We've arrived at the sixth (perhaps final?) part of the??school turnaround??debate between our Andy Smarick and??Public Impact's Bryan and Emily Hassel. Just checking in now? See Andy's first post and the Hassels' first response. Then, read the third installment, where Andy addresses five key points, and the fourth, where the Hassels fire back four quick responses of their own. Andy gave his input on those four responses, and now, in this sixth act, the Hassels are back with their final thoughts.
We'll try to ignore Andy's assuming of facts and results to support his argument. To be clear: we are not arguing for turnaround efforts like they have been tried in education in the past nor are we making any baseless assertions about their track record in education. Quite the contrary: It is outside of education that the turnaround track record is similar to new starts. ??So we looked outside of education to find out how to do a bad-to-great transformation.
Turnarounds in other sectors follow a formula - and not one like any of the education change efforts of the past few decades (e.g., continuous improvement, comprehensive school reform). So why not start with that bad-to-great success formula for school turnarounds? ??That's a key point of our work: education need not work in a silo with turnarounds.?? If we try what has worked elsewhere for turnarounds, the results should look similar to elsewhere and be on par with new starts, as in other sectors.?? That's how the new-start sector in education has distinguished itself from run of the mill new schools, and that's how turnarounds can do the same.?? Will they? That depends on whether turnaround schools follow the formula . . .