers(Berends et al, 2002) concluded:

• The hypothesis that adopting awhole school design would lead aschool to improve its performancewas largely unproved. For manyreasons including significantimplementation problems,researchers found a lack of strongimprovement in most schools intheir samples.

• External interventions need toaddress capacity issues such as lackof 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 likelyto face obstacles to implementingwhole school designs to improvestudent performance.

• Externally developed interventionscannot “break the mold” and beimplemented successfully in mostdistricts or schools because thesecontexts are simply not supportiveof these efforts. For example, manydistricts were unwilling to grantschools the authority needed toallocate funds, people, and time as

needed to implement the designs.For another, some would not takesteps to assign to CSR schoolsprincipals supportive of the chosenCSR model.

These findings resemble those citedabove related to the direct supportprovided by HSEs in Kentucky. Thecomprehensive school designs, likethe assistance of HSEs, could only goso far in light of the pre-existing levelof capacity in schools and the prevail-

ing conditions in which the schoolsoperated. Since CSR models were gen-erally not themselves designed tochange those conditions, they oftencould not overcome these formidableobstacles. While CSR has had somenotable successes, its promise as a“solution” to chronic underperfor-mance has remained unfulfilled.

The Zone of Wishful ThinkingAs Paul Hill and Mary Beth Celiohave written (1998), every approachto school reform has a “zone of wish-ful thinking”: a set of conditions oractions 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 inchronically under-performingschools, the zone of wishful thinkingis vast. It also has two parts. First, forprogram change to work, the peopleworking in chronically low-perform-ing schools must have the capacity toimprove. Not that they must alreadyhave 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 theymust have the capacity to use thatassistance well and turn it into signifi-cantly different operating approachesand performance results in theirschools. Too often, state assistanceteams, distinguished educators, andcomprehensive model providers havefound that school personnel, andespecially the leaders of chronicallyunder-performing schools, havelacked that basic capacity. In thesecases, the notion that simply provid-ing assistance could turn around theseschools was, in fact, wishful thinking.

Second, help is likely to convert toresults only if schools are workingwithin conditions that allow andencourage them to activate the advice,to implement what their assistance-providers are suggesting. Withoutauthority to do what helpers advise,and without strong inducements todo so even when change is difficult orcontroversial, schools may not moveforward according to the plans theydevise with their assistance-providers.

As a result of these zones of wishfulthinking, states and districts havesometimes sought to go beyond program change, as discussed in thefollowing two sections on people andsystem redesign.

In the case of program change in chronically under-per-forming schools, the “zone of wishful thinking” is vast.

A.2


A.3 Why People Change Falls Short of TurnaroundProviding for new leadership and new staff is also vital – and also insufficient

T he second broad category ofintervention design focuses on

changing people – usually along withchanging programs. Because capacityissues have hindered many efforts toprovide help to chronically under-performing schools, it is natural thatsome states and districts have soughtto supplement that assistance withactual changes in the people staffingand leading the schools. Given thewell-documented importance of bothleaders and teachers to the outcomesa school achieves, changing people isa plausible strategy for boosting per-formance. But, as we found withinterventions focusing on programchange alone, efforts that address peo-ple change (even as part of a largereffort that includes program change)without also addressing the systemsand conditions in which people workhave not, by and large, produced thedesired results.

People-change initiatives, in general,take two forms: bringing in a newprincipal, and bringing in a more orless entirely new staff for the school(“reconstitution”). These initiatives fallwithin NCLB’s second option. (Note:Another way states have sought to“change people” is to change leader-ship at the district level via statetakeovers or by granting control of a

district to the mayor or to a controlboard. These strategies are most oftenpart of broader initiatives designed torestructure failing districts, and arediscussed in the district profiles in theSupplemental Report.)

Changing LeadershipThe importance of the school leader indetermining a school’s success has along-standing research base and wideacceptance among practitioners. (Waters et al, 2003; Leithwood

et al, 2004) Experience with turn-arounds across industries reinforcesthis notion, since successful turn-arounds typically involve a change intop management. (Hoffman, 1989)Turnaround experience in other sec-tors reinforces an additional point:that managing turnaround effectivelyrequires a particular set of skills,beyond those generally acknowledgedto be required for effective leadership.

At one level, leadership change as aresponse to low performance inschools is routine – so routine, in fact,

that it has not been documented andstudied rigorously. It is thereforeimpossible to cite a research baseabout whether, and under what con-ditions, changing a school’s leader islikely to lift it out of chronic under-performance. Cross-industry researchon turnarounds, however, providesuseful insights about two issues: thequalities of leaders who appear mostlikely to succeed in a turnaround con-text, and the types of actions leadersappear to take en route to turn-

arounds that achieve some impact.(Kowal and Hassel, 2005)

Based on these cross-organizationalfindings, it appears that the mostpromising “changing leadership”strategies would be those that seek toinstall new leaders who bring theunderlying capabilities of successfulturnaround leaders and receive spe-cialized training on turnaround lead-ership actions most likely to lead tosuccess. The leading state-based exem-plar of this approach is the VirginiaSchool Turnaround Specialist

Program (VSTSP), a joint venture ofthe University of Virginia’s schools ofbusiness and education. This programidentifies high potential turnaroundleaders (from among high-performingurban principals) and provides themwith specialized training as they takeup posts in chronically low-perform-ing schools. Specialists can earnbonuses of $5,000 for completing thetraining and $8,000 differentials iftheir schools make AYP, achieve stateaccreditation, or reduce the failurerate in reading or math by 10%.Differentials of $15,000 are available inyears two and three of the principal’swork if the school continues to makeAYP or obtains state certification. Theprogram initially focused on Virginia,but is now working with three largeschool districts from other states aswell, with assistance from MicrosoftCorporation. The program is relativelynew, and no external evaluation hasbeen completed yet, although theprogram has issued its own com-pendium of “stories” from the firstcohort of 10 specialists, with someanalysis 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 numberof turnaround leaders leaving theirnew schools (as reported in

Turnaround experience in other sectors reinforces an additional point: that managing turnaround effectivelyrequires a particular set of skills, beyond those generallyacknowledged to be required for effective leadership.

A.3 People Change A.4 System RedesignA.2 Program ChangeA.1 School Intervention to Date


The second of our conceptualmaps of the school interventionlandscape places initiativesfocused on changing people large-ly in the lower lefthand quadrant.These initiatives have tended tolack scale (limited, as they are, bythe available capacity for newstaff and leadership) and they alsostop short of changing the condi-tions in which newly reconstitutedstaffs and/or new leaders work.Their track record of impact is lim-ited, at best (although Virginia’sTurnaround Specialist programshows solid improvement in someof its schools).

Betting on People Change: Still Not Changing the SystemFIGURE AB

A.3


Education Week and elsewhere; seethe Supplemental Report for more).

The changing-leadership strategy, infact, faces a number of obstacles. First,since turnaround leadership appearsto be a specialty requiring specificcompetencies and skills, it is likelythat the supply of individuals capableof taking on this role successfully islimited. Programs like the VSTSP areseeking to address the supply issue inone way – though the scale-ability ofthat model is limited at best. District-

based leadership academies in placeslike New York City, San Diego, andBoston, while less focused on “turn-around,” are also aiming to increasethe supply of capable school leaders.External efforts, notably New Leadersfor New Schools, are scouring thecountry for high-potential leaders andoffering them training and support.But if the nation shortly will have 5-10,000 chronically under-performingschools, the demand for capable turn-around leaders swamps the supplythese efforts can currently offer. Forthe changing leadership strategy towork, then, policymakers, funders, and

entrepreneurs will need to do muchmore to increase the pipeline of individ-uals ready and able to fill these posts.

A second and related challenge is thatfor many reasons, the conditions forleadership in chronically under-per-forming schools are often far fromideal. As noted above, principals inthese schools typically lack authorityover the critical resources of people,money, and time, hemmed in as theyare by district and state policies andby collective bargaining agreements.

While a hallmark of successful turn-around leaders is their ability andwillingness to accomplish resultsdespite such constraints, these barri-ers make the job less attractive – andthe potential for impact more uncer-tain. Isolated examples like the bonus-es paid by VSTSP notwithstanding,there are also few countervailingincentives for talented turnaroundleaders to take up these jobs. Thoughthere may be intrinsic rewards to tak-ing on the toughest jobs in publiceducation, there is no prospect forhigher pay, special recognition,opportunities for advancement, or

other inducements that typicallyattract high-performing individualsinto jobs. (Hay Group, 2004) In thatcontext, recruiting the requiredpipeline of leaders looks even morechallenging. The conditions and lack of authority over resourcesand strategies also make sustainingcapable leadership over time exceedingly difficult.

All of this is not to say that changingleadership should not be an integralpart of districts’ and states’ turn-around strategies. There are no silver-bullet strategies in effective turn-around, but effective leadership maywell be the most important single ele-ment. Given the importance of schoolleadership in general, and turnaroundleaders more specifically, policymak-ers must attend to this dimension ofchange in their turnaround approach-es. But to do so successfully, the strat-egy must also include attention topriming the pipeline of leaders andchanging the conditions of leadership– the authority and incentive struc-ture – in order to make the turn-around job as attractive and viable aspossible for capable people.

ReconstitutionReconstitution is a more thorough-going version of changing people,

involving wholesale replacement of allor most of a school’s staff, not just theprincipal. The theory of reconstitu-tion is that chronically under-per-forming schools need a fresh startwith a more or less completely newteam of people who can build fromscratch a school program that works.

Experiments with whole-schoolreconstitution have been limited todate, with generally abysmal results.Prominent examples include:

• San Francisco. The most cited caseis San Francisco’s 1983 reconstitu-tion of six schools as part of acourt-ordered desegregation effort.The district, in addition to chang-ing the staff, also set about recruit-ing the best teachers available,adding technology and otherresources, and focusing on improv-ing the lot of underserved students.Researchers found that AfricanAmerican and Latino students inthese initially reconstituted schoolswere performing better than thosefrom similar backgrounds in otherparts of the city. (McRobbie, 1998)However, in the eight schoolsreconstituted after 1994 in SanFrancisco, there has been little ifany improvement in standardizedtest 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 RedesignA.2 Program ChangeA.1 School Intervention to Date


San Francisco moved away fromthe strategy and has pursued moreof a program-change approach featuring the use of coaches toimprove under-performing schools.

• Chicago. Chicago attemptedreconstitutions of high schools in1997. Hess (2003) explains thatalthough all teachers in reconsti-tuted schools were technicallyfired, they were allowed to reapplyand be hired back. While theopportunity to fire and replaceteachers sounds plausible in theo-ry, in practice Chicago’s experi-ence suggests the process was toorushed to allow administrators orteachers to make thoughtful orperhaps even meaningful hiringdecisions. The final result was thatvarying but fairly high levels ofstaff remained in the same build-ings despite being reconstituted.There are a variety of reasons forthis variation, including the flawedhiring process, a lack of desire onteachers’ part to work in a schoolthat might close, and the need forany school district to continuouslyserve all of its students – i.e., thepressure under this kind of strate-gy to recruit and deploy a newstaff immediately.

After three years of study, theresearchers in Chicago (Hess, 2003)reported that there had been littlechange in the structure of the highschools, and little change in thequality of instruction despite theefforts of external partners. As theresearchers found little had actuallychanged except for the changes inpersonnel, they were not at all sur-prised to find lower-than-averagegains in reading achievement(roughly half the increase that thecity of Chicago gained during thistime period). The Chicago experi-ence at reconstitution prompted thedistrict to halt implementation ofthis strategy in other schools.

• New York. According to informa-tion assembled by the EducationCommission of the States (ECS),the New York Schools UnderRegistration Review (SURR) pro-gram of corrective action led tomore than 40 schools being recon-stituted in the early years of theprogram. 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 SURRschools have exited the program.And Brady (2003) points out thatthe criteria for exiting the SURR

program are considerably less strin-gent than what the state requiresfor NCLB. New York’s experience,then, appears to be another disap-pointing one for reconstitution.

It appears from this research thatreconstitutions suffer from the sametwin problems that undermine otherefforts to turn around low performingschools: insufficient capacity andobstructive conditions. The capacitychallenge appears at two levels. First,districts attempting reconstitutionhave struggled to find more capableteachers to replace the ones let go dur-ing reconstitution. If the failing facultyis replaced by one with equal or lessercapability, there is no reason to thinkreconstitution alone will improveschool performance dramatically.Second, reconstituted schools havetypically lacked the leadership capacityand resources to effect a successfulturnaround. The usual reconstitutiontimetable is to dismiss staff as oneschool year ends and re-hire over thesummer, a timetable that leaves littleopportunity for essentially a newschool start-up effort to be undertaken.

Reconstitutions do involve somechange to the condition set. In partic-ular, the act of reconstitution itselfrequires someone to have the authori-ty to dismiss members of the school

staff – a critical aspect of conditionchange. But this doesn’t mean that theschool, post-reconstitution, lives with-in a new condition set. The schools’new leaders may or may not haveongoing authority to build andchange their teams, to allocateresources strategically, to set sched-ules and otherwise use time in waysthat benefit their students.

The broader research on organization-al turnaround suggests that wholesalereplacement of staff, while sometimesused effectively, is not a necessaryingredient of turnaround success.Indeed, one recent review of the turn-around literature found that “success-ful turnarounds often combine newemployees with old to introduce newenergy and enthusiasm without losingskill and experience,” citing sixresearch studies in support of thatconclusion. (Kowal and Hassel, 2005)In that light, the disappointing experi-ence with school reconstitution is notat all surprising. While leadershipchange is often central to turnaroundsuccess, and the ability to shape schoolstaff around a turnaround strategy is acritical authority for turnaround lead-ers to hold, broad-scale all-at-oncestaff replacement appears less viable asa strategy – or even as one element ina larger initiative.

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A.4 System Redesign: Program, People – and Conditions ChangeThe operating context for intervention is as important as the intervention itself

There is enough research on themore typical forms of intervention,

summarized in the two previous sections(and in the Supplemental Report), toconclude 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, supportingstaff development, even changing leader-ship and school staff: none of this workhas produced a clearly delineated path-way that educators and policymakersmight adopt to turn around the lowest-performing schools successfully.

What’s missing?

Beyond the nature of the programmingand effectiveness of the people, there isthe context in which a school’s leader-ship and staff are pursuing their mis-sion – the set of conditions that shapeshow decisions are made and the extentto which, in any operation, people are enabled to do their best work.Providing extensive help to schoolswhose leaders lack the authority tomake change (or strong inducements to do so) appears limited in effect.Attracting and placing talented newleaders is more challenging whenthe conditions of leadership in a turn-

around school are not designed to make

real leadership possible. The same istrue of teachers: why would talented,experienced people be drawn to class-rooms in these schools under the sameconditions that have conspired to pro-duce so much failure, so consistently?

Ways to Create New Conditions This is the line of thinking that hasfueled the nation’s charter schoolmovement over the past ten years: inorder to free up educators and schoolleaders to do their best work, the dys-functions of the current public educa-tion system – so clearly evidenced bythe learning outcomes produced in thebottom five percent of public schools –must be skirted entirely and a new sys-tem (and new set of conditions) mustbe put in its place. As discussed in thebox on page 104, results from thenation’s charter experiment are mixed,depending to a strong degree on thestrength of the authorizing/accounta-bility framework in which individualcharter schools have developed. Butthis completely-outside-the-systemmodel has not been the only responseto the increasing conviction that theconditions context of reform is asimportant as the nature of the reformitself and the people implementing it.Decision-makers in a number of largeschool districts, and a growing set ofpolicymakers at the state level, have

begun to experiment with a hybridapproach that imports the outside-the-system thinking that characterizescharter schools – and attempts toimplement it within the system.

As described in Part 3, the conditionschange that has been the focus of thesenewer efforts can be thought of in twobroad categories. One is ensuring thatsomeone within the system, most likelyschool-level leaders or leadershipteams, holds clear authority over thekey resources that affect school per-formance and the implementation of

any turnaround plan: people, money,and time. The other is creating strongincentives for people to take on thechallenge of turning around chronical-ly under-performing schools, and todo so successfully. The research on thecentral importance of both authorityand incentives is cited in Part 3 as well.

Most of the experimenting with con-dition change has been undertaken atthe district level, by leaders in largeurban districts including Chicago,

Philadelphia, Miami-Dade, New York,Oakland, and Boston. The initiativesare often gathered under the mantel of autonomy, with the Edmonton,Canada school district’s experiencecited as a primary model. (Beginningin the late 1990s, Edmonton pioneeredan approach to district governancethat placed substantial decision-mak-ing authority in the hands of schoolprincipals and that has producedpromising results.) Increased authorityat the school leadership level is some-times used as a reward for relativehigh achievement, on the theory that

higher-performing schools could andshould be given latitude to pursuetheir own strategies for improvement.But experiments are also underway toprovide that authority (usually alongwith tighter accountability) to schoolsthat volunteer for it – and, in somecases, to chronically under-performingschools as a central part of a turn-around strategy. These district-basedreform efforts are discussed in subse-quent pages of this section and in theSupplemental Report.

Decision-makers… have begun to experiment with a hybridapproach that imports the outside-the-system thinking thatcharacterizes charter schools – and attempts to implement it within the system.

A.4 System RedesignA.3 People ChangeA.2 Program ChangeA.1 School Intervention to Date


In this third version of our inter-vention-vs.-scale “map” of thecurrent landscape of turnaroundreform efforts, we place a numberof initiatives that attempt to incor-porate basic changes in operatingconditions, work rules, and incen-tives as part of their approach toschool intervention. By and large,we found, initiatives that includeconditions change tend to allowfor significant program and peoplechange as well – but that is notalways the case.

The initiatives shown here are district-based strategies becausethese selected, large urban dis-tricts have been more entrepre-neurial than state policymakers inattempting this multi-dimensionalkind of reform. Their experimentsare too new to show definitiveresults, so it is too early to declarethat they have found demonstra-bly effective turnaround pathwaysfor chronically under-performingschools. But they do reflect a morecomprehensive, systems-orientedapproach that appears to morefully embrace, in our view, thecharacteristics of the HPHP (High-Performing, High-Poverty) schoolsprofiled in Part 2. These initiativesare briefly described over the fol-lowing pages and in greater detailin the Supplemental Report.

Getting to System Redesign by Incorporating Changes in Operating ConditionsFIGURE AC

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“Inside” and “Outside”Strategies to TransformOperating ConditionsEfforts to change the conditions context in which intervention takesplace fall along a continuum frominside to virtually outside the normalschool district governance and man-agement structures, as portrayed inFigure AD.

At the “inside” end of the continuum are strategies that seek tochange the conditions for turnaroundschools, but largely within existingschool district structures and arrange-ments. Schools remain district operat-ed; staff members remain districtemployees and members of collectivebargaining units; most district andcollective bargaining policies stillapply to the schools. But there aresome special rules, some exceptions to policies that allow these schools todo things differently. Miami’s SchoolImprovement Zone, described morefully below and in the SupplementalReport, is a prime example of theinside approach to conditions change.New York’s Chancellor’s District (aninitiative that operated in the 1990s),

Philadelphia’s district-operated low-performing schools, and Chicago’s“Performance Schools” fit into thiscategory as well.

At the “outside” end, districts andstates effect conditions change byturning over control of schools tooutside providers. Through a charter

or a contract, these providers gainauthority over the key resources of people, time, and money. Andthrough that same contract or char-ter, they shoulder potentially power-ful incentives to succeed or else facerevocation or non-renewal of theiragreement. While there are manyisolated examples of this approach

to improving chronically under-performing schools, a small numberof districts have begun using thisinstrument across multiple schools.Philadelphia and Chicago, for exam-ple, have entered into contracts and charters with a wide variety ofnonprofit and for-profit entities tooperate chronically low-performing

System Redesign(continued)

The Continuum of Outside-the-System Approaches,Applied to Various Degrees Inside the System


FIGURE AD


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 39schools with chronically low test scores. (Crew had pioneered this approachwith the Chancellor’s District in New York City, previously.) Schools in theZone receive the whole range of interventions described in this report. Thedistrict provides a great deal of assistance to Zone schools, in the form ofintensive teacher training around district-selected curricula. The district alsoenabled fairly extensive people change, replacing 15 principals at the 39schools and turning over a significant number of teachers. And the districtalso changed the schools’ operating conditions, negotiating with theteacher’s union for the authority to pay Zone teachers 20 percent more tocompensate 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 inthe Zone has not revolved around granting more authority to school-levelmanagers. On the contrary, schools in the Zone are subject to more intensivecentralized control over such matters as curriculum, scheduling, and teachertraining. The conditions-change has had more to do with increased authorityin 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, somuch as it is ensuring conditions that support the district’s strategies forintervention. That set of strategies, developed in part by former Miami-Dadedeputy superintendent Irving Hamer (who was a principal consultant on thisreport), 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-establishmentof an identity for Zone schools that has helped to make them places wherepeople want to work. The district held a successful national recruiting fairfor 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 ofthe schools to stay. Since then, the schools in the Improvement Zone (whichcompleted its third year in 2006-7), have shown appreciably strongerachievement gains than other Miami-Dade schools in the same time period,though many remain below district averages. See the Supplemental Reportfor a more detailed analysis.

schools. In San Diego, four schoolsfacing “Restructuring” under NoChild Left Behind were closed andreopened as charter schools underformer superintendent Alan Bersin.

In between these two extremes arehybrid efforts to use in-district butcharter-like structures to create a condition set that similarly combinesauthority and incentives (includingincreased accountability). A leadingexample of this general approach isBoston’s network of “pilot schools” –though Boston has used the pilotmechanism primarily to start newschools rather than to turn aroundlow-performing schools. In pilotschools, teachers remain union members, but the schools receive

greater latitude in five areas – curriculum, staffing, budgeting,scheduling, and governance (see boxat the end of this section) – to pursuelearning models developed individual-ly by staff and leadership at each pilotschool. Other districts have createdsimilar arrangements for single schools,such as Worcester, Massachusetts’University Park Campus School, profiled extensively in theSupplemental Report and at MassInsight’s effective-practice researchwebsite, www.buildingblocks.org.

The following descriptions profilethese approaches – inside, outside,and hybrid – and their emergingresults in more detail.

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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 contractswith multi-school education management organizations. While 3,600 charter schoolsoperate nationwide, only a small number of schools have been closed and reopenedas charter schools in response to chronic low performance. The states of Louisianaand Colorado have taken this step, as has the San Diego school district. (Ziebarthand Wohlstetter, 2005) The Chicago and Philadelphia “portfolio” approaches includecomplements of schools run by charter management organizations, through thesearrangements look more like contracts than independent charters, strictly speaking;the Oakland school district, meanwhile, went so far as to collaborate with outsidepartners to create a new charter management organization (called Education forChange) to take over two struggling elementary schools.

More common has been the contracting approach, where districts have enteredinto agreements with an outside entity to manage low-performing schools. Theseentities come in both for-profit (education management organizations, or EMOs)and non-profit (charter management organizations, or CMOs) varieties, and theyalso differ substantially in the types of instructional programs they offer and howthey are managed. (Colby, Smith, & Shelton, 2005) Many districts have contractedout the management of individual schools, but some have gone farther in anattempt to use contracting as a more scaled-up strategy. These include Baltimore,MD, and Chester, PA, which contracted with Edison Schools for the management ofsome struggling schools; Philadelphia, which contracts with a range of for-profitEMOs as well as universities and non-profits to manage some of its toughestschools; and Chicago, which is closing low-performing schools and reopening themunder 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 outsourcingauthority 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 contractschools have produced extraordinary results with previously unsuccessful students,but the performance of many other charter and contract schools is similar to orlower 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 thesystem level, a rigorous provider selection process, strong accountability for results,and extensive school autonomy appear to support effective chartering. (NationalAssociation of Charter School Authorizers, 2005) According to a U.S. Department ofEducation study of successful charter schools, the authority to do things differentlyis a critical success factor for the schools examined. (U.S. Department of Education,2004) At the school level, effective school design and highly capable leadershipboth 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 anon-going school. (Arkin & Kowal, 2005)

With results very mixed, contracting has not proved to be a panacea for districtsseeking dramatic improvement. Some experiments, such as Chester, PA’s attempt tocontract out the management of almost all the system’s schools, have failed miser-ably. (Rhim, 2004) In other cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, contractinghas achieved mixed but somewhat more encouraging success. (Rhim 2005a,2005b; Gill et al, 2007); see the profile of Philadelphia in the Supplemental Reportfor more detail.) But system-level conditions similar to those in chartering appearto facilitate success, including rigorous upfront selection, freedom to act for chosencontractors, and clear contracts that instill results-based accountability. (Rhim2005a, 2005b) In Chester, for example, the contractor (Edison Schools) did notreceive substantial authority over the critical resources, especially staff.

The issues surrounding chartering and contracting as strategies for interventionmirror 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, sufficientinterest in contracting with school districts to run turnaround schools. Most of the



executives at the 50 CMOs and EMOs interviewed for that study expressed skepticismthat the contracts would provide them with the autonomy and the resources theybelieve would be required to turn around a struggling school. The experience of thosewho 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 drawarea 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 autonomyfrom 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 districtbureaucracy, which precipitated issues around facility use and non-educational servicessuch as transportation and food.

In short, chartering and contracting have not proved, by themselves, to be the answerto the problem of chronically under-performing schools. While these “outsourced-management” arrangements show promise in sometimes bringing together importantelements 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, inaddition, other questions that are difficult to address: for example, what happens whena contract for management of an under-performing school expires? If the work hasbeen successful, is the contract extended or is the now adequately-performing schoolreturned to the school district – and under what kinds of conditions?

Outcomes emerging from some larger district/partner collaborations, such as the FirstThings First program being implemented by the Kansas City, KS school district with thenon-profit group IRRE (Institute for Research and Reform in Education), indicate that sustained, comprehensive partnerships encompassing all three forms of change, in somemanner, can produce improvement. The question is whether – and how – school districtsand states can combine effective partnering with outside-of-the-system conditions and acomprehensive, integrated reform approach to turn around the most dysfunctional, mostconsistently under-performing schools. That question is taken up in Part 5 of this report.

How Ready Are Districts to Contract Successfully withTurnaround 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 withlegal/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 casesbuttressed 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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A Hybrid Inside/Outside Model:Boston’s Pilot Schools

As shown in Figure AD, there is a continuum of possibilities between Miami-Dade’sinternal, district-centric effort to transform operating conditions in strugglingschools and the outsourcing strategies of chartering and contracting. Some districtshave pursued a strategy that combines inside and outside approaches to conditionschange, the best example of which may be Boston’s “pilot schools” strategy. Pilotschools first opened in 1995 through an unusual agreement between the district,the teachers’ union, and other parties. Under this agreement, pilot schools enjoyfive “autonomies”: budget, staffing, scheduling, curriculum/instruction/assessment,and governance/policies – in short, precisely the sort of authority associated withconditions change we have studied in this report. Yet unlike charter and contractschools, pilot schools are still squarely within-district schools, and staff remainmembers of the city’s collective bargaining unit.

A recent evaluation of Boston’s pilot schools found that they use their autonomyto 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 studentperformance results for the pilot schools, relative to regular district schools.(For example, 84% of pilot school students passed the state 10th grade EnglishLanguage Arts exam in 2005, compared to 58% of Boston Public School studentsoverall. 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 reflectsthe idea that decentralizing some forms of decision-making authority will ensurethat “those closest to the students... get to make the key decisions” (to quote fromNew 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 hadits heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that’s because it is a descendent inmany ways of that movement, but with more careful attention being paid, generally,to the mix of “tight” (centralized) and “loose” (decentralized) authorities acrossthe various domains in which schools operate: instruction, assessment, humanresource management, facilities management, transportation, policy compliance,etc. We study the loose-tight blend of authority in our discussion of a potentialstate 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, transformationalturnaround 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, oraccept much more intensive state intervention. All four schools elected, with unionsupport and 80% faculty votes, to enter into Co-Pilot status and submitted plansthat 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 autonomiesdescribed here, supported by their district and a Co-Pilot network managed by the Center for Collaborative Education. It’s an interesting experiment in achievingthe right balance of local control/buy-in, state-specified turnaround criteria, andnetwork 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 thenetwork – and ensuring that the network provider has the necessary resources to provide the required external capacity.



A Demanding StrategyTwo broad points about conditionschange as a key element in turningaround low-performing schoolsappear warranted from our examina-tion of what’s been tried. First: thenature of this principle and the newness of its application within aturnaround context point to the needfor much more research into whichauthorities can effectively be decen-tralized and which should more logi-cally remain the province of a cen-tralized network operator – in mostcases, a school district – and how thisloose-vs.-tight equation should beadjusted for higher, lower, or themost chronically poor-performingschools. “Loose-vs.-tight,” in ourview, may well become the criticalschool reform research question ofthis decade. (For a compelling analy-sis already published, see Colby,Smith, and Shelton, 2005. MassInsight is planning an in-depthresearch-and-development process to produce a set of recommendationson this issue for school networks.)

Second: districts and states need substantial capacity of their own to engage in successful conditionschange, even if it is part of a strategy

that devolves authority to schools or to outside providers. It is temptingto think of changing conditions as a low-investment strategy, one thatinvolves changing rules and policiesbut otherwise not requiring the sub-stantial funding and related supportassociated with such approaches asproviding guidance via school assis-tance teams. Research and experiencewith conditions change, however, tellanother story. Chartering and con-tracting, for example, require signifi-cant investment in systems to recruitand develop providers, select quali-fied operators, design RFPs and contracts that reflect research-basedreform criteria, monitor contract performance, and take action whencontract performance falls short.Failure to develop such systemsunderlies many of the problems thathave emerged with chartering andcontracting approaches nationally.(Kowal and Arkin, 2005; Arkin andKowal, 2005) The importance of suchsystems would be doubled when adistrict or state wants to undertakeconditions change for the purpose of school turnaround – and doubledagain when turnaround is undertakenat scale, across a number of schoolsand districts simultaneously.

The Five Autonomies of Boston’s Pilot Schools

Staffing: Teachers who work in Pilot Schools are exempt from teachers’ union contractwork rules, while still receiving union salary, benefits, and accrual of seniority withinthe district. Teachers voluntarily choose to work at Pilot Schools; when hired, they signwhat is called an “election-to-work agreement,” which stipulates the work conditionsfor each school for the coming school year. The agreement is revisited and revisedannually 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 equalto other BPS (Boston Public) schools that each Pilot School is able to allocate as theysee 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 pupilamount 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 fulfilleach 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. Staffengagement [reportedly has] increased with their increased decision-making capabilities.

Governance: Several different decision-making bodies exist in Pilot Schools, drawingon the voices of staff, students, and families. Staff decision-making groups may includeleadership teams, curriculum teams, and committees. Governing boards in Pilot Schoolshave more authority than traditional school site councils. Pilot School governing boardsconsist of the principal, staff (at least four), family representatives, community mem-bers (including from higher education, business, community organizations), and formiddle and high schools, students. Their respective peers elect staff, family, and studentrepresentatives, while the overall governing board selects community members.

Scheduling: Schools vary the length and schedule of instructional periods, whichallows staff more flexibility in their teaching. Many Pilot Schools choose to increasethe length of instructional blocks to improve teaching and learning. Extra time allowsstaff and students to pursue a subject more deeply. Teachers also have the possibilityof teaching an interdisciplinary curriculum and team-teaching. Pilot Schools are [also]able to modify the school schedule and calendar. High schools may determine start andend times for their schools (elementary and middle schools are still constrained by thedistrict bus schedule); as a result, most Pilot high schools start later in the day thanregular BPS schools.

Excerpted from The Essential Guide to Pilot Schools, Center for Collaborative Education; available at www.cce.org

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AIR/SRI American Institutes for Research & SRI International.(2005). The National Evaluation of High School Transformation:Executive Summary: Evaluation of the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation’s High School Grants, 2001–2004. Retrieved fromAmerican Institutes for Research website: http://www.air.org/pub-lications/pubs_ehd_school_reform.aspx.

Anyon, J. (2005). Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, UrbanEducation, and a New Social Movement. New York: Routledge.

Anyon, Jean. (2005a, March). What “Counts” as Education Policy?Notes Towards a New Paradigm. Harvard Education Review.

Archer, Jeff (September 13, 2006). Leading the Learning. Bethesda, MD: Education Week.

Arkin, M. D. & Kowal, J.M. (2005). School Restructuring Options Under No Child Left Behind: What Works When?Reopening as a Charter School. Retrieved from The Center forComprehensive School Reform and Improvement website:http://www.ncrel.org/csri/resources/ncrel/knowledgeissues/Reopening.htm.

Berends, M., Bodilly, S., & Kirby, S.N. (2002). Facing theChallenges of Whole-School Reform: New American Schools After a Decade. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Berliner, David C. (2006). Our Impoverished View of Education Reform [Electronic version]. Teachers College Record, 108 (6), 949-995.

Borman, G. D. & Rachuba, L.T. (2001, February). AcademicSuccess Among Poor and Minority Students: An Analysis ofCompeting Models of School Effects. Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk. Report No. 52.

Brady, Ronald C. (2003, January). Can Failing Schools Be Fixed? Retrieved from Thomas B. Fordham Institute website: http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publi-cation.cfm?id=2.

Bridgeland, J.M., Dilulio Jr., J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts.Retrieved from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website:http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Education/TransformingHighSchools/RelatedInfo/SilentEpidemic.htm.

Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G. J., Klebanov, P. K., & Sealand, N. (1993). Do Neighborhoods Influence Child and AdolescentDevelopment? American Journal of Sociology, 99(2), 353-395.

Carey, Kevin. (2005). One Step from the Finish Line: HigherCollege Graduation Rates Are Within Our Reach. Washington,DC: The Education Trust.

Carter, S.C. (2000). No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing,High-Poverty Schools. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation.

Center on Education Policy. (2006). From the Capital to theClassroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act. Washington, DC.

Center for Collaborative Education. (2006). Progress and Promise:Results from the Boston Pilot Schools. Boston, MA.

Center for Collaborative Education. (2006). Essential Guide to Pilot Schools. Boston, MA. Retrieved from http://www.cce.org.

Chenoweth, Karin. (2007). It’s Being Done: Academic Success inUnexpected Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Colby, Susan, Smith, Kim, & Shelton, Jim. (2005). Expanding the Supply of High-Quality Public Schools.Retrieved from The Bridgespan Group website:http://www.bridgespangroup.org/PDF/ExpandingtheSupplyofHighQualityPublicSchools.pdf.

Comer, James P. (2002). Waiting for a Miracle: Why SchoolsCan’t Solve our Problems and How We Can. Perspectives onUrban Education.

Cotton, Kathleen. (1995). Effective Schooling Practices: A Research Synthesis. Retrieved from Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory website:http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/esp/esp95.html#effschres.

CPE/Caliber Associates. (2005). Research Review: High-perform-ing, High-poverty Schools. Retrieved from Center for PublicEducation website: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org.

David, J., & Coe, P., et al. (2003). Improving Low-performingSchools: A Study of Kentucky’s Highly Skilled Educator Program.Lexington, KY: Partnership for Kentucky Schools.

DiBiase, R. W. (2005). State Involvement in School Restructuring under No Child Left Behind. Retrieved from Education Commission of the States website:http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=6428.

Donahue Institute. (2007, April). Gaining Traction: UrbanEducators’ 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.

Duncan, Greg J., & Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne. (1997). Consequences 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 SchoolTurnaround Process in 10 Virginia Schools. Charlottesville, VA:Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education.

The Education Partnership. (2007). Teacher Contracts: Restoring the Balance. Providence, RI.

The Education Trust. (2004). Education Watch: Achievement GapSummary Tables. Retrieved from The Education Trust website:http://www.edtrust.org/edtrust/summaries2004/2004AchievementGapandSummaryTables.pdf.

The Education Trust. (2005a, November). Gaining Traction,Gaining Ground: How some High Schools Accelerate Learning for Struggling Students. Washington, DC.

The Education Trust. (2005b). The Power to Change: High Schoolsthat Help all Students Achieve. Washington, DC.

Elmore, R. F. (1996a). Policy Choices in the Assessment of Work Readiness: Strategy and Structure. In L. B. Resnick and J. G. Wirt (Eds.), Linking School and Work: Roles for Standardsand Assessment (pp. 53-78). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Elmore, R. F. (1996b). Getting to Scale with Good EducationalPractice [Electronic version]. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 1-26.

Elmore, R. F. (2002). Bridging the Gap Between Standards and Achievement: The Imperative for Professional Development in Education. Washington DC: Albert Shanker Institute.

Farah, M.J., Noble, K.G. & Hurt, H. (2006). Poverty, Privilege, andBrain Development: Empirical Findings and Ethical Implications.In J. Illes (Ed.), Neuroethics; Defining the Issues in Research,Practice and Policy. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Farrell, J. M. (2005). Miami-Dade County’s Strategies to Improve its Worst Schools are Intense and Focused. But Do They Work? Retrieved from Scholastic website:http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/sept05/articles.asp?arti-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 at http://www.massinsight.com/AppendixB.


Fix, Michael & Passel, Jeffrey S. (2003). U.S. Immigration: Trends& Implications for Schools. Retrieved from Urban Institute website:http://www2.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410654_NABEPresentation.pdf

Fullan, Michael, Hill, Peter & Crevola, Carmel. (2006).Breakthrough. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Fullan, Michael (2005). Leadership and Sustainability: SystemThinkers in Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Gill, B. P., Hamilton, L. S., Lockwood, J. R., Marsh, J. A., Zimmer,R. W., Hill, D., et al. (2005). Inspiration, Perspiration, and Time: Operations and Achievement in Edison Schools. SantaMonica, CA: RAND.

Gill, B.P. et al (2007). State Takeover, School Restructuring,Private Management, and Student Achievement in Philadelphia.Pittsburgh, PA; RAND Corporation.

Haberman, Martin. (1999, March, May). Victory at Buffalo Creek:What Makes a School Serving Low-income Hispanic ChildrenSuccessful? Instructional Leader, 12(2), 1-5, 10-12; 12(3), 6-10.

Hamel, Gary. (2002). Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Living.Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Hart, Betty & Risley, Todd R. (2003, spring). The EarlyCatastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3. Retrieved from American Educator website: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/catastrophe.

Haycock, Kati, Jerald, Craig, & Huang, Sandra. (2001). Closing the Gap: Done in a Decade. Thinking K-16, 5(2).

Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers Make a Difference: What Is the Research Evidence? Retrieved from Australian Council forEducational Research website: http://www.acer.edu.au/work-shops/documents/Teachers_Make_a_Difference_Hattie.pdf.

Hay Group. (2004). Working Paper: Bridging the Pay-for-performance Gap. Philadelphia, PA.

Hess, G. A., Jr. (2003). Reconstitution: Three Years Later.Education and Urban Society 35(3), 300-327.

Hill, Paul, & Celio, Mary Beth. (1998). Fixing Urban Schools.Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Hoffman, C. (1989). Strategies for Corporate Turnarounds: What Do We Know about Them? Journal of General Management14(3), 46-66.

Ingersoll, Richard M. (2004, November). Why Do High-povertySchools Have Difficulty Staffing their Classrooms with QualifiedTeachers? Washington, DC: Center for American Progress and the Institute for America’s Future.

Kannapel, P. J., & Clements, S. K. (2005, February). Inside theBlack Box of High Performing High-poverty Schools. Retrievedfrom The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence website:http://www.prichardcommittee.org/Ford%20Study/FordReportJE.pdf.

Kowal, J. M. & Arkin, M. D. (2005). School Restructuring Optionsunder No Child Left Behind: What Works When? Contracting withExternal Education Management Providers. One report from five-part What Works When? series. Retrieved from The Center forComprehensive School Reform and Improvement website:http://www.ncrel.org/csri/resources/ncrel/knowledgeissues/Contracting.htm.

Kowal, J. M. & Hassel, E. A. (2005). School Restructuring Optionsunder No Child Left Behind: What Works When? Turnaroundswith New Leaders and Staff. Retrieved from The Center forComprehensive School Reform and Improvement website:http://www.centerforcsri.org/pubs/restructuring/KnowledgeIssues4Turnaround.pdf

Laguarda, K. G. (2003). State-sponsored Technical Assistance to Low-performing Schools: Strategies from Nine States. Chicago,IL: AERA.

Lane, B., & Gracia, S. (2005). State-level Support forComprehensive School Reform: Implications for Policy and Practice.Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 10(1), 85-112.

Lee, Valerie & Burkam, David. (2002). Inequality at the StartingGate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as ChildrenBegin School. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute.

Leithwood, K. & Louis, K. S., Anderson, S., & Whalstrom, K.(2004). How Leadership Influences Student Learning. Ontario,Canada: Center for Applied Research and EducationalImprovement and Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Connie Lestor, Kentucky Department of Education. (2006,January 27). Interview conducted by Bryan Hassel, Public Impact, Inc.

Lippman, Laura, Burns, Shelley & McArthur, Edith. (1996, June).Urban Schools: The Challenge of Location and Poverty.Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Marzano, Robert J. (2000). A New Era of School Reform: Going Where the Research Takes us. Retrieved from Beresford,South Dakota School District website:http://www.beresford.k12.sd.us/Staff%20Page/NewEraSchoolReform.pdf.

Marzano, Robert J. (2003). What Works in Schools: TranslatingResearch into Action. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervisionand Curriculum Development.

Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, 2001-05, BuildingBlocks Initiative. Available: http://www.buildingblocks.org orhttp://www.massinsight.org. Strategies include: Blackstone Valley, Charlestown High, Codman, Lowell Middlesex Academy, MATCH, Sterling Middle School, University ParkCampus School.

Mass Insight Education & Research Institute. (2007). ConsideringSchool Turnarounds: Market Research and Analysis in Six UrbanDistricts. Produced for NewSchools Venture Fund. Boston, MA.

MBDA Minority Business Development Agency. (1999,September). Minority Population Growth: 1995 to 2050. Retrieved from U.S. Department of Commerce website:http://www.mbda.gov.

McRobbie, J. (1998). Can State Intervention Spur Academic Turnaround? Retrieved from WestEd website:http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/470.

Mead, S. (2007, Winter). The Easy Way Out. Education Next.Retrieved from Education Next, Hoover Institution website:http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/4612407.html.

Mintrop, H. & Trujillo, T. (2005). Corrective Action in Low-performing Schools: Lessons for NCLB Implementation from State and District Strategies in First-generation AccountabilitySystems. Retrieved from National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing website:http://www.cse.ucla.edu/reports/R657.pdf.

Murnane, R. J. & Levy, F. (1996). Teaching the New Basic Skills:Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a ChangingEconomy. New York: Free Press.

National Association of Charter School Authorizers. (2005).Principles and Standards of Quality Charter School Authorizing.Alexandria, VA.

National Center for Educational Accountability/ Just for the Kids.(2006). Best Practice Summary Reports. Retrieved from Just for theKids website: http://www.just4kids.org/en/press_room/publica-tions.cfm.


NCCP National Center for Children in Poverty. (2006, December).Who Are America’s Poor Children? The Official Story. New York: National Center for Children in Poverty,Columbia University.

NCES National Center for Education Statistics. (2005). The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2005. Washington, DC.

NCES National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006).Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commissionon the Skills of the American Work Force. Washington, DC.

Nettles, Saundra, & Robinson, Frances. (1998, October). Exploring theDynamics of Resilience in an Elementary School. Center for Researchon the Education of Students Placed At Risk. Report No. 26.

Orfield, Gary, & Lee, Chungmei. (2005). Why Segregation Matters:Poverty and Educational Inequality. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity, The Civil Rights Project.

Orr, M. T., Byrne-Jimenez, M., McFarlane, P., & Brown, B. (2005,January). Leading out from Low-performing Schools: The UrbanPrincipal Experience. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4(1), 23-54.

Perie, M., Moran, R., & Lutkus, A.D. (2005). NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance inReading and Mathematics (NCES 2005–464). U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Peske, Heather G. & Haycock, Kati. (2006, June). TeachingInequality: How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality. Washington, DC: The Education Trust.

Policy Studies Associates. (2005). Teacher Quality and StudentAchievement: Key Lessons Learned. Retrieved from Center for PublicEducation website: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org.

Ragland, M.A., Clubine, B., Constable, D., & Smith P.A. (2002).Expecting Success: A Study of Five High-performing High-povertySchools. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.

Rathbun, Amy, West, Jerry, & Hausken, Elvira Germino. (2004).From Kindergarten through Third Grade: Children’s BeginningSchool Experiences. Washington, DC: National Center forEducation Statistics.

Reeves, D. B. (2000). The 90/90/90 Schools: A Case Study. InAccountability in Action: A Blueprint for Learning Organizations, 2ndedition. Retrieved from Center for Performance Assessment website:http://www.makingstandardswork.com/Downloads/AinA%20Ch19.pdf.

Reeves, Douglas B. (2003). High Performance in High PovertySchools: 90/90/90 and Beyond. Retrieved from Sabine Parish School District website: http://www.sabine.k12.la.us/online/leader-shipacademy/high%20performance%2090%2090%2090%20and%20beyond.pdf.

Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy. (2003). Head ofthe Class: Characteristics of Higher Performing Urban High Schoolsin Massachusetts. Cambridge, MA.

Rhim, L. M. (2004). Restructuring Schools in Baltimore: An Analysis of State and District Efforts. Retrieved from Education Commission of the States website:http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chousid=5326.

Rhim, L. M. (2005a). Restructuring Schools in Chester Upland,Pennsylvania: An Analysis of State Restructuring Efforts. Denver,CO: Education Commission of the States.

Rhim, L. M. (2005b). School Restructuring in Philadelphia:Management Lessons from 2002 to 2005. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States.

Rouse, Cecilia Elena. (2005, October 24-25). The Labor MarketConsequences of an Inadequate Education. Paper presented at the Social Costs of Inadequate Education Symposium, Columbia Teachers College.

Rowan, B., Correnti, R. & Miller, R. (2002). What Large-scale,Survey Research Tells us about Teacher Effects on StudentAchievement: Insights from the Prospects Study of ElementarySchools. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research inEducation.

Sanders, W. L., Wright, S. P., & Horn, S. P. (1997). Teacher andClassroom Context Effects on Student Achievement: Implicationsfor Teacher Evaluation. Journal of Personnel Evaluation inEducation 11(1), 57-67.

Shear, Linda, Song, Mengli, House, Ann, Martinez, Ben, Means,Barbara, & Smerdon, Becky. (2005, April). Creating Cultures forLearning: Supportive Relationships in New and Redesigned HighSchools. Washington, DC and Menlo Park, CA: American Institutesfor Research and SRI International.

Springboard/NCEA. (2005). Just for the Kids – California: HighSchool Best Practices Study, 2004-05. Austin: National Center for Educational Accountability.

Swanson, C.B. (2004). Who Graduates? Who Doesn’t: A Statistical Portrait of Public High School Graduation, Class of 2001. Retrieved from The Urban Institute website:http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410934_WhoGraduates.pdf.

Thernstrom, Abigail and Stephan. (2003). No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Thomas, M. Donald & Bainbridge, William L. (2001). All ChildrenCan Learn: Facts and Fallacies. Retrieved from School Match website: http://www.schoolmatch.com/articles/PDKMAY01.htm.

Thompson, James D. (1967). Organizations in Action: Social ScienceBases of Administrative Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Tough, Paul. (2006, November 26). What It Takes to Make a Student. New York Times Sunday Magazine.

U.S. Department of Education. (2004). Innovations in Education:Successful Charter Schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement.

Walberg, Herbert J., (1984, May). Improving the Productivity of America’s Schools. Educational Leadership, 41(8).

Wallis, Claudia & Steptoe, Sonja. (2007, May 24). How to Fix No Child Left Behind. Time magazine.

Waters, T., & Marzano, R. J., et al. (2003). Balanced Leadership:What 30 Years of Research Tells us about the Effect of Leadership on Student Achievement. Retrieved from Mid-continent Researchfor Education and Learning website:http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/LeadershipOrganizationDevelopment/5031RR_BalancedLeadership.pdf.

Wong, K. K. & Shen, F. X. (2003a). City and State Takeover as a School Reform Strategy. Retrieved from Education ResourcesInformation Center website: http://www.ericdigest.org/2003-2/city.html.

Wong, K. K. & Shen, F. X. (2003b, October 15-17). When MayorsLead Urban Schools: Towards Developing a Framework to Assess theEffects of Mayoral Takeover of Urban Districts. Paper presented atthe School Board Politics Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ziebarth, T. (2004). State Takeovers and Reconstitutions. Denver,CO: Education Commission of the States.

Ziebarth, T. & Wohlstetter, P. (2005). Charters as a “SchoolTurnaround” Strategy. In R. J. Lake & P.T. Hill (Eds.), Hopes,Fears, and Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in2005. Seattle: University of Washington, National Charter SchoolResearch 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 significantlyimprove student achievement, with a focus on closing achievement gaps.

Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: that change at scaledepends 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 reformmodel now inform the organization's national work on two high-impact goals: using AdvancedPlacement® as a lever to attain excellence in math and science achievement and to transformschool culture, and the successful turnaround of consistently under-performing public schools.

18 Tremont Street, Suite 930, Boston, MA 02108617-778-1500 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 publiclibraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a greateducation 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 Stonesiferand 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 SponsorsBill & Melinda Gates FoundationBarr FoundationThe Boston FoundationNational Math & Science Initiative• Exxon Mobil Corporation• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation• Michael & Susan Dell FoundationNellie Mae Education FoundationNewSchools Venture Fund

Major and Contributing SponsorsAnalog DevicesBank of AmericaIrene E. and George A. Davis FoundationEMC CorporationGenzyme CorporationGoodwin ProcterIBMIntel CorporationLiberty MutualMass High Tech CouncilMass Mutual InsuranceMicrosoft CorporationThe Noyce FoundationState Street CorporationTeradyneVerizon Communications

Public Sources of FundsFederal/State• Massachusetts Department of Education• Title IIA and IIB Math and Science Partnership• Comprehensive School Reform• Massachusetts Board of Higher EducationDistricts/Schools: Membership fees and earned revenue for field services

Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, founded in 1997, is an independentnon-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly improve student achievement, with a focus on closingachievement gaps.

Mass Insight's education reform strategies are defined by two convictions: thatchange 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 Insightimplemented 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 forpractical 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), andexpressly designed to spur action on both the policy and practice fronts. Our BuildingBlocks Initiative (www.buildingblocks.org) has been cited as a model for effective-practice research by the U.S. Department of Education. The landmark Keep thePromise Initiative studied urban, at-risk high school students in the first three classessubject to Massachusetts' MCAS graduation requirement and district strategies forserving them.

Policy facilitators. We are a leading statewide convener and catalyst for thoughtful,informed state education policymaking. Mass Insight's Great Schools Campaign and itspredecessor, the Campaign for Higher Standards, have played a highly visible role inshaping the priorities of Massachusetts' second decade of school reform. Mass Insightconsults on education policy formation outside Massachusetts as well - most recentlyhelping 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 consultingservices to schools and school districts - particularly to members of the Great SchoolsCoalition, 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 andimproved performance on AP tests to catalyze dramatic cultural and instructionalchange in schools across grades 6-12. The effort will be funded in part through theNational Math & Science Initiative, which recently awarded Mass Insight $13 millionas the Massachusetts lead on a competitive national RFP.

See www.massinsight.org for more details.




TheTurnaround

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.

The Turnaround

Challeng

eM

ass Insight

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