Years into America’s quest to fix its failing schools, everyone agrees that it is extraordinarily hard work to turn them around. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying.
Indeed, the federal government has spent over $5.7 billion on school improvement grants (SIG) to date and has very little to show for it. Data from 2013 indicated that roughly two-thirds of schools that received SIG funds saw incremental gains in student proficiency—in line with the performance trend for all U.S. schools, including those that didn’t get SIG dollars. Even more disappointingly, one-third of SIG schools did worse after receiving the funding. (A small percentage stayed the same.)
A May 2015 study helped to explain these sobering results. It found that most states lack the expertise to turn around persistently failing schools. In fact, 80 percent of state officials reported “significant gaps” in this realm.
Even when we stumble upon promising strategies, the old familiar barriers make implementation difficult. In 2012, for example, the Center on Education Policy found that a majority of state officials believed that replacing the principal or staff of low-performing schools was a key element in improving student achievement there. Yet many also reported that the tight schedule for implementing SIG grants, combined with various union requirements and other HR restrictions, seriously impeded such changes.
The resultant frustration, at a time when millions of children are stuck in schools that fail to educate them, fueled our interest in better understanding just how America’s fragmented, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance impedes school reform—and how it could itself be reformed. That’s why, over four years ago, we and our friends at the Center for American Progress launched a multi-year initiative to do just that. We commenced that work with an “anchor book” called Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century: Overcoming the Structural Barriers to School Reform. One of the promising innovations it identified was the “recovery school district” (RSD), an alternative to district-based governance and traditional state takeovers. The RSD was then already visible in New Orleans, where the first such venture was undertaken. As new entities charged with running and turning around their states’ schools, RSDs enjoy certain authorities and flexibility—such as the ability to turn schools into charters and to bypass collective bargaining agreements—that allow them to cut the red tape that has made so many schools dysfunctional and hard to change in the first place. Backers of RSDs correctly assume that “failing schools” are merely symptoms; failing districts are the disease.
To conduct a deeper investigation into these alternative arrangements, we enlisted Nelson Smith, former head of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and now senior advisor to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). He launched the series in spring 2013 with an in-depth profile of the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD), followed by a fall 2014 case study of Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA). (A precursor to the current series was his report on Louisiana’s original RSD and its lessons for Fordham’s home state of Ohio.) All three papers provide a detailed history of formidable challenges that these novel arrangements have faced in their respective states.
Last week we released the “capstone report” of this series, in which Smith provides updates to his earlier reviews of the RSD initiatives and adds a comprehensive cataloguing of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere. No other report—we’ve looked!—provides a comparably thorough analysis of turnaround districts and their kindred efforts.
Nelson explains the status of such districts in thirteen states—some of which have crashed and burned, but others of which are very much alive. As we write, a bill creating a turnaround school district just passed in the Nevada legislature, and lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are giving serious consideration to similar initiatives. The number of states undertaking this hugely promising but highly challenging (and endlessly varied) reform might double by mid-summer. What’s clear from the nearly twenty policy and governance recommendations contained in Smith’s brief is that these states and others have a lot to learn from both the failed and the successful attempts.
Here are a few of the report’s key takeaways for policymakers who might consider following in the footsteps of Louisiana, Tennessee, and other pioneers:
1. Call your lawyer. A close reading of the state constitution is essential. Some states are so wedded to traditional forms of “local control” that setting up a state district will require fancy legal footwork, if not a constitutional amendment. (That’s the case in Georgia.) It may be worth taking on this challenge, but it’s wise to know what’s in store.
2. Decide the endgame—for both schools and the turnaround district. Apart from setting goals for school performance, other decisions must be addressed—and the earlier, the better. For example: Who decides if a school returns to its home district? What conditions must the home district fulfill, both before and after any such return?
3. Expect course corrections. Running a statewide district is a huge, complex undertaking full of political, financial, and logistical challenges—not to mention the myriad crises and complications that always arise in institutions serving real children. Leaders need to pay close attention to real-time developments, build in feedback and reflection points, and be ready to pivot when results aren’t there or public support starts to evaporate. Sometimes even turnaround efforts need to turn around.
4. Give the locals a chance. After taking over failing schools, reformers sent by the state may want to clean house and start fresh with a whole new cast of characters. But attracting new talent is not easy, and even dysfunctional systems usually have some able (if underutilized or miscast) people working there. Incumbent staff should be given the opportunity to apply for work under the new arrangement and prove that they can shine under different circumstances.
As with virtually everything in education reform, when it comes to the design of turnaround districts, details truly matter. If these entities are to succeed where other school turnaround efforts have failed, they would do well to learn from the early wins and losses in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan. If you are a policymaker or advocate thinking of proposing a turnaround district for your state, consider our new report required homework. And if you walk away thinking this will be easy, please go back and read it again.
