News
News Headlines
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Cleveland names 'investment schools' slated for turnaround
The Cleveland School District, a Mass Insight partner, named 13 low-performing schools to join together for the "Investment Zone," the first steps in implementation of the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools.
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Syracuse City Schools to Receive 40% of New York State SIG Funding
The Syracuse City School District (SCSD), an STG partner district, is set to receive 40% of SIG funding awarded to the state of New York. SCSD will use the funding at select schools within the Innovation Zone to provide stipends for teachers for increased common planning time, extend the school day for students by 30 minutes, provide increased teacher training, as well as allow teachers the opportunity to opt out of working in the turnaround schools, and provide building leaders with the autonomy to re-interview teachers who wish to stay.
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JPPSS Announces Partnership with Mass Insight Education
The Jefferson Parish Public School System (JPPSS) in Louisiana has extended a partnership with the Mass Insight Education School Turnaround Group. The STG will be working with JPPSS to create a Transformation Network to serve 8-10 of the lowest-performing schools in the district. The STG will also work with JPPSS to create a new 6-12 school to focus on STEM, based off the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative's work in Massachusetts.
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Upcoming Webinar: Building Performance Driven School Culture Within a Turnaround School
"Building Performance Driven School Culture Within a Turnaround School" will be a 30-minute webinar session that will feature an interactive question and answer period with the webinar audience. The webinar will be lead by Mass Insight School Turnaround Group President Justin Cohen and Kickboard Founder and CEO Jennifer Medbery on Thursday, December 13th at 1:00pm EST.
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Providence and Red Clay Receive National Recognition
Providence, RI, and the Red Clay Consolidated School District in Wilmington, DE, were both among the recipients of national recognition from the White House's Together for Tomorrow Challenge. The STG has collaborated with both of these districts.
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A Third Option
In response to a guest post on Rick Hess' blog by Neerav Kingsland and John Thompson, the School Turnaround Group writes about the middle land between traditional public schools and charter schools, highlighting the option of clustering and forming "mini-districts."
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Partnership with Mass Insight to Build Capacity; Boost Student Achievement
The School Turnaround Group at Mass Insight Education recently partnered with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) in Indiana. The partnership will focus on strategically changing conditions, building capacity, and clustering schools, thus allowing EVSC to become closer to reaching its student achievement goals. With the STG's help, EVSC will develop a "Transformation Zone" to begin building upon the district's equity framework. Ami Magunia, an engagement manager at the STG, explained that "just as teachers differentiate instruction for their students so that each student can be reached the way they learn best, Mass Insight and EVSC will differentiate support for schools, clustering schools needing the most at this time and providing more supports where it is needed.”
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Zone and Partner School Turnaround Strategy Increasingly Adopted by Leading Urban Districts
May 24, 2012 - Mass Insight Education Releases Progress Report, ‘Playbook’ For New Districts. A strategy for turning around underperforming public schools that calls for flexible operating conditions, decentralizing local capacity, and organizing schools into high school-led clusters is gaining ground in urban districts. The analysis, highlighting school districts embracing all or part of the Mass Insight Education framework, was announced in tandem with Mass Insight’s release of the Lead Partner Playbook, a free, 70-page guide for other districts to design their own solutions, tailored for their unique conditions, but within the turnaround framework.
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Making School Turnaround A National Priority
Large numbers of schools across the country are low performing and have been for years. This longstanding, widespread problem reveals that districts and states, as well as schools, wrestle with how to turn around struggling schools. Federal policy can play a key role in rectifying the systemic failures that allow schools to flounder. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a ripe opportunity to revise the law's main program that supports school turnaround, the School Improvement Grant fund.
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New STG Publication - School Turnaround Grants: Take 2
The School Turnaround Group (STG) is pleased to share a new report on how states can leverage funds provided by the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program to drive dramatic reform. This publication, School Improvement Grants: Take 2, provides local and state officials with a framework to revise the Round 2 process.