The Hassels have a new post up on Eduwonk about turnarounds. I'm generally a big fan of this talented duo and have been for years. In fact, Bryan Hassel's excellent The Charter School Challenge from 1999 was years ahead of its time. ??But??I think they're still way off base regarding the doomed venture of school turnarounds. (As you may recall, we slugged it out earlier here.)
As for their latest foray, they admit straightaway that turnarounds in all fields seldom work. Then they conclude that the answer is to just try more often because that will increase the number of success stories.
This, however, is??of course??like acknowledging that the chances of winning the lottery are infinitesimal but contending that a wise investment strategy is buying lots and lots of lottery tickets.
Yes, trying school turnarounds more often will??technically, mathematically increase the number of successes. But the flaw in this logic has been shown many times, including by this famous example.
The issue, which I addressed in point four here, is just how seldom school turnarounds work. The Hassels seem to think that in education 20 - 30 percent of persistent failures can be turned into consistent high-performers. I can't find a single bit of evidence to suggest that this is the case. In fact, everything I've come across suggests it is much, much lower.
In short, if you want to accumulate wealth over time, there are investment alternatives to lottery tickets, like bonds, mutual funds, savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. (And, per the above,??Gutenberg showed there are better ways to get multiple copies of a Shakespearean sonnet than randomly striking the keys of a typewriter.)
So too, if you want more great schools now and a healthy urban education industry that improves over time, there are alternatives to turnarounds. More on that later.