¡Turn it Around! | EduShyster

¡Turn it Around! | EduShyster:

¡Turn it Around!

What if there was a way to turn schools around without turning them upside down?

It’s field trip time, reader — and today we’re off to visit a real live school success story. FYI: it’s not the Massachusetts miracle turnaround school that got a shout-out at the Democratic National Convention, merited a stop by Yo Yo Ma, or whose students recently visited the White House in order to recite a Martin Luther King speech to President Obama. In other words, we’re NOT headed to Orchard Gardens, which has received more adulatory press coverage than any other public school in Massachusetts… 

The missing miracle
Our destination is a formerly failing elementary school in Lowell, MA, which last week was named one of the top-performing schools in the state. How did the Charlotte M. Murkland Elementary School accomplish this miraculous miracle? Not by following the “upside down” model that has made Orchard Gardens such a media darling. You see, Orchard Gardens pursued what we now now is a guaranteed recipe for success, or at least media attention and political praise: 80% of its teachers were fired and replaced by fresh new teachers, including many who are Teaching for America. The Murkland, whose student are similarly high poverty and English-language-learning, skipped the silver bullets, bypassing