Tinkering and Turnarounds: Understanding The Contemporary Campaign To Improve Low-Performing Schools

School Turnaround as National Policy in the United States: Considerations from Three Studies Conducted in the Midwest

“…The topic of "turning around" chronically low-performing schools has become prominent in American education discourse. The U.S. Department of Education (2009), independent researchers (e.g., Meyers and Murphy, 2008;Duke, 2012), and practitioners (e.g., Wolk, 1998) have called for drastic improvement in the academic performance of the lowest-performing schools. A key part of the call for school turnaround has emphasized a need for identifying schools that chronically underperform, most typically on state assessments.…”

Untitled

“…The U.S. Department of Education (2009), independent researchers (e.g., Meyers and Murphy, 2008;Duke, 2012), and practitioners (e.g., Wolk, 1998) have called for drastic improvement in the academic performance of the lowest-performing schools. A key part of the call for school turnaround has emphasized a need for identifying schools that chronically underperform, most typically on state assessments.…”

Turnaround network

“…Despite great efforts, billions of dollars spent, and a plethora of initiatives stopped and started, many of our nation's high needs, high poverty public schools have been unable to overcome and eliminate the myriad of challenges facing schools working to turnaround, much to the dismay of the many who have been working at school reform for decades (Calkins et al, 2007;DiPaola, Tschannen-Moran, & Walther-Thomas, 2004;Dragoset et al, 2017;Duke, 2012;Herman et al, 2008). This elusive goal of improving our most needy schools continues to be of grave concern, an urgent, persisting, challenge and an equity issue in the United States, as students who attend high performing schools inherit access to a better quality of life than those who do not (DeArmond, Denice, Gross, Hernandez, & Jochim, 2015;Gergen, 2007).…”

“…The term school turnaround is not entirely new to education and the earliest mention of the concept in educational contexts can be found as early as the 1990s (Duke, 2012). According to Peurach and Neumerski (2015), turnaround's origin and beginning was earlier and began in New York during the mid-1980s.…”