New Report: Turning Around the Nation’s Lowest-Performing Schools

Posted by on February 27, 2011

Turning Around the Nation’s Lowest-Performing Schools: Five Steps Districts Can Take to Improve Their Chances of Success

Author: Karen Baroody
Published in: Center for American Progress
Published: January 2011

Read Full Article: Full Report (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/pdf/five_steps.pdf)
Executive Summary (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/pdf/five_steps_execsumm.pdf)
Read Online (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/five_steps.html)

Abstract
Persistently low-performing schools face unique challenges that require aggressive, customized, and sustained interventions. Too often districts provide intervention based on a one-size-fits-all approach offering the same support regardless of differences in individual school needs. The result is often a standalone, add-on approach that neither addresses the needs of each individual school nor fixes the district-level conditions that allowed the school to fail in the first place. This report identifies five steps that districts can take in designing and implementing their school improvement programs that will increase the probability that their efforts will achieve lasting improvement.