School turnaround is possible, but it takes a concerted effort with daring leadership at the helm and persistent, achievement-oriented collaboration among staff. For turnaround efforts to succeed, nothing is more important than making sure that the leaders and teachers who are selected for these challenging roles have the capacity and the will to make a turnaround happen.
The four resources in the Competencies for Turnaround Success Series are designed to help district officials identify and hire the right leaders and teachers for this demanding role. These resources clarify the most critical competencies – or patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting – that enable people to be successful in attempts to transform schools from failure to excellence quickly and dramatically.
The series includes two guides that describe the most critical turnaround competencies. The leader guide provides competency definitions, school examples, and detailed levels of increasingly effective competence. The teacher version provides competency definitions and school examples only.
School Turnaround Leaders: Competencies for Success
School Turnaround Teachers: Competencies for Success
Public Impact also developed two companion "toolkits" that can be used as step-by-step guides by districts and other organizations seeking to hire individuals to serve as turnaround principals or teachers. The toolkits include detailed levels of increasingly effective competence, selection questions, guidance on how to conduct interviews that reveal information about competencies, and scoring rubrics.
School Turnaround Leaders: Selection Toolkit
School Turnaround Teachers: Selection Toolkit
These four resources were developed with funding and support from The Chicago Public Education Fund and, in the case of Leaders for School Turnarounds: Selection Toolkit, additional funding and support from the District of Columbia Public Schools.
If you would like printed, bound copies of any of these materials, you can obtain them from the print-on-demand service Lulu.com. All proceeds from print purchases go to Lulu.com, not Public Impact.
