New School Start Ups and Replications of High Performing Charter School Models
Provide a Better Solution
STANFORD, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
As the Obama administration pushes states, districts, and education
organizations to embrace school "turnarounds" and prepares to spend billions of
dollars in federal funds on such efforts, education researcher Andy Smarick of
the Thomas B. Fordham Institute warns that the evidence strongly suggests that
this policy is not the solution for the nation`s mounting number of failing
schools.
"We need to begin this discussion by acknowledging that the vast majority of
persistently low performing schools remain that way despite interventions," says
Smarick. His article, "The Turnaround Fallacy," appears in the forthcoming issue
of Education Next and is now available online at www.EducationNext.org.
To illustrate, Smarick points to national data on the results of No Child Left
Behind-mandated school restructuring for schools that fail to meet minimum
achievement targets for five years or more. According to a report from the U.S.
Department of Education, of the schools required to restructure in 2004-05, only
19 percent were able to exit improvement status two years later.
To get a perspective on the value of turnaround strategies more broadly, Smarick
also looked at research from the private sector.
"Education leaders seem to believe that, outside of the world of schools,
persistent failures are easily fixed," Smarick writes. "Far from it: The limited
success of turnarounds is a common theme in other fields." He points to research
by the American Enterprise Institute on the success rates of Total Quality
Management (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR), the two most common
approaches to organizational reform in the private sector. Both have failed to
generate the desired results two-thirds of the time or more.
If failure is also the norm for turnaround efforts in the business world, where
flexibility and competitive pressure are present, Smarick argues that we should
have little confidence that turnaround strategies will be successful in urban
school districts, which are subject to severe political and regulatory
restrictions.
A better solution is being tried by reform-minded district superintendents who
are closing the lowest performing schools and making room for new school start
ups and replication of high-performing charter school models that are recording
impressive achievement gains.
For decades, states and districts have tried to fix their worst schools,
investing incalculable resources into these efforts. The NCLB restructuring
provision provided more resources and gave districts four specific strategies to
address these schools and a fifth option that allowed even more interventions.
And yet, we still have thousands of failing schools. Now the current
administration wants to invest billions more in these turnaround efforts.
Instead, Smarick argues that the charter model ought to be applied as a
solution. Schools that fail to live up to expectations should be closed, new
schools should be started in their place, and the best schools should be
expanded and replicated.
"Our relentless preoccupation with improving the worst schools actually inhibits
the development of a healthy urban public-education industry," Smarick says.
Read "The Turnaround Fallacy" available online at www.educationnext.org.
WatchEducation Next`s video interview with Andy Smarick, "Should failing schools
be fixed or closed?" online at
www.educationnext.org/should-failing-schools-be-fixed-or-closed.
Andy Smarick is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute and adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that
is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform. Other sponsoring
institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance and the
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Caleb Offley (585) 319-4541
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6010
www.hoover.org
Hoover Institution
Caleb Offley, 585-319-4541
or
Andy Smarick, 443-534-6550
asmarick@edexcellence.net
Copyright Business Wire 2009
