Corrected: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that the School Turnaround Group, an arm of the Boston-based Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, is working with Texas. The story should have said instead that the group is working with New York, in addition to the five other states.
Includes updates and/or revisions.
School districts are in federal money to turn around their chronically underperforming schools, and in a number of states, local educators overwhelmingly are opting for 鈥渢ransformation,鈥� the least disruptive of four school intervention methods endorsed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
All but seven states have been approved by the U.S. Department of Education to receive their share of the , the supercharged program aimed at reversing years of academic decline at some of the nation鈥檚 most troubled schools.
As state education departments award the grants to eligible schools, the school improvement model known as transformation鈥攚hich, in most cases, requires the assignment of new principals, though not new instructional staff members鈥攊s the one that many educators view as the most feasible and politically palatable.
Two other interventions entail more aggressive shake-ups to staffing. The model known as 鈥渢urnaround鈥� requires schools to replace at least half the existing instructional staff, while 鈥渞estart,鈥� which is the method that converts a school to a charter, would also lead to a dramatic turnover in teaching personnel. The fourth option, 鈥渃losure,鈥� involves shutting down a low-performing school entirely and shifting students to a higher-performing campus.
But one school improvement expert said the long list of specific steps that schools must enact under transformation鈥攊ncluding instituting longer school days and new evaluation systems for principals and teachers that are based, in part, on student-achievement results鈥攎ake the model as stringent, if not more so, than the other three options endorsed by federal education officials.
鈥淭ransformation may be the easiest thing to do politically, but it鈥檚 the hardest to do technically,鈥� said Justin Cohen, the president of the , part of the Boston-based Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, which is working with six states on turnarounds. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a litany of requirements for this model that are fairly intense, like extending the day and requiring new evaluations.鈥�
First Choice
A look at several states around the country reveals that the transformation option is the first choice of most districts and schools.
Of the 113 persistently lowest-achieving schools that have applied for a grant in California, 72 elected for the transformation model, according to data from the state education department. Thirty-two schools would use turnaround, while only eight would convert to a charter school under the restart model. Two would be closed. California has $415 million to dole out among those schools.
Twelve persistently low-achieving schools competed for a piece of New Jersey鈥檚 $45 million share of the school improvement money, and seven of them will use transformation as their method of intervention, while four opted for turnaround and one for restart.
In Minnesota, 22 of 26 schools that applied for the funding have opted for transformation.
And North Carolina education officials awarded grants to 25 schools; 18 of them selected transformation.
Several specific requirements are spelled out in the rules for transformation. They include rewarding teachers, principals, and staff members who deliver increased student-achievement results and identifying and removing those who don鈥檛. Transformation also requires the ongoing use of student data through regular assessments to gauge student learning and alter instructional strategies.
Mr. Cohen, with the School Turnaround Group, said the onus should, in part, be on the public to scrutinize those schools that have selected transformation to make sure they follow through on all the requirements.
鈥淭he message may be out there that this is the path of least resistance,鈥� he said, 鈥渂ut you actually have to do something. To dismiss this is as the 鈥榣ighter touch鈥� is letting the districts off the hook for implementation.鈥�
In the six states where Mr. Chen鈥檚 group is working鈥擟olorado, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New York鈥攖ransformation will be the most widely used intervention model, he said.
Caps on Approach
When officials at the Education Department originally wrote the rules for how the grants could be used, Secretary Duncan emphasized his desire for urgent and dramatic actions in the nation鈥檚 5,000 lowest-performing schools that included converting them to charters and bringing in fresh talent by replacing principals and teachers.
The secretary initially viewed the transformation option as the one of last resort, but relented some on the rules after running into resistance from state and local educators who said that replacing teacher and principal talent in all those schools would be too challenging, if not impossible, in some rural areas.
Still, the current rules do limit the number of campuses that can elect for transformation in districts where there are large numbers of low-performing schools.
