USA: School Challenge

This USA report by Mass Insight examines why school turnaround strategy in the USA is failing and suggests a comprehensive plan for action to address schools which are consistently under-performing.

Key points:
- Comprehensive turnaround will be most effective when it is actively initiated by districts and schools in response to state requirements and with state support.
- Turnaround is essentially a people-focused enterprise. States, districts, schools, and outside partners must organize themselves to attract, develop, and apply people with skills to match the needs of struggling schools and students.
- States must create a visible, effective agency that – like turnaround schools themselves – is free from normal bureaucratic constraints and has a flexible set of operating rules that allow it to carry out its mission.
- Failing schools need skilled outside assistance to mount a comprehensive, sustained turnaround initiative. That will require a far stronger resource base of partners than the patchwork of individual consultants (mostly retired educators) now assisting with intervention in most states.
- High performing, high poverty schools exhibit three overarching characteristics. Together, they make up what the report calls the Readiness model – a set of strategies that turnaround efforts should emulate: readiness to learn, readiness to act and readiness to teach.