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We often hear that traditional public schools should learn from the successes of the best charter schools. That's true. But they have at least as much to learn from their struggles.

Here are some of the seldom acknowledged lessons we should learn from great charter schools:

You can't just do away with your central office. What a lovely, romantic idea: Thousands of schools homesteading on their own, free from those meddling, fat-cat administrators. Yet reality looks a bit different. Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) have had to expand their central offices as they create more schools. If you want to "scale up" a good model, you'll need something that looks like, well, a district.

The hard stuff costs lots of money. Charters were supposed to be more efficient, and therefore less expensive, than regular public schools. It turns out that many of the best ones have to rely on extra philanthropic dollars to serve their students well. Even when you account for the fact that some get less less from the government, they cost more.

Teachers should not have to be ascetics. Sure, you can run a few hundred schools that depend on teachers who are willing to forego families, sleep and sanity for the sake of their students--until, of course, they leave. But tens of thousands?

Schools have to do more to motivate children and families. The students who leave demanding charter schools don't just disappear. They go to less challenging schools. As long as first-rate charter schools can use their high ...

Dr. Jerry Weast has presided over a decade of strong and steady gains in Montgomery County, Maryland. How did his district do it? Not by using any of the cure-all strategies that have captivated the national media.

Weast recently told us the story of his school district's success. Several big themes stand out:

• Stop the blame game and start collaborating. Big fights between administrators and teachers are catnip to reporters, but they don't do much for children.
• Set common goals and figure out how to reach them. In Montgomery County, everyone could agree that students should leave high school ready for college.
• Create a system that helps everyone be successful. It's not enough to let 1000 flowers bloom.
• There's more to equity than equality. Weast describes a "red zone" where most of the county's low-income children live. It's not enough to treat those children and their wealthier "green zone" peers equally. The children in the "red zone" need much more systemic support.

There's much more to Dr. Weast's vision than I can sum up here. Here's the story as he told it to us in a phone conversation last week:

There are some structural issues in the way that we are thinking about American education. You see little Kindergartners come to school, and they believe that they can learn anything. Their parents do too. And so does everybody else who meets them. But a few years later, because of the sorting process and the type of structure that they are in, a lot of that belief is taken away and there are huge achievement gaps.

Then you see beginning teachers. They come in and they feel like they can take on the world and do anything. But within five years about half of them have left the profession.

There is something structurally wrong with a system where about a third of the children in America ...

As everyone knows by now, Aldine Independent School District in Texas won the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education. And they did it without mayoral control (gasp) or even a single charter school (say it ain't so!)

So what did they do? For one, the board, administrators, teachers and community members collaborated on common solutions to the district's problems. For another, they worked hard to give teachers and administrators the support they needed. Most important, they committed to improvement for the long haul. No quick fixes at Aldine.

The Learning First Alliance offered far more detail in a 2003 case study of Aldine. Here are a few highlights from what we learned back then:

1. Recognize that you have a problem. When student peformance cratered in the mid 90s, district leaders knew they had to do something.
2. Set high expectations for students and staff. Yes, this has become a truism--but only because it's so very true.
3. Give schools a first-rate curriculum. In 1996, Aldine created "benchmark targets," a curriculum aligned with state standards. Teachers asked for
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There is a school turnaround strategy for every taste. At least, that's the impression I get from the National Journal's most recent panel of experts. Asked to name the best strategies for turning around schools, different experts list different ideas. Pair struggling schools with the best teacher training institutions, writes Steve Peha. Create a year-round calendar, writes Phil Quon. Shutter struggling schools and start from scratch, writes Tom Vander Ark.

Each of these ideas has merit in some cases--I myself love the first idea, like the second, and am not fully sold on the third. But none is a necessary ingredient for all or even most schools.

So what do we know about turnarounds? Two big themes stand out in much of the school turnaround literature:

1. There is no detailed prescription for what works in all cases.
2. There is, however, abundant evidence that a school will not turn itself around unless it gives teachers the support they need to succeed.

These themes are also clear in the many turnaround stories we profile on this website. Policy makers should take note.

The Reconstitution Myth
It's high time to slay the reconstitution dragon. Despite what you may hear these days, you do not have to kill a school to save it.

Here's what Emily and Bryan Hassel write in Education Next, which is hardly a pro-union rag: “Successful turnaround leaders typically do not replace all or most of the staff at the start, but they often replace some key leaders who help ...