Turnarounds

After a lovely Fourth of July weekend I came back to the office ready for the work ahead. My plan for this week was to dive into my research on turnaround strategies. I've been picking at it here and there since I arrived, but I wanted to really dig deep this week.

What I've learned has been fascinating so far. Usually when we think "turnaround" we think of the radical changes some districts are implementing where the entire staff has to reapply for their jobs and a new principal is brought in. I plan to investigate those attempts as well, but I also want to learn about specific strategies used in those turn around efforts. For instance, I read this case on Charlotte-Mecklenburg's Strategic Staffing model, which essentially describes how the school district incentivized working in the school district's lowest performing schools. Like with the radical change approach, the school district hires a new principal. However, they recruit a principal who had a track record of results and then give her the ability to select the administrative team she wants to move to the school with her. The principal also gets to hire a team of teachers to join the school. The teachers also have to have a track record of results and are compensated for working at a higher need school. They receive additional supports from the district such as targeted professional development and a training during the summer. The initiative is young, but the results have been promising so far. They are learning a lot as they go and are being very disciplined about improving the program at every step of the process.

Yesterday I read reports on New York City's Small Schools initiative. Today I tried to learn more about Chicago's turnaround method and the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL). I found what looks like a promising resource--a list of reports on turnaround strategies, each with a different focus. This toolkit on competencies for turnaround success seemed especially interesting. It reminded me of TFA's TAL (Teach as Leadership) rubric and essentially how we assess students. There are a set of standards students must meet and we assess them in order to determine if they have met those standards. Similarly, if we can specify the standards (aka "competencies") we want leaders that are turning around schools to meet we can better assess if they have attained them and if they are up for the challenge of turning around a low-performing school.