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Measuring the Performance of Turnaround Schools

vonzastrowc's picture
By Claus von Zastrow on September 16, 2009

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced an ambitious goal: To turn around the nation’s lowest-performing schools. The Learning First Alliance (LFA), which sponsors Public School Insights, applauds that goal. Today, the Alliance released a set of principles for tracking the progress of the nation’s school turnaround efforts. Principles for Measuring the Performance of Turnaround Schools outlines how education agencies and communities can determine whether those efforts are leading to both swift improvement and sustained change in persistently struggling schools.

This statement offers a framework for aligning turnaround efforts with a vision for giving every child access to an excellent public school. The proposed principles can help policymakers, educators and communities identify schools in need of intervention, reliably gauge the progress and staying power of turnaround efforts, and guide effective improvement strategies.

You can read the LFA press release here or read the entire statement here.

 

Link to this story: http://www.learningfirst.org/measuring-performance-turnaround-schools

2 Comments Digg this article Del.icio.us

LFA is to be congratulated

Submitted by Renee / TeachMoore on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 00:03

LFA is to be congratulated for its perceptive analysis of what it really takes to measure the success of a school and those who work there. I suspect this clarity comes from the mix of stakeholder organizations that make up LFA (teachers, parents, admnistrators, boards, policymakers). I hope this helps us push forward a more thoughtful discussion at national and local levels of how we can know when our schools are being successful and how to sustain that success past grant or election cycles.

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Thanks for the kind comment,

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 15:29

Thanks for the kind comment, Renee. We certainly hope that the mix of stakeholder groups coming together around a common cause helps us come to valuable insights.

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