(This is the first guest post to come from Andy Smarick, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education where he helped manage the Department's research, budget, and policy functions. From 2007 to 2008, Andy served at the White House in the Domestic Policy Council.)
At the recent Fordham event on school accountability, Fordham trustee Diane Ravitch made what I thought was the most provocative comment of the evening. While discussing interventions for struggling schools, Dr. Ravitch said that urban superintendents should be punished??????receive demerits??? I believe were her words???when they close a school. Dr. Ravitch would prefer for districts to apply serious interventions in an effort to turn these schools around.
I'm of the exact opposite mind. If I were a state chief, I'd try to find some way to reward urban superintendents who regularly close persistently failing schools and replace them with new schools possessing the building blocks of success. I'm opposed to relentless efforts to fix failing schools for three reasons.
- There's a good bit of research on school turnaround efforts, especially now that we have so many schools facing NCLB restructuring, and virtually all of it shows these efforts seldom work. This isn't necessarily cause for alarm: the inability to fix low performers isn't reserved for K-12 education. Rick Hess and others have shown that other industries have the same problem. Consider: if fixing failed enterprises were so easy, why are bankruptcies, liquidations, and going-out-of-business sales so common? Some people have said that creating charters isn't a scalable way to improve urban education. The truth, it seems to me, is actually that fixing broken schools isn't a scalable way to improve urban education.
- Those on the ground who create great schools and try to fix bad ones seem to be coming to a consensus that new starts, not turnarounds, are the way to go. High-performing school networks like KIPP and Achievement First aren't interested in taking over a failing school. ??They want to start fresh. ??Bill Gates, who has funded more turnaround and start up efforts than just about anyone, recently reflected on what he's learned. ???We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.??? And with regard to the schools that have closed the achievement gap and those that have successfully replicated to help more students: ???Almost all of these schools are charter schools.???
- It seems to me that the way other industries remain dynamic, respond to changing conditions and demands, and consistently improve quality over time is NOT by spending vast stores of resources on their lowest performers. Instead, those chronically on the left side of the quality distribution are consistently shut down, new entrants constantly refresh the sector, and great performers expand and replicate.