Turnaround Schools:
District Strategies for Success and Sustainability
ERS, September 2010
Turnaround efforts at individual schools will not result in widespread, sustainable change without fundamental shifts in the way districts evaluate school, student, and teacher needs and match resources and support to meet those needs. Your challenge is to develop district capacity to address these four questions:
- What does each school need?
- What does each school get now?
- Does your district have an effective turnaround program?
- What are the right intervention strategies for each school?
This guide offers practical guidance for school turnaround tailored to your district’s situation.
- Use the Online Self-Assessment to determine how well your district currently supports turnaround and to measure current practice against optimal interventions.
- Work through a four-step process to answer the key questions of what your schools need, what resources your schools get and how they use them, whether your district has an effective turnaround program, and whether you are investing in the most important interventions. You will find worksheets at the back of the guide to help you.
- Identify actions you can take.
- Make the best short-term budget decisions, leverage the opportunity of federal funding, and lay the foundation for long-term success..
Also, consider checking out the other Practical Tools for District Transformation we have available:
