The demands placed on principals to meet the wide range of needs present within the learning community continue to expand within the context of school reform. While there is some research on the ideals of successful turnaround school reform strategies, there is a lack of research on the essential key levers it takes to reform a school and district…

Prior to the 2012-13 school year, New York and many other states underwent changes to their accountability systems as a result of applying for and being granted waivers from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. A key component of these new accountability systems, under what is known as ESEA Flexibility or NCLB Waivers, was the…

Most research focuses on principal mobility generally, but little assesses charter leadership specifically. This exploratory study examines how leaders in stand-alone and charter management affiliated schools in New York and New Jersey made their decisions to lead, stay, and transition to different roles. Leaders cited excitement about autonomy…

Over the past half-century, billions of dollars have been spent across the nation on efforts to transform low-performing public schools -- most of them urban, most of them low-income, and most of them disproportionately enrolled with students of color -- into models of success. It hasn't worked. The failure of attempts to remedy the state of urban…

School leadership is a key component of successful school environments and academic performance strategies. Among school-related factors, school leadership is second to teaching in its impact on student learning. In addition, research shows that strong leaders contribute significantly to successful school turnaround. To ensure that school leaders…

The state government uses turnaround models to improve chronically low-performing schools. The effectiveness of this intervention is not yet known. There was a need for research to identify the extent to which state regional education agencies and the school units they served aligned school structures and systems health to create a model for…

The purpose of this brief is to support stakeholders in their efforts to influence how states use the mandatory 7 percent Title I school improvement set-aside in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)--an allocation that could total more than $5 billion nationwide over the next five years. First, the authors provide an overview of the ESSA's school…

This article focuses on the enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the USA's broad sweeping federal education policy, in a persistently low-achieving school in which the majority of students are refugees and immigrants. Drawing on a 26-month ethnography, I reveal the ways in which a NCLB-guided school turnaround plan is enacted variably,…

In 2011, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and the City Council's Middle School Taskforce launched the Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) as an instructional intervention for improving literacy levels in the lowest performing middle schools in New York City. The initiative grew rapidly and now serves over 100 schools and…

A state education agency (SEA) served by the Southeast Comprehensive Center (SECC) has requested information regarding state-developed (also referred to as state-determined) alternative models for schools receiving School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds. The state-determined school improvement model (one of three new models) offers an alternative to…

Improving low-achieving schools is a critical challenge facing urban education. Recent national policy shifts have pressed states to take an expanded role in school improvement efforts. In 2009, a federal grant competition called Race to the Top (RttT) compelled states to improve their capacity to implement ambitious education reform agendas.…

This article tells the story of MetLife Foundation-NASSP Breakthrough Schools. The program's goals are to identify, recognize, and showcase the leadership and successful practices of middle level and high schools that serve large numbers of students living in poverty and that have high levels of student achievement or show evidence of dramatically…

Implementation of school turnaround strategies under School Improvement Grant and Race to the Top programs has provided States with a unique opportunity to rethink how to govern effectively and to organize their efforts to improve their lowest achieving schools. States have had to consider such issues as whether to provide support directly to…

The Race to the Top and the School Improvement Grant programs provide resources to States to implement significant interventions to turn around their persistently lowest achieving schools. Implementation of school turnaround is a complex effort; States, local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools often engage outside experts and providers of…

From the Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) work examining the efforts to close schools over the past 10 years, in cities of all sizes, two glaring facts stand out: Most city and district leaders are surprised at how difficult it is to close schools. And many of these leaders make mistakes that others before them have learned to…