Interesting new column here by Jay Mathews. In it, he writes that??striving to turn around chronically low-achieving schools is "a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures. Why not just close them down and start fresh? Why kill ourselves trying to root out the bad habits of failing schools?" He then goes on to cite and discuss (at some length) Andy Smarick's recent article in Education Next, "The Turnaround Fallacy." Andy is a distinguished visiting fellow here at Fordham. All in all, it's a discussion that's definitely worth checking out....
