Survey finds limited familiarity, success with turnarounds
Blog by Dakarai Aarons/Education Week
A new survey released today finds that few school districts are familiar with the four federal models for turning around low-performing schools and even fewer have implemented them. More than a third of school districts reported they had no familiarity with the models that are part of the federal School Improvement Grants heading to school districts this fall in a bid by the Obama administration to change the fortunes of the bottom five percent of America's schools, according to the report from the Washington-based Center on Education Policy. And fewer than 12 percent had implemented any of the models in their schools. "This really is a grand experiment to take the 5,000 lowest-performing schools in the country, tell them they have to follow four specific models of reform and putting a lot of money behind the reform," said Jack Jennings, CEP's president, in an interview. (more…)