School Turnaround

This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).  It provides the following descriptive information on school principals by school type, student characteristics, and other relevant categories: number, race/ethnicity, age, gender, college degrees, salary, hours worked, focus of work, years experience, and tenure at current school.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether academic achievement in fact increases after the introduction of high-stakes tests. The first objective of this study is to assess whether academic achievement has improved since the introduction of high-stakes testing policies in the 27 states with the highest stakes written into their grade 1-8 testing policies.

The Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary School Principals in the United States is a subsection of the NCES 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It provides descriptive statistics on K-12 school principals in areas such as: race, gender, education level, salary, experience, and working conditions.

This study is a meta-analysis of the research on the impact of comprehensive school reform (CSR) on student achievement. The research summarizes the specific effects of 29 widely implemented models.

This review assesses the effectiveness of school-based curricula, finance, management, and teacher’s decision-making. This report has implications for the impact of charter schools, as the primary intervention in this model is local control. The report finds limited evidence of the effectiveness of these reforms, especially from low-income countries.

The Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement: A Systems Framework (PDF) is a research-based approach to school turnaround — proven to help states, districts, and schools in effectively leading and managing rapid improvement efforts.

In a time when public schools continue to be scrutinized, school leadership never mattered more in order to exercise school reform. This qualitative study examined how five principals working in an urban school district perceived their evaluation and how it contributed to their practice.

In a time when public schools continue to be scrutinized, school leadership never mattered more in order to exercise school reform. This qualitative study examined how five principals working in an urban school district perceived their evaluation and how it contributed to their practice.

Class size is one variable in American education that research confirms has a positive influence student learning and was then taken to scale across the nation. Unfortunately, the results when applied at scale have not achieved the results expected in the initial studies.

This briefing paper addresses the essential competencies and actions of the turnaround principal.

This report is the second in an IERC series on public school principals in Illinois. This study focuses on principals’ movements during the same period, thereby providing recent information on principal retention and turnover during a time marked by increasing school accountability and public scrutiny of principal effectiveness

Race to the Top will reward States that have demonstrated success in raising student achievement and have the best plans to accelerate their reforms in the future. These States will offer models for others to follow and will spread the best reform ideas across their States, and across the country.

"But I am addressing my remarks not just to those of you assembled today in this majestic Rotunda but to a generation of college students, professionals rethinking their careers, military veterans, retirees and others who may be thinking of becoming a teacher. Put plain and simple, this country needs an army of great, new teachers—and I can think of no better place to start recruiting them then in Thomas Jefferson's hallowed halls."

School reform embraced the American psyche in the 1980s, and waves of initiatives emerged to revitalize and improve a system perceived as not meeting the country's needs. Today, ideas such as school choice, for-profit
schools, site-based management, participatory decision-making, teacher empowerment, school restructuring, and an array of other reforms fill the educational lexicon as reformers seek alternative means for better educating the nation's youth.

How to bring schools from the brink of doom to stellar success.

Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a turnover is confounded with unobserved school-level factors. We employ a novel identification strategy that blocks each potential source of endogeneity to isolate plausibly causal effects of within- and between-year principal turnover.

This guide identifies practices that can improve the performance of chronically low-performing schools--a process commonly referred to as creating "turnaround schools." The four recommendations in this guide work together to help failing schools make adequate yearly progress. 

This report provides descriptive information on traditional public, charter, and private school principals over the period of 1987-88 through 2011-12. It includes comparative data on number of principals, gender, race/ethnicity, age, advance degrees, principal experience, teaching experience, salaries, hours worked, focus of work, experience and tenure at current schools, etc.

This paper defines and describes what is meant by "professional learning community"; describes what happens when a school staff studies, works, plans, and takes action collectively on behalf of increased learning for students; and discusses what is known about creating such communities of professionals in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the relationship between principal effectiveness (which we capture with a principal quality measure) and turnover. Specifically, we assess whether higher quality principals are more or less likely to leave their schools in New York City (NYC) as well as at the national level.

In trying to improve American public schools, educators, policymakers, and philanthropists are overselling the role of the highly skilled individual teacher and undervaluing the benefits that come from teacher collaborations that strengthen skills, competence, and a school’s overall social capital.

Using meta-analytic review techniques, this study synthesized the results of 79
unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its
impact on the school organization, teachers, and students.

The authors begin with eight basic understandings, assumptions, or starting points for our subsequent account of how to lead the successful turnaround of underperforming school. 

Leading School Turnaround offers new perspectives and concrete, evidence-based guidelines for the educational leaders and administrators faced with the challenge of turning our low-performing schools around. Using the tools outlined in this groundbreaking book, school leaders can guide their schools to higher levels of achievement and sustained academic success.

This paper reports findings of a study that is grounded in the assumption that the ways in which teachers interact outside their classrooms may be critical to the future of school restructuring and the effects of restructuring on students.

This article examines the unique features of the rural school context and how these features are associated with the stability of principals in these schools

This chapter examines what happens when schools engage in a process of comprehensive
school reform (CSR)

This report sets forth a framework of essential supports and contextual resources for school improvement, examines empirical evidence on its key elements and how they link to improvements in student learning, and investigates how a school's essential supports interact with community context to affect student learning.

This study investigates the successes of the charter and district sectors in eliminating bad schools via dramatic turnarounds in performance and/or shutdowns.

The National Teacher and Principal Survey is completed every four years soliciting descriptive information from principals and teachers across the 50 states. A few highlights include: Sixty percent of school principals have been at their schools for three years or less. 

The purpose of this Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement is to provide principles for restructuring and substantially improving schools.

As suggested by the title, the purpose of this Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement is to provide principles for restructuring and substantially improving schools. Sponsored by the US Department of Education, the Center on Innovation & Improvement (CII) engaged leading experts on restructuring and school improvement to prepare modules for this handbook to assist states, districts, and schools in establishing policies.

The authors measure the impact of replacing these principals on school-wide student achievement by measuring the changes in achievement that occurred when principals were replaced, and comparing these changes to achievement in comparison schools within DCPS that kept the same principal

During the past two decades, principal turnover issues have raised nationwide concerns about leadership stability and student performance. With national data from National Center for Education Statistics, this study examines how principal working conditions influence the probability of different types of principal turnover (mover, promoted, demoted, leaver, and retired).