In their March 2016 CALDER working paper, “School Turnaround in North Carolina: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis,” Jennifer Heissel and Helen Ladd find that school turnaround efforts funded by the federal Race to the Top grant did more harm than good.
Low-performing schools participating in the “Turning Around the Lowest Achieving Schools” or TALAS program could choose one of the US Department of Education’s four turnaround models. According to Heissel and Ladd, most of the 118 participating schools chose the “transformation model,” which involved replacing the principal, instructional reform, additional professional development, increased learning time, and operational flexibility.
The authors write,
Although the ultimate goal of the program was to improve student test scores, it instead led to a drop in school-wide passing rates in math (especially for female and Hispanic students) and in reading (especially for Black students). Among students who experienced the program in the first full treatment year, the program may have helped those on the borderline of passing in math, but it decreased the scores of the highest-achieving students in reading. In addition, we provide some limited evidence that the program led to an increase in the proportion of disadvantaged students in the treated schools.
Why did the turnaround efforts fail? Blame the bureaucracy.
Our unique statewide data set based on the state’s biannual Teacher Working Conditions Survey allowed us to open the black box to examine how teacher activities change under a turnaround regimen. We find that substantial change occurred in the treated schools. As required by the program, the schools brought in new principals and increased the time teachers devoted to professional development. But the program also increased administrative burdens and distracted teachers, potentially reducing the time available for instruction. Teachers became less satisfied with the time and other resources they had available and their turnover increased after the first full year of implementation.
Perhaps different approaches, such as an achievement school district, would do a better job of improving low-performing schools.