TFA Celebrates Five Baltimore ‘Turnaround’ Schools. One Is Still Ranked In The Bottom 1%.
As an ashamed TFA alum, I receive their quarterly alumni magazine, ‘One Day.’ In the most recent issue, which I also saw on their Twitter feed, was an article called ‘Undefeated: Inside Five Baltimore Turnaround Schools that Refuse to Fail.’
The article is about five Baltimore schools that are run by TFA alumni and were recipients of some of the Obama/Duncan $3 billion school turnaround grant. The most aggressive turnaround strategy is to replace the majority of the staff, which is what these five schools did. The school turnaround grants have generally been considered a failure across the country, even by staunch reformers.
But, at least at a first glance, these turnaround schools were exceptions that prove that firing all the teachers at a school and replacing them, presumably with a lot of TFA teachers, is something that can work as long as TFA leaders are involved.
The five schools are Commodore John Rogers Elementary/Middle, Academy for College and Career Exploration (ACCE), Harford Heights Elementary, James McHenry CONTINUE READING: TFA Celebrates Five Baltimore ‘Turnaround’ Schools. One Is Still Ranked In The Bottom 1%. | Gary Rubinstein's Blog