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School Turnarounds: Gold Rush for Consultants or kids?
June 23, 2010
While I'm thrilled that the feds have provided a bit more clarity and money on fixing low-performing schools than the last administration, I've been amazed that there has not been more thoughtful discussion about what's worked and how to successfully pull off a turnaround. A thanks goes to Andy Smarick for raising critical questions, thoughtful analysis while Public Impact provides some great resources.
Based on some of the recent rhetoric from all levels of education, it's as if schools, districts, foundations and states have only just started doing school improvement, redesign and replacement work.
You can bet there are lots of "turnaround consultants" madly creating workshops and slide decks with lots of fancy flowcharts and arrows in the hopes that they can land a district or state consulting contract at a couple thousand bucks/day.
It would be great if there were a federal clearinghouse that had descriptions of schools that had dramatically improved with all the research about strategies and effectiveness.
It would also be nice to have some kind of website that collected data/feedback on school consultants and their organizations. It will be interesting to follow who gets the contracts, what they do and how much they are paid.
I know there is much more learning about what has failed than what has worked. There are few schools that have been turned around and lasted. This is particularly true when you look at the waves of attempted high school transformations over the last 20 years from Annenberg, Carnegie, Gates, Comprehensive School Reform Program, California's SB1274 and the multitude of district efforts.
Funny, it seems an understanding of ed reform history might help us to steer clear from déjà vu all over again.