This column was first published on May 17, 2016, on msdf.org, home of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
This is part of a blog series about one way we can help our nation’s lowest performing schools. In this series, we will introduce the concept of restart and will highlight: Who’s doing it, how it works and, ultimately, does it work. You can find the entire series here.
Over the past year, we’ve shared our experiences with school restart. As we discussed in our restart blog series, we describe school restart as matching high-quality operators with the highest needs schools in cities and districts across the country to restart them for better results. Our series served to answer the below question first asked by Joe Siedlecki in his blog Restarted schools: A necessary victory for kids:
“While every child deserves the chance to attend a quality school, far too many kids remain in failing schools. This begs the question: Who will take on the challenge of restarting these schools? Will a set of high performing education and charter management organizations prove what is possible? We hope so. Because we need these entrepreneurial leaders to help break down long-standing barriers and push for necessary change in schools across the country.”
We’ve invested in school restart as early as 2005 and will continue to do so because it’s showing promise as a viable option in creating quality schools for students. We have seen that, under the right conditions, restart can work.
