Effective turnaround at scale calls for bold, comprehensive action from the state, working together with districts and outside partners. State governments must take strong action – even in strong localcontrol states. They must act in concert with districts and outside providers. With rare exceptions, schools and districts – essentially risk-averse, conservative cultures – will not undertake the dramatic changes required for successful turnaround on their own. But while states may have the responsibility to ensure equitable intervention across district lines, they clearly do not have the capacity to implement turnaround on the ground at the scale of the need. Their role is to require fundamental, not incremental change; establish operating conditions that support, rather than undermine, the desired changes; add new capacity in highleverage school and district roles and establish turnaround partners; and galvanize local capacity where it is currently trapped in dysfunctional settings.

The Three ‘C’s of Turnaround at Scale
Our research suggests that a coherent, comprehensive state turnaround initiative would incorporate three key elements: Changing Conditions, Building Capacity, and Clustering for Support.

Changing Conditions
Turnaround requires protected space that dismantles common barriers to reform. Chronically under-performing schools offer a politically defensible opportunity to create such a space. A few entrepreneurial school districts (Chicago, Miami-Dade, New York) have created such condition-changing zones or “carve-outs” for their neediest schools. But others (Philadelphia, Oakland) have needed intervention from the state to mount similar initiatives. States should pass regulations (as Massachusetts has) or legislation (as Maryland has) that produce sufficient leverage for all district leaders to create the protected space they need for turnaround to be effective. The best regulations change the incentives for local stakeholders, motivating the development of turnaround zones in order to gain their advantages – while avoiding “final option” alternatives that would diminish district and union control.

The condition changes needed for turnaround zones can be controversial. But turnaround leaders clearly must have the authority to act. That means a collaborative revision of many contractual requirements in districts with unions. Districts, working with turnaround partners and the state, must be able to install new principals if needed; principals must in turn have control over who is working in their buildings, along with the allocation of money, time, and programming (including curriculum and partnerships with social services). Schools must be freed to take on professional norms, including differentiated roles for teachers and differentiated compensation. Decision-making must be freed so that it revolves around the needs of children, not adults. At the same time, each turnaround school cannot be expected to design and manage its own change process; its latitude for decision- making lies within a framework of strong network support and turnaround design parameters established by the state, and carried out by districts and/or turnaround partners.

Building Capacity
Organizational turnaround in non-education-related fields requires special expertise; school turnaround is no different. It is a two-stage process that calls for fundamental transformation at the start, managed by educators with the necessary training and disposition, with steady, capacity-building improvement to follow. Neither schools and districts, nor states, nor third-party providers have sufficient capacity at present to undertake successful turnaround at scale. Building that capacity for effective turnaround – both inside of schools and among outside partners – must be the state’s responsibility, as school districts lack the means and expertise to do so on their own. Moreover: turnaround represents an opportunity to redesign the ways schools work with outside partners. The fragmentation that characterizes current school/provider relationships needs to be replaced by an integrated approach that aligns outside support around the turnaround plan, organized by a single “systems integrator” partner.

Clustering for Support
Turnaround has meaningful impact at the level of the school building, but turnaround at scale cannot be accomplished in ones and twos. States and districts should undertake turnaround in clusters organized around identified needs: by school type (e.g., middle schools or grade 6-12 academies), student characteristics (very high ELL percentages), feeder patterns (elementary to middle to high school), or region. Clusters should be small enough to operate effectively as networks, but large enough to be an enterprise – i.e., to provide valuable, efficient support from the network center.

The Political Realities: Enabling the State Role
Turnaround of failing local schools has no natural constituency. Coalitions of support must instead be built at two levels – statewide and community-wide. To ensure sustained and sufficient statewide commitment to turnaround reforms and investments, someone (governor, commissioner, business/community leader) or some agency must create an advocacy coalition of political, education, corporate, foundation, university, and nonprofit leaders. To ensure broad commitment to turnaround at the community level, states can blend the leverage of accountability- based sanctions (you risk losing authority over this school if you fail to act) with the “carrot” of resources and condition change. Finally: to design and implement turnaround effectively, states must create an appropriate coordinating body or mechanism to lead the work, ideally as a public/private agency linked to the state department of education. 

For the complete analysis, conclusions and framework from our turnaround research, click here for downloadable versions of our reports.