The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute a grant late in 2005 to produce a framework for states and districts seeking a flexible, systemic approach for swift, significant improvement in schools (particularly high schools) that have clearly failed their mission, producing track records of under-achievement that are indefensibly poor. The Turnaround Challenge and corollary resources are the result of that grant.

A follow-up from the Gates Foundation is supporting a Mass Insight-led effort to inform national and state leader discussions and actions around the issue of school turnaround, and to carry out a research and development process, in conjunction with national collaborators, that will help states, districts, and others implement the report’s turnaround framework at three levels:

·         State and District Strategies for Turnaround at Scale: Developing work-plans and templates for the strategic approaches, organizational structures, and policy language states and districts need to undertake effective turnaround in the bottom five percent of under-performing schools – and to invite schools not yet in NCLB’s Restructuring category to perform “preemptive turnaround,” using similar strategies.

·         School Cluster/Partner Network: Defining a new model for integrated school network partnerships – school clusters that amount to “mini-districts” supported by lead external partners and special district turnaround offices – and building a new generation of lead turnaround partners as key implementers.

·         School: Producing detailed strategy choices, work-plans, and practical tools for school leaders and their partners in implementing turnaround.

This research-and-development effort will also lay initial groundwork for three potential national initiatives to build out these strategies:

·         Pilot Cohort of Turnaround States and Districts: Working closely with three to five states and as many large urban districts (along with other partners) to implement a full range of turnaround strategies, adapted for each site, emerging from this work.

·         Turnaround Partner Capacity-Building: Creating intermediary organizations or other national resources that would provide investment and technical assistance to build a viable marketplace of lead turnaround partners. (Mass Insight does not intend to serve a lead turnaround role, but to act as a catalyst for the development of this resource base.)

·         National Center: Develop a national center to conduct related research, advocate for comprehensive turnaround, produce additional tools and templates, and continue the work of defining and refining school turnaround as discipline.

All of the elements of this follow-up initiative will involve national collaborators, including individuals and organizations with particular expertise in urban education (including practitioners and external providers), turnaround (in education and other sectors as well), state policy, mission-driven investment, communications and advocacy, and research.  The initiative builds on and directly supports related work that Mass Insight has performed for the Washington and Illinois state boards of education, the latter in partnership with Holland & Knight and with contractual support from the Gates Foundation.