Public Impact

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • What We Do
  • Media
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
Innovation. Excellence. Service. Impact.
  • Opportunity Culture
  • Teachers & Principals
    • Teacher Leadership
    • Recruit, Select, and Keep Education Talent
    • Competencies of High Performers
    • Evaluating Teacher and Leader Performance
    • Teacher and Leader Compensation
    • Professional Development for Educators
  • Turnarounds
    • Turnarounds Within Schools
    • Restarts by Charter Operators
    • Innovation Zones
  • Funding
    • School Funding
  • Charters
    • Charter School Authorizing
    • Scaling Up Quality
    • Restarts in Failing Schools
    • High Market Share Cities
    • State and Federal Charter School Policy
    • Help for Charter Schools
    • Serving Students with Highest Needs
  • More Topics
    • Big Ideas for Education
    • Entrepreneurship in K-12
    • Parents and Community
    • Philanthropy in Education
    • Special Populations
    • Technology in Schools
    • Assessment and Data

Early Indianapolis Restarts Shed Light About Improvement Strategy

written by Paola Gilliam on October 31, 2019

Districts are increasingly joining with external providers—often charter operators—to implement “restarts” as one way to turn around persistently struggling schools. In a restart, a school continues to serve the same community, while its new provider receives operational autonomy in exchange for a contractual commitment to raise student outcomes. Our ongoing research has documented more than 200 such restarts in 16 states between 2010–11 and 2016–17, as leaders seek alternatives to closing struggling schools or allowing them to languish.
restart cover with border
With restarts gaining traction, the field needs much better information and insight about the approach. How well are restarted schools performing?  What challenges have arisen? And what can leaders do to increase restart success?
In The Impact of School Restarts: Lessons from Four Indianapolis Schools, Public Impact’s Daniela Doyle and Ismael Hernandez-Cruz take a deep dive into the data from four restarts that started within Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) between the 2015–16 and 2017–18 school years, as well as interviews with school and district staff. As researchers have documented elsewhere, the authors found mixed results in Indianapolis.
  • Student enrollment increased at all four restarts, and reenrollment rates increased at three.
  • The longest-running of the restarts, Phalen Leadership Academy @ 103, made double-digit student learning growth in both ELA (English language arts) and math during the study period.
  • Other schools made gains in one subject but not the other, or showed less growth than in the three years prior to the restart.
  • At least two years of restart data were available for three of the schools. In the two years following the restart, students who remained in the restarted school made bigger gains than those who went elsewhere in one of three schools in ELA, and in two of three schools in math.

Given the small number of restarts and tested students included in the study, the findings from this analysis are not conclusive. The field needs more research on a larger and more diverse set of schools to more confidently identify what works, what doesn’t, and why.

The experiences of these four schools, however, point toward three lessons for districts, states, and educators to consider when restarting a school:

  1. The restart opportunity can attract high-potential school operators.  IPS’s experience demonstrates that access to district resources, especially facilities and local tax dollars, can induce promising operators to take on the challenging work of reviving long-struggling schools.
  2. Early and honest community engagement can smooth the process. Though less disruptive than closure, restart is a major change for students, families, and the community. IPS leaders and operators learned, sometimes the hard way, the importance of putting deep thought and energy into authentic community engagement from the beginning to help clear the path for restarts.
  3. More seamless data systems are needed to support systems of schools across a city. As more operators share responsibility for enrolling students in a city, leaders need improved data infrastructures that make it possible to follow students as they change schools and track their learning throughout their schooling.  Better data will enable education leaders and policymakers to make better decisions about restarts in the future.

The Indianapolis research builds on Public Impact’s prior work on school restarts, which includes additional studies as well as practical tools for leaders implementing the approach. Those resources are available here.

About Paola Gilliam

Public Impact®

Public Impact, LLC
Chapel Hill, NC
919-240-7955

Public Impact encourages the free use, reproduction, and distribution of our materials, but we require attribution. If you adapt the materials, you must include on every page “Adapted from PublicImpact.com; Copyright Public Impact” in the font size specified here.

Materials may not be sold, leased, licensed, or otherwise distributed for compensation. See our Terms of Use page or contact us for more information.

Public Impact is certified as a living wage employer by Orange County Living Wage.

Search

Subscribe

Sign Up for E-News!
 


 
Read Back Issues of our
E-Newsletter

 
Subscribe to our blog with RSS

Follow

New from Public Impact

The Impact of School Restarts—Lessons from Four Indianapolis Schools
Report analyzes how enrollment, demographic, and student performance data changed following the restarts of four charter schools in Indianapolis, IN.

Employment Opportunities—Entry-Level Consultant
Public Impact is seeking candidates for an Entry Level Consultant position, with a start date of Summer 2020. Deadline for applications is October 14, 2019!

Learning from Project L.I.F.T.—Legacy of a Public-Private School Turnaround Initiative
Report examines successes, challenges, and lessons from a private-public district turnaround initiative.

Employment Opportunities—Systems Support Associate
Public Impact is seeking candidates for a Systems Support Associate position, with a start date of Fall 2019. Deadline for applications is October 7, 2019!

The Potential of a Virtual Education—Lessons from Virtual Schools with Results 
Report highlights two virtual charter schools making online schooling work for their students and identifies lessons and recommendations for virtual schools.  

Better Together—Charter School Champions and Parent Advocates
This call to action explains why partnerships to better support students with disabilities are needed, the forms they might take, and how to get started.

Charter School Facility Incubators—An Innovative Approach to Charter School Facilities
This case study provides an in-depth look at the design and operations of Building Pathways, a charter facility incubator in Washington D.C.

Public Impact, LLC | 919-240-7955 | Terms of Use | © Public Impact 2000-2019 | Wordpress website design by LeGa Design Group