School Turnaround Field Guide

Posted by on November 21, 2010

Succeeding at scale

A new turnaround guide from FSG Social Impact Advisors aims to increase reformers’ awareness of turnaround issues, prompting those in the field to think about how to most effectively perform turnaround work, and to encourage members of the field to work in concert. To transform thousands of chronically underperforming schools, multiple actors must collaborate to identify and spread effective practices, create policies and conditions for success, build capacity, and ensure sustainability of turnaround work at scale. The report gives an overview of school turnarounds, identifies measures of success, surveys the policy and funding environment, compares major turnaround models, and provides a guide to important actors in the field and a visual map of their interrelated roles and funding. It also suggests a set of actions that various stakeholders could take — collectively and individually — to ensure turnaround succeeds at scale. The guide summarizes critical lessons learned, and identifies a number of what it calls “key gaps” that hamper turnaround success: capacity, funding, public and political will, conditions, research- and knowledge-sharing, and understanding of how to best turnaround rural and high schools.

See the report: http://www.fsg-impact.org/ideas/item/school_turnaround_field_guide.html