This Week In Education: Thompson: SIG Failure Explained

This Week In Education: Thompson: SIG Failure Explained:

Thompson: SIG Failure Explained

by john thompson

In a stark contrast to the rosy scenario presented by Secretary Duncan last week, the Center on Reinventing Education's new report, "Tinkering Towards Transformation," by Sarah Yatsko, Robin Lake, Elizabeth Cooley Nelson, and Melissa Bowan describes the failure of Washington State to invest federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds in a transformative manner. The Center discovered that the $900,000 per year per school of SIG money produced marginal results because the rushed turnaround process ignored a large body of research on making dramatic improvements in low-performing schools. "District administrators described the entire process as extremely challenging, with one calling it a 'nightmare.'"  One district SIG director started an interview with the Center's researchers by inadvertently revealing the seat-of-your-pants nature of the process.  The district's director asked, "'Did we have any information that we could provide him on how to successfully turn around a failing school?' He went on to explain that he was at a loss as to how to do this."
Read below for more details from the report, and my take on what what SIG gets right and how it contradicts Mass Insight's turnaround "Bible."
The Center discovered that districts faced tight timelines and rushed negotiations with unions, and that some 

Bruno: Massive Turnover Isn't "Corporate Reform", Either

by Paul Bruno

I've written before about my distaste for the term "corporate reform", since it implicitly - and often unnecessarily - concedes the idea that the reformers' agenda consists mostly of implementing ideas that have been demonstrated to be effective in the private sector. Now, via Stephen Sawchuck, I see a new study indicating  that "there is a disruptive effect of turnover" that hurts achievement "particularly...in schools with more low-performing and black students".
This is a striking finding given the extent to which education reform often relies on increasing staff turnover in various ways, whether through the weakening of tenure, school turnarounds, or parent trigger laws. Rhetoric about "corporate reform" notwithstanding, do we often see corporations adopting these sorts of heavily pro-turnover policies?
On the contrary, while corporations typically have more flexible hiring and firing policies than traditional public

Next Up: Drone High

by Alexander Russo

It's high tech.  It's already online.  It's a growth industry.  And they're already teaching it at the college level:
"Amid a worldwide boom in unmanned aerial vehicles, a handful of U.S. colleges have begun offering classes and even four-year degrees for students looking for jobs in the fast-growing field where even newcomers can earn six-