Every student deserves arts instruction for its own sake, as an essential ingredient to a well-rounded education. Yet arts education adds value for a whole host of other educational purposes: among them, enhanced writing and reading, ability to retain information, problem solving, and critical thinking. Interest in models of whole-school reform…

This brief summarizes the January and February 2018 Thought Leadership Forum presentations. January featured a content-based presentation by William Robinson from the University of Virginia on turnaround leadership competencies and February featured Hannah Peria and Elisabeth Peterson from the New Mexico Public Education Department profiling New…

The Texas Education Agency offers grants for districts to implement school turnaround strategies at low-performing schools. Districts that receive these grants can implement a school turnaround strategy (referred to as a district-managed restart strategy) that includes replacing principals and teachers at schools that the district identifies as…

As public education secretary of New Mexico, Hanna Skandera dug in fast, set an ambitious agenda, and broke a lot of china. Her ability to inspire and subsequently ignore controversy is clear: from the outset, she was deemed so contentious that the state senate refused to confirm her for four years, during which she performed her duties as…

The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA"), as amended by the "Every Student Succeeds Act" ("ESSA") has transformed federal support for low-performing schools by moving away from prescriptive models of school turnaround toward supporting state innovation. State approaches to implementing…

This report describes the School Turnaround AmeriCorps Initiative and the program's impact on students at Reagan High School and Travis High School during the 2015-2016 school year.

This brief is one in a series highlighting state policies, regulations, practices, laws, or other tools intended to create the necessary conditions for school and/or district turnaround. Each brief includes an overview of the relevant turnaround tool, its development process, its impact, and lessons learned that could assist other education…

Developing excellent principals who can set direction, develop people, redesign organizations, and lead instruction requires a system of high-quality preparation and professional development. This paper summarizes the elements of high-quality principal preparation and professional development programs that have been associated with positive school…

Leading Charlotte foundations formed a funding collaborative to support a five-year district turnaround initiative to dramatically improve educational outcomes for students in the West Charlotte High School corridor, one of the city's lowest-performing feeder zones. The "Project L.I.F.T." initiative involves four areas of education…

According to the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, a "promising practice is any technique used that has a positive impact on students and has some data to support the claims made." Sources of this data range from experimental research to district- or state-level data analysis, but they must provide…

The Indiana State Board of Education (ISBE) has not been shy about exercising its authority to intervene in chronically underperforming schools. Under the state's Public Law 221, the Indiana Board can mandate specific interventions for any school that has received six consecutive failing grades under the state's accountability system--up to a…

Miami Central High School technology teacher Frank Houghtaling thinks the connection between theory and application is one reason his students perform better on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). The impressive turnaround school drew local and national attention last spring when one of Houghtaling's students, Dagoberto Cruz, won…

The federal program providing billions of dollars to help states and districts close or remake some of their worst-performing schools remains a work in progress after two years, with more than 1,200 turnaround efforts under way but still no definitive verdict on its effectiveness. The School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, supercharged by a…

Sanger Unified School District in California's Central Valley had been named one of the worst 98 school districts in California. It was not only one of the worst-performing districts in a state with 1,042 districts, but it also had been flagged as one of the first to be named a program improvement district under No Child Left Behind. In this…

Both state and local school systems, recognizing the strong and growing evidence of pre-kindergarten's effectiveness in closing achievement gaps, are implementing early learning programs as part of their education reform efforts. In low-performing districts, pre-k has emerged as a promising turnaround strategy, reaching children before they become…