Salvaging Assets: Considering Alternatives to School Closure

[pdf] Closing bad schools is necessary to maintain quality in a system based on performance accountability. However, even “failing” schools may have pockets of strength and/or “assets” that are worth preserving: a committed parent body, high-quality teachers, a valuable school building in a tight real estate market. In this report, prepared for the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s National Charter School Research Project, Lucy Steiner and Bryan Hassel draw upon interviews with high-quality charter school authorizers and school districts to offer a framework and preliminary lessons for considering alternatives to school closures. Three approaches — installation of new leaders, school reconstitution (where governance structures and personnel are replaced but students remain) and facility acquisition (new school operator takes over a failing school’s facility) — have shown promise for intervening in failing schools when closure is not the best option.