As the Obama administration seeks to turn around failing schools, a new report released Wednesday on California schools underscores the difficulty of boosting the academic achievement of low-performing schools.
The study by the Brown Center of Education Policy compares the rankings of 1,156 public schools in California in 1989 with their rankings in 2009.
The researchers found that 63 percent of the 290 schools that ranked in the bottom quarter in 1989 were still at the bottom 20 years later. Only 1.4 percent of those schools moved to the top quarter.
In contrast, the study found that 63 percent of the 289 schools that ranked in the top quarter in 1989 were still at the top in 2009. And only 2.4 percent fell to the bottom quarter.
"It's extremely difficult to turn around these low-performing schools," said Tom Loveless, the report's lead author. "Within the state, schools that were laggards 20 years ago are still lagging, and the ones that were leading the state are still leading the state."
More research would be needed to determine if the same dynamic holds true in other states or time periods, said Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brown Center, which is part of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Loveless, who taught in California public schools for nine years, said the "persistence of school culture" — created by teachers, administrators, parents and students — could help explain why so few low-performing schools become high performers.
"We don't know how to sever this link between past and future," he said. "We need to learn a lot more about how schools create their cultures."
John Rogers, co-director of University of California Los Angeles' Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, noted that 20 years is a long period in which to look at a school's performance.
"There was a rapid decline in conditions in California schools during this time, we had a
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