Public Impact

Act Strategically When Schools Fail

Far too many schools under-perform despite years of intervention, assistance, incentives, and sanctions. To respond to this challenge, education leaders need better tools to choose change that works and make chosen changes happen.

Competencies for Turnaround Success Series. Public Impact has developed a series of resources for The Chicago Public Education Fund and District of Columbia Public Schools designed to support school turnarounds. This series was developed for districts and schools that are interested in school turnarounds and have the will to implement this dramatic and forceful change strategy. The series includes two guides that clarify the most critical competencies – or patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting – that enable people to be successful in attempts to transform schools from failure to excellence quickly, one about turnaround school leaders and one about teachers in turnaround schools. The series also includes two toolkits specifically designed to help with selection of leaders and teachers for turnarounds. The toolkits include detailed levels of increasingly effective competence, selection questions and scoring rubrics.

Public Impact has developed a series of resources entitled School Restructuring Options Under No Child Left Behind: What Works When, in conjunction with the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. The series includes a guide to help district and state leaders [pdf] choose the best restructuring option for each school and white papers identifying what we know from research about when the first four restructuring options under NCLB work: reopening as a charter school, contracting with external providers, turnarounds with new leaders and staff, and state takeovers.

Public Impact is also working with the National Association of Charter School Authorizers on a series of publications specifically on “starting fresh” – the chartering and contracting options. The series includes an overview [pdf] and how-to guides on selecting the right providers [pdf], engaging parents and community [pdf], and setting clear contract terms [pdf].

School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement. Prepared for the Center on Innovation and Improvement, this updated and expanded version of Public Impact's 2005 paper reviews the considerable literature from the business, nonprofit, government, and education sectors on what factors make turnarounds most likely to succeed, including the actions turnaround leaders take and the environment in which they work. Click here for a presentation based on this report.

Scroll down to see examples of our other projects in this area.

School Turnarounds: Actions and Results [pdf] by Dana Brinson, Julie Kowal and Bryan Hassel for the Center on Innovation and Improvement, illustrates how the 14 leader actions of successful turnarounds have played out in turnaround schools. This report provides a description of the 14 leader actions, illustrative vignettes, and an annotated bibliography of the case studies included in the report and builds on Public Impact’s prior work entitled School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement, a report on education-specific examples of turnarounds.

Considering School Turnarounds: Market Research and Analysis. One strategy for turning around low-performing schools is to contract with management organizations to operate the schools. Public Impact helped Mass Insight Education conduct a market analysis of the environment for school restructuring by charter management organizations in six target urban areas: Chicago, the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, and Philadelphia for NewSchools Venture Fund. The report revealed interest in this approach to restructuring in three of the districts (Chicago, NYC, and Philadelphia). But even in those districts, constraints prevent this strategy from being widely used. Most notable is the gap between the kinds of autonomy school operators require and the level districts are currently able to offer.

No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB, from AEI press, features a chapter by Julie Kowal and Bryan C. Hassel on NCLB Remedies in Action: Four of NCLB’s “Restructured” Schools. The chapter is part of a comprehensive evaluation of the NCLB remedies edited by Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn, Jr. and it takes a look at what NCLB restructuring looks like “on the ground” in four schools in Michigan and California. With 2,000-3,000 schools likely to be in restructuring by 2008-09, the case studies offer an important picture of how the restructuring requirements of NCLB are being put into practice at the local level. This chapter was presented in November 2006 at the American Enterprise Institute/Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, “Fixing Failing Schools: Is the NCLB Toolkit Working?”. A webcast of the conference is also available.

Using Chartering to Meet Demands of NCLB. In this federally funded initiative, Public Impact partnered with Education Commission of the States to help states and districts use chartering to meet relevant requirements of No Child Left Behind. Through meetings of policymakers and a series of publications on critical issues, the project focuses on using chartering to create new options for families and to intervene in chronically low-performing schools.

Starting Fresh: A New Strategy for Responding to Chronically Low-Performing Schools [pdf]. This report, co-authored by Bryan Hassel and Lucy Steiner and funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, outlines a new approach states can use to respond to schools that continue to struggle despite interventions and accountability measures. Under the "starting fresh" strategy, the state or district essentially opens a new school within the walls of the existing schools. The report discusses why states and districts should add this approach to their toolboxes, and examines the practical challenges of implementing a starting fresh strategy.