This study proposes an empirically grounded theory of how school reform implementation relates to effectiveness, useful for developing and studying many approaches to school reform both in the U.S. and abroad, and also for assessing how policymakers and implementers might leverage various aspects of implementation to create effective school…

Purpose: The involvement of organizational development (OD) consultants in schools has become widespread in recent years. In Israel, their presence increased in the past 2 decades when the Ministry of Education encouraged their entry as support for the self-management reform and improvement of failing schools. Despite accumulated experience and…

Leading school turnaround has been conceptualized as a school-level issue focused on immediate change. There has been little consideration about how district leaders change systems to sustain school turnaround successes. This case study research conducted through the lens of Change Theory explores the leadership struggles of one mid-sized urban…

School improvement in chronically under-performing schools remains a formidable challenge for school leaders. Recent policies in the U.S. have created incentives for school leaders to attempt new strategies to improve outcomes, and increasingly, school leaders of charter management organizations and other multi-school organizations (MSOs) are…

The Leadership and Inquiry for Turnaround (LIFT) initiative in Utah supports turnaround leaders' development and builds resilience and capacity of school leadership teams to thrive and lead their schools to improvement, even in the face of major challenges and adversity. This article describes how professional learning can help mitigate the…

Background: School improvement planning is a common school leadership practice built on assumptions that schools increase organizational performance if rational yearly plans are developed and then enacted with fidelity. A quality school improvement plan (SIP) should position subsequent critical leadership and instructional moves in a more holistic…

Research suggests that high-quality school improvement planning reflective of the school's needs and objectives is central to a principal's success in leading a school. Some American scholars contend that successfully planned and executed "quick wins" are critically important to launching high-level organizational change processes…

We understand very little about what is special that leaders do to facilitate improvement that is both transformational and lasting in previously persistently failing schools in the United States. Relatively little is understood about change not just during the initial turnaround stage, but that "endures" on the larger journey as the…

To support systemic thinking about school improvement, the Center on School Turnaround at WestEd developed a framework to assist states, districts, and schools in leading and managing rapid improvement efforts. The framework, which is presented in this article, has four domains that have proved central to rapid, significant improvement: (1)…

According to Duncan and Murnane (2011. "Introduction: The American Dream, Then and Now." In "Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances," edited by Greg J. Duncan, and Richard J. Murnane, 3-25. New York: Russell Sage Foundation), questions about teachers' commitment to schools that primarily…

In Australia, school leadership is influenced by neoliberal discourses of accountability and performativity. Many schools seek to balance systemic pressures that narrow outcome expectations with a desire to deliver schooling in the broad interests of the students and communities that they serve. In this case, the principal was appointed to a…

This article recounts an autoethnographic study of a White elementary school principal's efforts to confront White supremacy in punitive discipline. This principal applied transformative leadership precepts and antiracist pedagogy to conduct a school turnaround effort. The district had committed to neoliberal reform and neoliberal mandates in…

Turning around low-performing schools has been a constant theme in education policy for decades. Even before the latest studies, analysts and education leaders have recognized the implementation challenges schools and districts face. So, what solutions are available for education leaders and state policyholders? The article offered these…

This qualitative case study explores the practices and tensions of being an effective principal in a turnaround school through an in-depth analysis of one principal who has been successful in several turnaround settings. Although principals have long been cited as foundational to a school's success, being the principal of a turnaround school is a…

The following study provides a unique internal perspective on changes made in schools that "turned around" versus schools that are in the process of "turning around" versus schools that are "stuck." After comparing and contrasting these three groupings of schools who received similar state-level support, we learned…