Per the Hassels' rejoinder to my post, first let me say that I'm very happy that there's a discussion taking place about the feasibility of turnarounds. This is an important and potentially expensive undertaking so we should be driven by evidence, not hope.
With that said, I need to address several points in the Hassels' post:
First, while they are right that the ???????gold-standard??????? bar is a very high one, that IES study is not by any means the only study or report showing the general futility of turnarounds in education. I only cited it because IES is getting back into this business, and I wanted to make sure people understood that they'd already weighed in. More broadly, though, the question is not whether turnarounds can meet the gold-standard test of effectiveness; it's whether they can meet any reasonable test of scalable, sustainable effectiveness.
Second, I agree that turnarounds don't always fail. It's just that they almost always fail. That's why I'm careful to state my position as: ???????Turnarounds aren't a scalable way to improve America's urban school districts.??????? I disagree that ???????turnarounds happen all the time across sectors.??????? I think that's too optimistic a conclusion if we have a rigorous definition of a successful turnaround. As a matter of fact, I would love to get my hands on a list of successful school turnarounds. My definition is a school that was in a persistent state of failure then moved to excellent performance, which was then sustained for at least three years.
Third, I don't think they adequately addressed the fundamental problem with case study analysis, which the IES report explained very well. Identifying and then promoting common characteristics among successful examples is misleading because those exact same characteristics could have been present in unsuccessful examples.
If you were studying what makes a successful US Army general, you could do a case study of Eisenhower and Grant and conclude that attending West Point is the answer. But many West Point graduates turned out to be unsuccessful generals. This lesson is quite germane for school turnarounds: the commonalities among successful turnarounds (like a strong leader) are often present in failed turnarounds.
Fourth, while I concede that not all new charters will succeed, this can be said about new starts in every industry. The data on charters is what we ought to expect: a wide distribution in quality. So I would never argue that all new schools will be great and all turnarounds will fail. But I will argue that we have a significantly better chance of success with new charters (assuming they have critical components, like high expectations, the ability to make personnel decisions, etc.).
Finally, it is true that the big-name CMOs don't currently have the capacity to open enough schools to serve all of America's underserved kids. But that doesn't mean that we should resort to turnarounds. Those CMOs aren't the only ones who have the ability to run great schools. They were once unproven start-ups as well. But the operative term there is ???????start-ups.??????? That is, they weren't turnarounds. That's why my recommendation is that we encourage the opening of many new schools (fully recognizing that not all will succeed), monitor them assiduously, close those that fail, and replicate those that excel.
This process of rebuilding urban school systems won't happen overnight, but, in my opinion, it gives us the best hope of finally having a great system for great schools in America's cities.