School Turnaround

Recent reform efforts aimed at ‘turning around’ the lowest-performing schools in the country, such as the Race to the Top initiative, have focused renewed attention on the significant achievement gap between America’s best and worst schools.  School turnaround is a complex concept with a myriad of social, political, and economic aspects, and there is on-going debate about whether there exists a single ‘formula’ that will help any under-performing school to improve.  The practices that have been promising in individual schools are often difficult to scale up and transplant to the contexts of troubled districts, and systemic strategies for improving accountability and management have not proven effective.  Below is a listing of CPRE research that examines the difficulties and possibilities of school turnaround efforts.