Improving struggling schools

Closing low-performing schools has been a signature reform of Mayor Bloomberg and his schools chancellors, but it has encountered unprecedented opposition from parent and community groups and school staffs. One key reason for their anger is how the district identifies low-performing schools. Too often, critics say, schools that serve the most hard-to-educate students have been penalized for weak test scores and graduation rates, when in fact the school has been doing a good job with its student population. What such schools need most are resources and programs to help them improve performance.

However, there are schools that have become mired in a toxic culture of low expectations, student apathy, teacher-administrator antagonisms and educational isolation. Those schools legitimately need intervention, which can take many forms. Ultimately, the principal, teachers, parents and students must all be willing and able to make changes, and they will need something to jumpstart the process. The work is intense and complex.

Experts say sometimes there is no choice but to close a school, but those times are few and far between. After then-Chicago Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan had shut down 38 “failing” schools in Chicago from 2001 to 2006, he was compelled to shift gears and adopt a turnaround approach, according to a report from the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research. Closing schools had had little effect on the students, who fared no better in the schools they transferred to.

Turning around struggling schools is a lot harder than closing them. But if the effort is successful, there is a better school to show for it and valuable lessons learned.

In December 2009, the U.S. Department of Education made $3.5 billion available to states to improve schools they identified as “persistently lowest achieving” (PLA), as part of the federal “Race to the Top” incentive funding. New York State has indentified 54 PLA schools in New York City, based on graduation rates and test scores, and offers funding for four different models to improve them. (In fact, though, only two of them are true turnaround models.)

Turnaround model. Replace the principal and rehire no more than 50 percent of the staff. Give the principal flexibility (including in staffing, calendars/time and budgeting) to implement a comprehensive approach to substantially improve student outcomes.
Restart model. Convert a school or close and reopen it under a charter school operator, a charter management organization, or a district-selected education management organization.
School closure. Just like it sounds. Enroll the students who attended that school in other schools in the district that are higher achieving.
Transformation model. Implement each of the following strategies: (1) replace the principal and take steps to increase teacher and school leader effectiveness; (2) institute comprehensive instructional reforms; (3) increase learning time and create community-oriented schools; and (4) provide operational flexibility and sustained support.

The school improvement grants — $2 million over three years for each selected school — require district-union collaboration. For the 2010-2011 school year, the UFT and the DOE negotiated pilots of the transformation model in 11 schools, which include a teacher evaluation component. For the fall of 2011, the union and district agreed to include 17 city schools in the transformation process and another 14 schools in the restart model.

Partners in the restart model include longstanding New York City education organizations such as New Visions for Public Schools and Center for Educational Innovations-Public Education Association (but no charter management organizations). The staff of the restart schools will stay intact and the schools will get specially selected and trained master teachers to help with their transformations. And they will get money to improve education for their students.

Ongoing national research by Harvard University’s Ronald Ferguson and others has shown that turning around schools is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. He has also found that it is most frequently staff led and requires building teachers’ professional skills, raising expectations for students and finding ways to get teachers and administrators to do the work together. It is not done in a day or even a single year.

Improving struggling schools

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