What can we learn from turnaround high schools — schools that were stuck or flailing, but now boast high student achievement and committed staffs?

For starters, nothing simple. Each school turns around on its own terms, according to “How High Schools Become Exemplary,” a new report by Ronald Ferguson and his colleagues at Harvard University.

Successes in this report share some things in common — many schools focused on improving writing instruction across all subjects, and virtually all put teachers in charge of change.

But each school followed its own path. “It is notable that none of the schools became successful primarily by replicating prepackaged programs,” Ferguson writes.

His group studied 15 public high schools in five states and the District of Columbia where low-achieving students made exceptionally large academic gains. The New York Times featured one, the 4,100-student Brockton HS in Massachusetts [The New York Times, Sept. 27], to show that large high schools can succeed as well as small schools.

But size was not the common thread. Three schools in the study were new and small. Several were longstanding, midsized schools. One was a charter. Three had career and technical curricula. Some admitted students based on tests; others used lotteries.

Ferguson does identify five “steps to success,” where, for example, schools “implemented plans, monitored quality and provided appropriate supports.” But the list reads as all such lists do — vague-sounding summaries that by themselves tell us nothing about what actually took place in the schools.

So let’s step into two of the participating schools, and see what happened.

Worcester Tech

Worcester Technical HS serves a depressed industrial city in central Massachusetts. It has a racially mixed student body with two-thirds qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. In 2006, 87 percent of entering 9th-graders had either failed the Massachusetts standardized math tests or scored “needs improvement.” Half had failed or needed improvement in English.

A new principal came in that year, with a pledge to her 140 faculty members to “do one or two things well” and not lose focus. In public education, “you can rub your belly, tap your head, stand on one foot and jump and that sometimes feels like education,” she told Ferguson’s group, but “we all know that does not work.”

The faculty found that in the previous year, 40 percent of their students had not gotten a single “open-response” (longer, written) question right on the state tests. Students told the teachers they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with such questions. The faculty decided that open response would become their focus. (It may help to know that Massachusetts’ state tests are held in higher regard than New York’s.)

Every member of the faculty took part, vocational and academic. Five early-release days were devoted to training by teacher-leaders on writing good open-response answers. Open-response questions were assigned in every class. Teachers created a “bank” of open-response questions that they shared. Math teachers worked with shop and technical teachers to create open-response questions about the technical subjects they were teaching.

Students in the graphics shop were enlisted to produce a poster about open response. An English teacher composed a rap about open response, which the school played over loudspeakers every morning instead of ringing a starting bell.

One Worcester Tech math teacher explained to the researchers, “There is no magic pill to take. It’s just hard work, and the kids are willing to do it, if you let them.”

After one year, the school raised its percentage passing English by 40 points, from 50 to 90 percent. In 2008, the incoming students from 2006 scored better than 80 percent of all state schools on the math test.

Taft Information Technology HS

Robert A. Taft Information Technology HS is a 96 percent black and 68 percent poor school in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2000, just 18 percent of its students graduated, placing it at the bottom of the state’s high schools. It is now performing above the state average in math, reading and science, and has a 90 percent graduation rate.

What happened? The school took a number of steps, most notably an emphasis on writing across the curriculum. But the principal put the process in the hands of teachers. “We put a lot of teachers in charge of what happens in our school,” he told the Ferguson group. His belief in the staff helped jump-start the change process.

A small group of teachers from Principal Anthony Smith’s former school came with him to Taft, and they modeled a team approach that resulted in better attendance, discipline and achievement in their classes. After beating back initial resistance and resentment, this team helped guide other teacher teams.

Smith did not get rid of any of the original Taft teachers. Instead, he encouraged staff-led professional development. An “open-door policy” permitted teachers to see into each other’s classrooms, “not to point fingers but rather to share teaching strategies,” as Ferguson observes. Many teachers were fearful, but they went ahead.

Today, 35 of the school’s 43 teachers run professional development classes in other schools in the district.

Such turnarounds can sound like miracles in print. The tensions and frustrations that accompany the process do not show up — only the glorious results.

An initial success helps, Ferguson notes, because “seeing is believing.” Grit and perseverance are a big part of the process. But what stands out is that the staffs turned around these schools using their collective insight and determination, not anyone’s prescriptions. They learned to develop trust and respect for each other. They put aside turf issues, fears and resentments for the sake of their schools and students. Not that it was easy. But it was the only way.