Review praises, but raises concerns with, ambitious proposal for worst-performing schools
Contact: Patrick McQuillan, (617) 552-0676; (email) mcquilpa@bc.edu
Kevin Welner, (303) 492-8370; (email) kevin.welner@gmail.com
TEMPE, Ariz and BOULDER, Colo. (April 24, 2008) -- A new report recommends a series of sweeping changes and new investments to turn around America's worst-performing schools. A review of the report commends it for making "a major contribution" to the debate over school reform, but warns that it has an overly optimistic timeline, relies too much on punitive sanctions, offers key recommendations that reach beyond what the current research knowledge can support, and pays little attention to the role students might play in the reform process.
The report is The Turnaround Challenge: Why America's Best Opportunity to Dramatically Improve Student Achievement Lies in Our Worst-Performing Schools. It was written by Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash and published by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute. The Turnaround Challenge was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by Professor Patrick McQuillan of Boston College, who has extensively researched school reform over the past two decades.
This new report arrives at a time when schools around the country are facing the most serious sanctions in the No Child Left Behind Act. By the 2009-2010 school year, the report notes, five percent of the 100,000 public schools in the United States are likely to be assigned for "restructuring" under NCLB. The Turnaround Challenge suggests one approach for such restructuring. Pointing to a small group of "high-performing, high-poverty" schools in Massachusetts, the report contends that all schools are capable of closing gaps in student achievement.
The report describes a "Readiness Model" involving three components: changing school conditions to allow greater autonomy and authority for individual schools to respond more quickly to their conditions, instituting policies such as merit pay for teachers, longer school days, and swifter replacement of administrators deemed inadequate; increasing capacity by granting schools more autonomy in hiring talent and forming potential alliances in the community aimed at driving reform efforts forward; and clustering schools in networks that will provide them mutual support for reform efforts. Each of these would be overseen by a new state agency "free from normal bureaucratic constraints . . . [with] a flexible set of operating rules that allow it to carry out its mission."
Professor McQuillan credits the report for its thorough review of existing research and school reform, a review that acknowledges "both promising and less-than-positive findings." Yet the core recommendation of the report, a major state intervention in low-performing schools, involves a leap of faith since it has little support from research. "Notwithstanding the quality of the report's literature review, state-directed interventions remain relatively understudied and the report necessarily relies on a limited research base," McQuillan notes. He also says the report might have been improved by examining failed reforms-not just successes-because we can learn a great deal from what doesn't work.
Other concerns McQuillan raises include the fact that the report says little about the important role of students as reform participants; that it rests on what may be unrealistic assumptions that the political will exists for the sort of investment ($250,000 to $1 million a year per school) that would be needed, as well as additional government muscle required to carry out its recommendations; that it sets an "overly optimistic" goal for "significant achievement gains" within two years of implementation; and that it relies "a bit too much on unproven negative sanctions" alongside its recommendation for incentives for reform.
Overall, the review offers encouragement to Mass Insight's efforts. But Professor McQuillan also suggests some areas of concern that advocates of these ideas might want to reexamine.
CONTACT:
Patrick McQuillan, Professor of Education
Boston College
(617) 552-0676
mcquilpa@bc.edu
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@gmail.com
About the Think Tank Review Project
The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and CU-Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
Kevin Welner, the project co-director, explains that the project is needed because, "despite their garnering of media attention and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think tanks vary tremendously in their quality. Many think tank reports are little more than ideological argumentation dressed up as research. Many others include flaws that would likely have been identified and addressed through the peer review process. We believe that the media, policy makers, and the public will greatly benefit from having qualified social scientists provide reviews of these documents in a timely fashion." He adds, "we don't consider our reviews to be the final word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks' contributions to a public dialogue. That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about through rigorous critique and debate."
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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder partners with the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. These centers provide a variety of audiences, both academic and public, with information, analysis, and insight to further democratic deliberation regarding educational policies.
Visit their website at http://educationanalysis.org
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