The turnaround fallacy: stop trying to fix failing schools. Close them and start fresh.

The turnaround fallacy: stop trying to fix failing schools. Close them and start fresh. For as long as there have been struggling schools in America'scities, there have been efforts to turn them around. The lure ofdramatic improvement runs through Morgan Freeman's big-screenportrayal of bat-wielding principal Joe Clark, philanthropic initiativeslike the Gates Foundation's "small schools" project, andNo Child Left Behind (NCLB)'s restructuring mandate. The Obamaadministration hopes to extend this thread even further, making schoolturnarounds a top priority. But overall, school turnaround efforts have consistently fallen farshort of hopes and expectations. Quite simply, turnarounds are not ascalable strategy for fixing America's troubled urban schoolsystems. Fortunately, findings from two generations of school improvementefforts, lessons from similar work in other industries, and a buddingpractice among reform-minded superintendents are pointing to a promisingalternative. When conscientiously applied strategies fail to drasticallyimprove America's lowest-performing schools, we need to close them. Done right, not only will this strategy help the students assignedto these failing schools, it will also have a cascading effect on otherpolicies and practices, ultimately helping to bring about healthysystems of urban public schools. A Body at Rest Stays at Rest Looking back on the history of school turnaround efforts, the firstand most important lesson is the "Law of Incessant Inertia."Once persistently low performing, the majority of schools will remainlow performing despite being acted upon in innumerable ways. Examples abound: In the first year of California's AcademicPerformance Index, the state targeted its lowest-performing 20 percentof schools for intervention. After three years, only 11 percent of theelementary schools in this category (109 of 968) were able to make"exemplary progress." Only 1 of the 394 middle and highschools in this category reached this mark. Just one-quarter of theschools were even able to accomplish a lesser goal: meeting schoolwideand subgroup growth targets each year. In 2008,52 Ohio schools were forced to restructure because ofpersistent failure. Even after several years of significant attention,fewer than one in three had been able to reach established academicgoals, and less than half showed any student performance gains. TheColumbus Dispatch concluded, "Few of them have improvedsignificantly even after years of effort and millions in taxdollars." These state anecdotes align with national data on schoolsundergoing NCLB-mandated restructuring, the law's most seriousintervention, which follows five or more years of failing to meetminimum achievement targets. Of the schools required to restructure in2004-05, only 19 percent were able to exit improvement status two yearslater. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A 2008 Center on Education Policy (CEP) study investigated theresults of restructuring in five states. In California, Maryland, andOhio, only 14, 12, and 9 percent of schools in restructuring,respectively, made adequate yearly progress (AYP) as defined by NCLB thefollowing year. And we must consider carefully whether merely making AYPshould constitute success at all: in California, for example, a schoolcan meet its performance target if slightly more than one-third of itsstudents reach proficiency in English language arts and math. Though theCEP study found that improvement rates in Michigan and Georgia wereconsiderably higher, Michigan changed its accountability system duringthis period, and both states set their AYP bars especially low. Though alarming, the poor record for school turnarounds in recentyears should come as no surprise. A study published in 2005 by theEducation Commission of the States (ECS) on state takeovers of schoolsand districts noted that the takeovers "have yet to producedramatic consistent increases in student performance," and that theimpact on learning "falls short of expectations." Reflecting on the wide array of efforts to improve failing schools,one set of analysts concluded, "Turnaround efforts have for themost part resulted in only marginal improvements. ... Promisingpractices have failed to work at scale when imported to troubledschools." Like Finding the Cure for Cancer The second important lesson is the "Law of OngoingIgnorance." Despite years of experience and great expenditures oftime, money, and energy, we still lack basic information about whichtactics will make a struggling school excellent. A review published inJanuary 2003 by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation of more than 100 books,articles, and briefs on turnaround efforts concluded, "There is, atpresent, no strong evidence that any particular intervention type worksmost of the time or in most places." An EdSource study that sought to compare California'slow-performing schools that failed to make progress to itslow-performing schools that did improve came to a confoundingconclusion: clear differences avoided detection. Comparing the twogroups, the authors noted, "These were schools in the same citiesand districts, often serving children from the same backgrounds. Some ofthem also adopted the same curriculum programs, had teachers withsimilar backgrounds, and had similar opportunities for professionaldevelopment." Maryland's veteran state superintendent of schools, NancyGrasmick, agrees: "Very little research exists on how to bringabout real sea change in schools. ... Clearly, there's noinfallible strategy or even sequence of them." Responding to thegrowing number of failing Baltimore schools requiring state-approvedimprovement plans, she said, "No one has the answer. It's likefinding the cure for cancer." Researchers have openly lamented the lack of reliable informationpointing to or explaining successful improvement efforts, describing theliterature as "sparse" and "scarce." Thoseattempting to help others fix broken schools have typically resorted toidentifying activities in improved schools, such as bolsteringleadership and collecting data. However, this case-study style of analysis is deeply flawed. As theU.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences(IES) has noted, studies "that look back at factors that may havecontributed to [a] school's success" are "particularlyweak in determining causal validity for several reasons, including thefact that there is no way to be confident that the features common tosuccessful turnaround schools are not also common to schools thatfail." Researchers have noted that the Department of Education hassignaled its own ignorance about what to do about the nation's veryworst schools. One study reported, "The NCLB law does not specifyany additional actions for schools that remain in the implementationphase of restructuring for more than one year, and [the Department] hasoffered little guidance on what to do about persistently strugglingschools." Indeed, the IES publication, "Turning AroundChronically Low-Performing Schools" practice guide, purportedly aresource for states and districts, concedes, "All recommendationshad to rely on low levels of evidence," because it could notidentify any rigorous studies finding that "specific turnaroundpractices produce significantly better academic outcomes." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Still in Its Infancy? The prevailing view is that we must keep looking for turnaroundsolutions. Observers have written, "Turnaround at scale is still inits infancy," and "In education, turnarounds have been triedrarely" (see "The Big U-Turn," features, Winter 2009).But, in fact, the number and scope of fix-it efforts have been extensiveto say the least. Long before NCLB required interventions in the lowest-performingschools, stales had undertaken significant activity. In 1989 New Jerseytook over Jersey City Public Schools; in 1995 it took over Newark PublicSchools. In 1993 California took control of the Compton Unified SchoolDistrict. In 1995 Ohio took over the Cleveland Metropolitan SchoolDistrict. Between 1993 and 1997 states required the reconstitution offailing schools in Denver, Chicago, New York City, and Houston. In 2000Alabama took over a number of schools across the state, and Marylandseized control of three schools in Baltimore. Since NCLB, interventions in struggling schools have only grown innumber and intensity. In the 2006-07 school year, more than 750 schoolsin "corrective action," the NCLB phase precedingrestructuring, implemented a new research-based curriculum, more than700 used an outside expert to advise the school, nearly 400 restructuredthe internal organization of the school, and more than 200 extended theschool day or year. Importantly, more than 300 replaced staff members orthe principal, among the toughest traditional interventions possible. Occasionally a program will report encouraging success rates. TheUniversity of Virginia School Turnaround Specialist Program asserts thatabout half of its targeted schools have either made AYP or reduced mathand reading failure rates by at least 5 percent. Though this might bebetter than would otherwise be expected, the threshold for success isremarkably low. It is also unknown whether such progress can besustained. This matter is particularly important, given that some pointto charter management organizations Green Dot and Mastery as turnaroundsuccess stories even though each has a very short turnaround resume, inboth numbers of schools and years of experience. Many schools that reach NCLB's restructuring phase, ratherthan implementing one of the law's stated interventions (close andreopen as a charter school, replace staff, turn the school over to thestate, or contract with an outside entity), choose the "other"option, under which they have considerable flexibility to design animprovement strategy of their own (see "Easy Way Out," forum,Winter 2007). Some call this a "loophole" for avoiding toughaction. Yet even under the maligned "other" option, states anddistricts have tried an astonishing array of improvement strategies,including different types of school-level needs assessments, surveys ofschool staff, conferences, professional development, turnaroundspecialists, school improvement committees, training sessions, principalmentors, teacher coaches, leadership facilitators, instructionaltrainers, subject-matter experts, audits, summer residential academies,student tutoring, research-based reform models, reconfigured gradespans, alternative governance models, new curricula, improved use ofdata, and turning over operation of some schools to outsideorganizations. It's simply impossible to make the case that turnaroundefforts haven't been tried or given a chance to work. A Better Mousetrap? Despite this evidence, some continue to advocate for improvedturnaround efforts. Nancy Grasmick supports recognizing turnarounds as aunique discipline. Frederick Hess and Thomas Gift have argued fordeveloping school restructuring leaders; Bryan Hassel and Emily AyscueHassel have recommended that states and districts "fuel thepipeline" of untraditional turnaround specialists. NewSchoolsVenture Fund, the Education Commission of the States, and the researchfirm Mass Insight have offered related turnaround strategies. And the Obama administration too has bought into the notion thatturnarounds are the key to improving urban districts. Educationsecretary Arne Duncan has said that if the nation could turn around1,000 schools annually for five years, "We could really move theneedle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions ofunder-served children." In the administration's 2009 stimuluslegislation, $3 billion in new funds were appropriated for schoolImprovement Grants, which aid schools in NCLB improvement status. Theadministration requested an additional $1.5 billion for this program inthe 2010 budget. This is all on top of the numerous streams of existingfederal funds that can be--and have been--used to turn around failingschools. The dissonance is deafening. The history of urban education tellsus emphatically that turnarounds are not a reliable strategy forimproving our very worst schools. So why does there remain a stubborninsistence on preserving fix-it efforts? The most common, but also the most deeply flawed, justification isthat there arc high-performing schools in American cities. That is, somefix-it proponents point to unarguably successful urban schools and theninfer that scalable turnaround strategies are within reach. In fact, ithas become fashionable among turnaround advocates to repeat philosopherImmanuel Kant's adage that "the actual proves thepossible." But as a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation study noted, "Much isknown about how effective schools work, but it is far less clear how tomove an ineffective school from failure to success. ... Being ahigh-performing school and becoming a high-performing school are verydifferent challenges." In fact, America's most-famous superior urban schools arevirtually always new starts rather than schools that were previouslyunderperforming. Probably the most convincing argument for thefundamental difference between start-ups and turnarounds comes fromthose actually running high-performing high-poverty urban schools (seesidebar). Groups like KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) and AchievementFirst open new schools; as a rule they don't reform failingschools. KIPP's lone foray into turnarounds closed after only twoyears, and the organization abandoned further turnaround initiatives.Said KIPP's spokesman, "Our core competency is starting andrunning new schools." A 2006 NewSchools Venture Fund study confirmed a widespreadaversion to takeover-and-turnaround strategies among successful schooloperators. Only 4 of 36 organizations interviewed expressed interest inrestructuring existing schools. Remarkably, rather than trustingsuccessful school operators' track records and informed opinionthat start-ups are the way to go, Secretary Duncan urged them to getinto the turnaround business during a speech at the 2009 NationalCharter Schools Conference. The findings above deserve repeating: Fix-it efforts at the worstschools have consistently failed to generate significant improvement.Our knowledge base about improving failing schools is still staggeringlysmall. And exceptional urban schools are nearly always start-ups orconsistently excellent schools, not drastically improved once-failingschools. So when considering turnaround efforts we should stop repeating,"The actual proves the possible" and bear in mind a differentKant adage: "Ought implies can." If we are going to tell states and districts that they must fix allof their failing schools, or if we are to consider it a moral obligationto radically improve such schools, we should be certain that thisendeavor is possible. But there is no reason to believe it is. Turnarounds Elsewhere Education leaders seem to believe that, outside of the world ofschools, persistent failures are easily fixed. Far from it. The limitedsuccess of turnarounds is a common theme in other fields. Writing inPublic Money & Management, researchers familiar with the trueprivate-sector track record offered a word of caution: "There is arisk that politicians, government officials, and others, newly enamoredof the language of failure and turnaround and inadequately informed ofthe empirical evidence and practical experience in the for-profit sector... will have unrealistic expectations of the transformative power ofthe turnaround process." Hess and Gift reviewed the success rates of Total QualityManagement (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR), the two mostcommon approaches to organizational reform in the private sector. Theliterature suggests that both have failed to generate the desiredresults two-thirds of the time or more. They concluded, "The hopethat we can systematically turn around all troubled schools--or even amajority of them--is at odds with much of what we know from similarefforts in the private sector." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many have noted that flexibility and dynamism are part of thegenetic code of private business, so we should expect theseorganizations to be more receptive to the massive changes required by aturnaround process than institutions set in what Hess calls the"political, regulatory, and contractual morass of K-12schooling." Accordingly, school turnarounds should be moredifficult to achieve. Indeed, a consultant with the Bridgespan Groupreported, "Turnarounds in the public education space are far harderthan any turnaround I've ever seen in the for-profit space." Building a Healthy Education Industry We shouldn't be surprised then that turnarounds in urbaneducation have largely failed. The surprise and shame is that urbanpublic education, unlike nearly every other industry, profession, andfield, has never developed a sensible solution to its continuousfailures. After undergoing improvement efforts, a struggling privatefirm that continues to lose money will close, get taken over, or gobankrupt. Unfit elected officials are voted out of office. The worstlawyers can be disbarred, and the most negligent doctors can lose theirlicenses. Urban school districts, at long last, need an equivalent. The beginning of the solution is establishing a clear process forclosing schools. The simplest and best way to put this into operation isthe chatter model. Each school, in conjunction with the state ordistrict, would develop a five-year contract with performance measures.Consistent failure to meet goals in key areas would result in closure.Alternatively, the state could decide that districts only have oneoption--not five--for schools reaching NCLB-man-dated restructuring:closure. This would have three benefits. First, children would no longer besubjected to schools with long track records of failure and highprobabilities of continued failure. Second, the fear of closure might generate improvement in somelow-performing schools. Failure in public education has had fewerconsequences (for adults) than in other fields, a fact that mightcontribute to the persistent struggles of some schools. We should havelimited expectations in this regard, however. Even in the privatesector, where the consequences for poor performance are significant,some low-performing entities never become successful. Third, and by far the most important and least appreciated factor,closures make room for replacements, which have a transformativepositive impact on the health of a field. When a firm folds due to poorperformance, the slack is taken up by the expansion of successfulexisting firms--meaning that those excelling have the opportunity to domore--or by new firms. New entrants not only fill gaps, they have atendency to better reflect current market conditions. They are also farlikelier to introduce innovations: Google, Facebook, and Twitter werenot products of long-standing firms. Certainly not all new starts willexcel, not in education, not in any field. But when provided the rightcharacteristics and environment, their potential is vast. The churn caused by closures isn't something to be feared; onthe contrary, it's a familiar prerequisite for industry health.Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan's brilliant 2001 book CreativeDestruction catalogued the ubiquity of turnover in thriving industries,including the eventual loss of once-dominant players. Churn generatesnew ideas, ensures responsiveness, facilitates needed change, andempowers the best to do more. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] These principles can be translated easily into urban publiceducation via tools already at our fingertips thanks to chartering:start-ups, replications, and expansions. Chartering has enabled newschool starts for nearly 20 years and school replications and expansionsfor a decade. Chartering has demonstrated clearly that the ingredientsof healthy, orderly churn can be brought to bear on public education. A small number of progressive leaders of major urban school systemsare using school closure and replacement to transform their long-brokendistricts: Under Chancellor Joel Klein, New York City has closed nearly100 traditional public schools and opened more than 300 new schools. In2004, Chicago announced the Renaissance 2010 project, which is builtaround closing chronically failing schools and opening 100 new publicschools by the end of the decade. Numerous other big-city districts are in the process of closingtroubled schools, including Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.In Baltimore, under schools CEO Andres Alonso, reform's guidingprinciples include "Closing schools that don't work for ourkids," "Creating new options that have strong chances ofsuccess," and "Expanding some programs that are alreadyproving effective." Equally encouraging, there are indications that these ideas, whichonce would have been considered heretical, are being embraced byeducation's cognoscenti. A group of leading reformers, theCoalition for Student Achievement, published a document in April 2009that offered ideas for the best use of the federal government's$100 billion in stimulus funding. They recommended that each statedevelop a mechanism to "close its lowest performing five percent ofschools and replace them with higher-performing, new schools includingpublic charter schools." A generation ago, few would have believed that such a fundamentaloverhaul of urban districts was on the horizon, much less that perennialunderperformers New York City, Chicago, and Baltimore would be at thefront of the pack with much of the education establishment and reformcommunity in tow. But, consciously or not, these cities have beguninternalizing the lessons of healthy industries and the charteringmechanism, which, if vigorously applied to urban schooling, haveextraordinary potential. Best of all, these districts and outstandingcharter leaders like KIPP Houston (with 15 schools already and dozensmore planned) and Green Dot (which opened 5 new schools surrounding oneof Los Angeles's worst high schools) are showing that the formulaboils down to four simple but eminently sensible steps: close failingschools, open new schools, replicate great schools, repeat. Today's fixation with fix-it efforts is misguided. Turnaroundshave consistently shown themselves to be ineffective--truly anunscalable strategy for improving urban districts--and our relentlesspreoccupation with improving the worst schools actually inhibits thedevelopment of a healthy urban public-education industry. Those hesitant about replacing turnarounds with closures shouldsimply remember that a failed business doesn't indict capitalismand an unseated incumbent doesn't indict democracy. Thoughtemporarily painful, both are essential mechanisms for maintaininglong-term systemwide quality, responsiveness, and innovation. ClosingAmerica's worst urban schools doesn't indict public educationnor does it suggest a lack of commitment to disadvantaged students. Onthe contrary, it reflects our insistence on finally taking the stepsnecessary to build city school systems that work for the boys and girlsmost in need. RELATED ARTICLE: Start Schools from Scratch Ask those who know how to run high-performing, high-poverty schoolswhy they start fresh, and they'll give strikingly similaranswers-and make the case against turnarounds. A study done for NewSchools Venture Fund found that the operatorsof school networks believed that "changing the culture of existingschools to facilitate learning was difficult to impossible." Onecompared turnarounds to putting "old wine in new bottles." Tom Torkelson, CEO of the high-performing IDEA network agrees:"I don't do turnarounds because a turnaround usually meansoperating within a school system that couldn't stomach the radicalsteps we'd take to get the school back on track. We fix what'swrong with schools by changing the practices of the adults, and Ibelieve there are few examples where this is currently possible withoutmeddling from teacher unions, the school board, or the centraloffice." Chris Barbic, founder and CEO of the stellar YES Prep network, saysthat "starting new schools and having control over hiring, lengthof day, student recruitment, and more gives us a pure opportunity toprove that low-income kids can achieve at the same levels as their moreaffluent peers. If we fail, we have only ourselves to blame, and thatmotivates us to bring our A-game every single day." KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg says simply, "The best way wecan look a child in the eye and say with confidence what kind of schooland environment we will provide is by starting that school andenvironment from scratch." Andy Smarick is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B.Fordham Institute and adjunct fellow at the American EnterpriseInstitute.