Tag Archives: turnaround

The Principal Perspective

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The Center for Public Education has released a new report called The Principal Perspective, which examines what impact principals actually have on a school and how they may or may not affect school turnarounds.  Existing research, of which there is little, seems to agree on several things:

  • The job of principal has changed dramatically.
  • Principals impact their students’ outcomes, particularly at the most challenging schools.
  • Principal turnover adversely impacts schools.
  • Effective principals retain and recruit effective teachers.
  • Principals become more effective as they gain more experience.
  • Being an instructional leader is a hallmark of effective principals.

According to the new report, however, some of these facts have caveats.  First, principals have the most impact on student achievement in high-poverty, high-minority schools—second only to teachers.  Unfortunately, these are just the types of schools in which veteran administrators are hard to find.

Second, principals who are highly effective are more likely to: 1) have three or more years of experience overall; 2) have at least three years of experience at a particular school; 3) share leadership responsibilities (rather than just delegating paperwork); 4) have a clear sense of instructional goals; 5) give ongoing, informal feedback and support toward those goals; 6) conduct unannounced, informal teacher evaluations or classroom visits and give feedback afterward; and 6) have school board leaders who exhibit a clear vision of what constitutes a good school and create a framework that gives principals both autonomy and support to reach those goals.

The authors of the report conclude that while “NCLB and other policies of the past decade have mainly focused on teachers to close achievement gaps, research shows that focusing on principals could have a strong impact on turning around low-performing schools and propel student learning.”  They also leave a list of questions for school boards to evaluate principal effectiveness in their districts, and determine “next steps” for improving student achievement:

  • How are principals evaluated for effectiveness?
  • Are evaluations linked to student achievement?
  • Are evaluations linked to the district’s goals and strategic plan?
  • Do all students have equal access to effective or experienced principals?
  • What incentives does your district give principals to lead challenging schools?
  • What kind of professional development does your district provide principals?
  • Has the school board read and discussed the ISLLC standards?
  • How does the district handle ineffective principals?
  • What is the principal turnover rate in your district? How does it vary by school? What could your district do to decrease the turnover rate to the key period of three to five years?
  • How does your district identify potential principals?
  • How effective are principal preparation programs?
  • Are these preparation programs aligned to the needs of the district?

To read the full report, please visit http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/principal-perspective

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Building Family and Community Demand for Dramatic School Change

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District-led, dramatic change efforts in failing schools-including turnarounds and school closures-often face strong resistance from families and communities. Resistance may be based on district-community tensions, failed past school improvement efforts, or a lack of understanding about what is possible in schools.  In this new presentation by Public Impact, nine strategies are proposed to address these challenges. Based on 28 interviews with leaders from community-based organizations, school districts, and other groups, these strategies include:
1. Assess political landscape
2. Develop a coherent strategy
3. Identify audiences
4. Identify messengers
5. Build trust with families and communities
6. Justify hopefulness, communicate reality
7. Define stakeholder rules
8. Measure success
9. Sustain the momentum

In addition, the following questions are addressed:
1. Why is building demand for dramatic change among families and communities such a challenge?
2. Why is it worth the effort?

This presentation is supported by the  NewSchools Venture Fund and The Joyce Foundation. To view the slides, visit http://www.publicimpact.com/images/stories/building_demand_for_change_in_failing_schools-Public_Impact.pdf

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Resources: Successful Leadership for School Turnaround

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Public Impact’s School Turnaround website contains many useful resources on developing leaders for School Turnaround efforts. You can download each of the resources described below at http://www.schoolturnarounds.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=4&Itemid=10

Using Competencies to Improve School Turnaround Principal Success This paper, produced for the University of Virginia’s School Turnaround Specialist Program, describes how using competencies that predict performance can improve turnaround principal selection, evaluation, and development.  Although the term “competency” often describes any work-related skill, in this context competencies are the underlying motives  and habits—patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, and speaking—that cause a person to be successful in a specific job or role.  The primary critical competencies for school turnaround leader are “achievement” and “impact and influence.” Achievement is having the drive and taking actions to set challenging goals and reach a high standard of performance despite barriers.  Impact and influence is acting with the purpose of affecting the perceptions, thinking and actions of others. This report provides guidance for organizations on how to use competencies to select, evaluate, and develop effective school turnaround leaders.

Competencies for Turnaround Success Series. Public Impact has developed a series of resources designed to support school turnarounds. The series includes guides and toolkits that help select turnaround leaders and teachers based on the competencies–or patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting–that enable them to be successful in turnarounds.

Successful School Turnarounds: Seven Steps for District Leaders.One promising strategy to dramatically improve chronically low performing schools is known as a “turnaround” – a quick, dramatic, sustained improvement in performance brought about by a highly-capable leader. This type of change is different from what many have tried in the past: the changes are bigger and faster, and the press for success is relentless.  Turnarounds also require different types of support and flexibility from district leaders. In this Issue Brief, prepared by Public Impact for The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement at Learning Point Associates, seven steps for district leaders to support the dramatic change required to turn around chronic low performance are outlined. Steps include: making a commitment to dramatic change, choosing turnarounds for the right schools, developing a pipeline of turnaround leaders, providing leaders extra flexibility, holding schools accountable, prioritizing teacher hiring for turnaround schools, and proactively engaging the community. A webcast with summary recommendations is available here.

The Big U-Turn:  In Education Next, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel describe six leadership strategies that recur in successful school turnarounds. Using the NYC Police Department and Continental Airlines, the authors explain the importance of focusing on a few early wins, breaking organizational norms, pushing rapid-fire experimentation, getting the right staff, driving change with data, and running a “turnaround campaign” to build support for change and silence naysayers.

School Turnarounds: Actions and Results by Dana Brinson, Julie Kowal and Bryan Hassel for the Center on Innovation and Improvement, illustrates how the 14 leader actions of successful school turnarounds have played out. This report provides a description of the 14 leader actions, illustrative vignettes, and an annotated bibliography of the case studies included in the report and builds on Public Impact’s prior work entitled School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement, a report on education-specific examples of school turnarounds.

At Core Education, we are dedicated to the human capital initiatives that make School Turnaround work. We know that preparing effective leaders is a key element of successful school improvement for persistently low-achieving schools. For more on our services, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com/services.php

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Teacher Turnaround Teams in Boston

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Successful school turnarounds have long been elusive and have depended on finding talented teachers and leaders to engage in the transformation of school cultures and teaching norms. A newly piloted model out of Boston shows some promise for staffing school turnaround and providing career ladder options for experienced teachers. The Teacher Turnaround Teams (T3) program, a Teach Plus and Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Unlocking Potential joint venture, recruits and places groups of effective, experienced teachers in select BPS buildings, infusing these struggling schools with both a “critical mass” of accomplished teachers and a teacher-leader cadre ready to up the abilities of their peers.

The BPS website asks, “Are you an experienced, effective teacher who is looking for the next professional challenge? Are you looking for recognition as an excellent teacher? Are you looking to work with a collaborative team of like-minded peers? Are you ready to demonstrate the power of teaching to eliminate the achievement gap? If so, then applying to become a T3 teacher could be the next step in your career.” Both Boston Public Schools teachers and teachers who currently teach outside the district are eligible to apply.

At the two pilot schools participating in the program, T3 teachers–who have been chosen through an intense application process–make up about 25 percent of the teacher force. And it seems to be working. Eight months into the program’s inaugural year, T3 schools are seeing marked student improvement. But that’s not all. Along with catalyzing achievement gains, T3 offers standout teachers the chance to lead, while remaining in the classroom. T3ers run weekly team meetings with teachers in their grades and subject matters, debriefing, mentoring other teachers, and vetting team concerns. The concept is compelling: Recruit a cohort of high-caliber folks, place them in leadership roles within the teaching profession, and offer them the school-based autonomy needed to make smart shifts.

Core Education is dedicated to human capital initiatives that fully utilize the talents of exceptional teachers. For more information about us, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com
Successful school turnarounds have long been elusive and have depended on finding talented teachers and leaders to engage in the transformation of school cultures and teaching norms. A newly piloted model out of Boston shows some promise for staffing school turnaround and providing career ladder options for experienced teachers. The Teacher Turnaround Teams (T3) program, a Teach Plus and Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Unlocking Potential joint venture, recruits and places groups of effective, experienced teachers in select BPS buildings, infusing these struggling schools with both a “critical mass” of accomplished teachers and a teacher-leader cadre ready to up the abilities of their peers.

The BPS website asks, “Are you an experienced, effective teacher who is looking for the next professional challenge? Are you looking for recognition as an excellent teacher? Are you looking to work with a collaborative team of like-minded peers? Are you ready to demonstrate the power of teaching to eliminate the achievement gap? If so, then applying to become a T3 teacher could be the next step in your career.” Both Boston Public Schools teachers and teachers who currently teach outside the district are eligible to apply.

At the two pilot schools participating in the program, T3 teachers–who have been chosen through an intense application process–make up about 25 percent of the teacher force. And it seems to be working. Eight months into the program’s inaugural year, T3 schools are seeing marked student improvement. But that’s not all. Along with catalyzing achievement gains, T3 offers standout teachers the chance to lead, while remaining in the classroom. T3ers run weekly team meetings with teachers in their grades and subject matters, debriefing, mentoring other teachers, and vetting team concerns. The concept is compelling: Recruit a cohort of high-caliber folks, place them in leadership roles within the teaching profession, and offer them the school-based autonomy needed to make smart shifts.

Core Education is dedicated to human capital initiatives that fully utilize the talents of exceptional teachers. For more information about us, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com
Successful school turnarounds have long been elusive and have depended on finding talented teachers and leaders to engage in the transformation of school cultures and teaching norms. A newly piloted model out of Boston shows some promise for staffing school turnaround and providing career ladder options for experienced teachers. The Teacher Turnaround Teams (T3) program, a Teach Plus and Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Unlocking Potential joint venture, recruits and places groups of effective, experienced teachers in select BPS buildings, infusing these struggling schools with both a “critical mass” of accomplished teachers and a teacher-leader cadre ready to up the abilities of their peers.

The BPS website asks, “Are you an experienced, effective teacher who is looking for the next professional challenge? Are you looking for recognition as an excellent teacher? Are you looking to work with a collaborative team of like-minded peers? Are you ready to demonstrate the power of teaching to eliminate the achievement gap? If so, then applying to become a T3 teacher could be the next step in your career.” Both Boston Public Schools teachers and teachers who currently teach outside the district are eligible to apply.

At the two pilot schools participating in the program, T3 teachers–who have been chosen through an intense application process–make up about 25 percent of the teacher force. And it seems to be working. Eight months into the program’s inaugural year, T3 schools are seeing marked student improvement. But that’s not all. Along with catalyzing achievement gains, T3 offers standout teachers the chance to lead, while remaining in the classroom. T3ers run weekly team meetings with teachers in their grades and subject matters, debriefing, mentoring other teachers, and vetting team concerns. The concept is compelling: Recruit a cohort of high-caliber folks, place them in leadership roles within the teaching profession, and offer them the school-based autonomy needed to make smart shifts.

Core Education is dedicated to human capital initiatives that fully utilize the talents of exceptional teachers. For more information about us, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com

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State Strategies to Improve Chronically Low-Performing Schools

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A new issue brief released by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices offers lessons drawn from its State Strategies to Improve Chronically Low-Performing Schools project, which sought to address underlying causes of failing schools: weak leadership; inadequate skill levels among teachers; and insufficient high-quality teaching materials. In 2009, the project gave Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Mississippi grant funds and consulting services to develop policies and plans for turning around chronically low-performing schools and districts. As a result, the report has several recommendations for building state capacity. States should engage external partners to manage school and district turnarounds; set ambitious but realistic goals for school improvement that incorporate multiple measures; develop a human capital strategy to improve the quality of leadership and teaching; and increase state authority to intervene in failing schools and districts if other approaches prove insufficient. School closure should be used only when a state or district authority is certain it can send students to a better-performing campus. “Fixing failing schools and districts is hard but necessary work for governors to ensure all students have access to an education that prepares them to compete in the modern economy,” according to the report. To read the policy brief, visit http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/1103FIXINGFAILINGSCHOOLS.PDF

Core Education is committed to working with states and districts to improve human capital strategies to positively impact low-performing schools. For more information about our services, see www.CoreEducationLLC.com

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