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

Measuring School Turnaround Success: Report Explores Options

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 5, 2016

Turning a failing school around takes hard work—and can be even harder to sustain. And right now, most states don’t even have a clear, robust definition of turnaround success.

So Public Impact collaborated with the Center on School Turnaround on Measuring School Turnaround Success to explore an approach that states, districts, and schools can adapt to fit their own contexts. The authors detail the analyses conducted to test a critical part of this approach—measuring academic gains—and recommend expanding the measures to include leading indicators and targets based on school priorities for “early wins.”

Key findings:

  • Benefits of multiple measures. Measuring turnaround success is multifaceted and requires using multiple measures of outcomes, leading indicators, and school practices.
  • Benefits of percentile rank. Ranking each school against all others in the state is a useful measure of turnaround achievement gains, especially helpful in states where assessments and performance measures have recently changed.
  • Trajectory for turnaround success. This approach to measuring school performance can take into account that a school may meet minimum standards at the beginning, showing that it is on track for success, before reaching ambitious targets.
  • Accelerate turnaround success. It’s crucial to define and measure turnaround success so other schools can learn from successful schools.

Key next steps:

  • Examine the role of leading indicators and school-based targets in turnaround success, to establish a more robust definition of school turnaround success.
  • Encourage states to apply the measures of turnaround success, modifying them to fit state needs. Changing assessment and accountability systems present barriers to creating a common definition of turnaround success that can be applied across states, but they also present an opportunity for states to use a common definition as a foundation for measuring success.
  • Help states and districts get smarter about what to do when turnarounds seem unlikely to succeed. Most change efforts in education wait for five or more years of continued failure before trying a new turnaround strategy, but research shows the promise of attempting a new strategy earlier. However, starting another turnaround process soon after a previous one has begun presents significant challenges. States and districts need better strategies to intervene and replace failing turnarounds.

Public Impact’s Jeanette Cornier and Cassie Lutterloh, who wrote the report with Public Impact Co-Director Bryan C. Hassel, recently presented on this approach to Measuring Turnaround Success at a Center on School Turnaround webinar for state leaders.

About Sharon Kebschull Barrett

Sharon Kebschull Barrett is a senior editor with Public Impact. She edits the Public Impact and Opportunity Culture blogs, copyedits Public Impact's reports, and provides research and writing for the firm. Her recent work focuses on extending the reach of excellent teachers, charter schools, and state policy. A former newspaper reporter and copy editor, Ms. Barrett is the author of two cookbooks, Desserts from an Herb Garden and Morning Glories (St. Martin's Press). She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as editor of The Daily Tar Heel.

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

Learning in Real Time—How Charter Schools Served Students During Covid-19 Closures
Profiles highlight how charter schools were able to respond quickly to school closures during the pandemic and continue to serve their students well.

Building an Effective Staff—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Engaging Families—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Building a Strong School Culture—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

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.

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.

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.  

Public Impact, LLC | 919-240-7955 | Terms of Use | © Public Impact 2000-2020 | Wordpress website design by LeGa Design Group


Don’t miss the latest Public Impact reports:
Sign-up for our newsletter!



×