Policy Analysis: Proposals for Improving Turnaround Strategies

Policy Analysis: Proposals for Improving Turnaround Strategies

Anna Tabet

Introduction

The current administration has made the nation’s lowest performing schools a top priority, setting a goal to turnaround the 5000 lowest performing schools and committing $5 billion to the cause. There has been a great emphasis on turnaround strategies through Race to the Top and the Title I School Improvement grants and the federal government has outlined four models for improvement: turnaround, schools closure, restart and transformation. The Institute of Education Sciences defines turnaround strategy as a policy that will help transform failing schools quickly, with visible improvement within three years (IES, 2008). Turnaround strategies are usually focused on improving test scores so as to avoid a failing label by No Child Left Behind measures. This type of progress is made by a brief and unsustainable period of work and rarely translates to long-term improvement of the school. As Elmore states, "many so-called "turnaround" schools are, in fact, functioning only at the minimal level required to keep them from returning to failing status. Turning around failing schools, in other words, is not the same as improving them" (Ascher, Ikeda, & Fruchter, 1998; ViterittiKosar, 2001 in Elmore, 2003). In order to create more meaningful and sustainable turnarounds, we propose that all models, in addition to our critiques, incorporate the following strategies:

• States must create a system for measuring the success of turnarounds that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data. This would allow states to more holistically assess the progress of the turnaround strategies. For example, it would shed a positive light on schools that may have had minimal test scores gains but had made deep improvements in culture and practice and a negative light on those schools that had made drastic test score improvements without building the capacity of the school to continue improving. This assessment system would allow states to implement turnaround strategies while keeping their focus on the creation on sustainable and quality educational institutions.
• Each improvement model should require the creation of a rigorous, strategic and measurable plan for student achievement.
• Each improvement model should also be required to utilize a community partnership with an organization possessing a record of achievement with turnaround schools.

School Closure Model:

This model proposes to close the failing school and transfer the students to other high-achieving schools in the district. We propose that this model be removed from the list of potential strategies to be used with the lowest performing schools because there is little evidence of the effectiveness of this policy. The Consortium on Chicago School Research researched the effects of school closure on the students in the Chicago Public School district and found that school closings had little effect – positive or negative (CCSR 2099). This was due in large part to the lack of ‘better’ schools. Most students, except those who went to schools with top quartile test scores, maintained the same achievement trajectory that was predicted at their previous school. This lack of academic gain coupled with the trauma that school closure can bring to a community should signal to states that this not the path to increasing student achievement.

Restart Model: Charter conversion

In its current form, this model of school improvement relies heavily on closing schools and reopening them under the management of a charter school. However many of the successful charter organizations only start new schools, rather than reform failing ones claiming that“starting new schools and having control over hiring, length of day, student recruitment, and more gives us a pure opportunity to prove that low-income kids can achieve at the same levels as their more affluent peers” (Smarick, 2010). For charter schools to be effective as restarts, they would need to have the freedom over hiring and length of day that has made them successful. However, charters should only be considered for restarts if they are willing to accept the same student population rather than hold a lottery for enrollment. It is important that the new school serve those students who were languishing in the closed school rather than restart with students who all had to make the choice to attend the school. Without this provision, charter schools should not receive the Title I School Improvement funding.

Restart Model: District School

In addition to restarting a school as a charter, we believe it should be possible to close a failing school and reopen it as a district school. As written, the restart option places too much hope and responsibility on charter schools to remedy our education system.This restart model would replace the Turnaround Model outlined by the federal government by serving as an additional alternative to dealing with failing schools. In this new District Restart Model, all staff including administrators would be required to reapply for their jobs. This would allow for a more strategic replacement of personnel, preventing the firing of valuable staff just for the sake of reaching a benchmark of 50% as mandated by the Turnaround Model. The restart school would also be required to create a comprehensive and measurable plan for student achievement as well as a community partnership just as all school improvement strategies are required. However this restart model allows for more flexibility in improving student achievement.

Transformational Model

The federal government’s transformational model provides a more prescriptive and perhaps a less draconian plan for school turnaround. The federal government has outlined four strategies that must be implemented under the transformational model: developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, comprehensive instructional reform strategies, extending learning time and creating community-oriented schools and providing operating flexibility and sustained support (See Table 1 for more information) (US Department of Education, 2009). While there is a paucity of research regarding effective means of turning around failing schools, we believe that this model could be improved by following the recommendations of Mass Insight’s turnaround framework and the guidelines proposed by the Institutes of Education Sciences.

Changing Conditions

A major component of the Mass Insight model for school transformation involves changing conditions and dismantling the barriers to reform. Conditions in this sense refers not the physical setting of the school but rather “the systemic operating conditions that actively shape how everyone – adults and students alike – behave in the school” (Mass Insight, 2007). The Transformational model as written, recognizes the need for this type of change by giving schools more flexibility over their budgets, the ability to extend their learning day and provisions for assembling a quality and committed staff. By reducing these barriers to school operation, the leaders of these struggling schools are empowered to enact real and dramatic changes.

Reducing barriers is not enough on its own, it is also necessary to create incentives to take the large and often painful steps of school turnaround. Changing the conditions of school reform also entails changing the incentives behind reform strategies. Currently the incentive system is driven by punitive and restrictive measures such as school closure (No Child Left Behind [NCLB], 2002). The need for more positive incentives has been recognized by both the federal government and Mass Insight. At the school level, there need to be more incentives to reward quality teachers such as “differential pay, low-interest mortgages, loan-forgiveness, and leadership roles” (Mass Insight, 2007). Effective teachers and school leaders also need to be recognized and rewarded for their progress (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). At the district level the stigma associated with the label of ‘turnaround school’ needs to be changed so that the label is valued “due to the attention, resources, condition changes and promise that attach to the status” (Mass Insight, 2007).

Changing Capacity

The unwritten message behind No Child Left Behind has been that failing schools are somehow choosing to fail and that the threat of closure should be enough to motivate significant changes (Elmore, 2004). However the number of schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress, as outlined by NCLB each grows each year (Mass Insight, 2009). Clearly if school improvement only required a choice, this list would be considerably smaller. Increasing the capacity for school improvement requires developing the people within the school. The federal government has mandated that educators in turnaround schools should receive “relevant, ongoing, high-quality job-embedded professional development” (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). This stipulation requires states and districts to take on the responsibility of identifying and cultivating high quality providers of professional development. The other critical piece of increasing capacity of schools to improve requires schools to look beyond themselves. It is unreasonable to expect that all responsibility for improvement should fall on the individual school. Community partnerships have proven to be a critical piece in the existing turnaround success stories (Mass Insight, 2007). The idea behind this strategy is that the responsibility of turning around a school needs to be shared with an outside organization in order to increase accountability for the results.

Changing Support Structures

Turning around a failing school is extremely difficult work. The demanding nature of this work coupled with the isolating tendencies of education can make the task seem overwhelming. Turnaround schools should be clustered together in support networks in order to facilitate a sharing of resources and best practices. Mass Insight’s Turnaround Challenge document outlinesdifferent possibilities for clustering schools, depending on the needs and limitations of the school district. Schools may be clustered by location, by type of education institution (such as middle school) or in networks of longitudinally linked schools (Mass Insight, 2007). Networks can aid in the implementation of many of the strategies outlined by the federal government such as methods of differentiation and data analysis by sharing best practices across the different schools. The networks can also increase the effectiveness of community partnerships by capitalizing on the improved infrastructure provided by networks.

Counter-Arguments and Rebuttals

These models for turning around our nation’s lowest performing schools all require significant changes in school structure, specifically personnel changes. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress for five years must create and implement a restructuring plan. There were several options that schools could choose, one of which was “any other major restructuring of the school’s governance designed to produce major reform” (Mead, 2007). This vague measure was chosen by the majority of schools in need of restructuring as opposed to many of the more extreme measures such as school closure or being taken over by a charter school. While some critics may take issue with the harshness of these turnaround policies, the number of schools that have continually failed to improve using these ‘soft touch’ measures proves the need for more extreme actions.

Flexibility in choosing a school’s staff is present in every turnaround model proposed in this policy. This is a departure from the guaranteed job security provided by union contracts and therefore likely to invited criticism from teacher’s unions. While these reforms might result in the loss of jobs for some, there must be a continual focus on student achievement – ultimately schools must serve children, not adults. However there are ways to incorporate the needs of educators into these plans. Helping teachers find alternate placements as well as offering opportunities for professional development can help create a stronger all-around teaching force while allowing turnaround schools to choose staff that are best suited to their challenging situation.

Conclusion

Turning around failing schools is very difficult work. However, there are policies that can make this task more attainable. Each year, the regulations of No Child Left Behind are marking more and more schools as in need of improvement and the better strategies we have to offer, the better chances these schools have to improve. The timing of these measures could not be more pressing as there are thousands of students who are currently enrolled in these turnaround schools and we owe it to them to identify the best strategies and put them to work immediately.

Table 1: Description of Transformational Model by U.S. Department of Education

Under SIG’s transformation model, a school is required to implement all of the following four strategies:
1) Developing teacher and school leader effectiveness.

1. Use evaluations that are based in significant measure on student growth to improve teachers’ and school leaders’ performance;
2. Identify and reward school leaders, teachers, and other staff who improve student achievement outcomes and identify and remove those who do not;
3. Replace the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformation model;
4. Provide relevant, ongoing, high-quality job-embedded professional development
5. Implement strategies designed to recruit, place, and retain high-quality staff.

2) Comprehensive instructional reform strategies.

1. Use data to identify and implement comprehensive, research-based, instructional programs that are vertically aligned from one grade to the next as well as aligned with State academic standards; and
2. Differentiate instruction to meet students’ needs.

3) Extending learning time and creating community-oriented schools.

1. Provide more time for students to learn core academic content by expanding the school day, the school week, or the school year, and increasing instructional time for core academic subjects during the school day;
2. Provide more time for teachers to collaborate,
3. Provide more time for enrichment activities for students
4. Provide ongoing mechanisms for family and community engagement.

4) Providing operating flexibility and sustained support.

1. Give the school sufficient operating flexibility (including in staffing, calendars/time, and budgeting) to implement fully a comprehensive approach to substantially improve student achievement outcomes; and
2. Ensure that the school receives ongoing, intensive technical assistance and related support from the LEA, the SEA, or a designated external lead partner organization (such as a school turnaround organization or an EMO).

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