Can Failing Schools be Fixed?

January 1, 2003

Will the sanctions for failing schools laid out in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) succeed in turning those schools around? This report draws on the results of previous?efforts to overhaul failing schools to provide a glimpse at what may be expected from NCLB-style interventions. The results:?no intervention strategy has a success rate greater than 50%, so policymakers are urged to consider additional options for children trapped in failing schools.

Foreword

When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law, attention instantly focused on its centerpiece provisions dealing with testing and accountability. NCLB requires that all states install school and district accountability systems based on the results of student scores on annual tests. The Congressionally mandated accountability arrangements are elaborate, complex, and prescriptive. The goal is to press states and districts to act decisively to turn around failing schools and boost pupil achievement, particularly in reading and math. Millions of U.S. youngsters presently attend schools that are not educating their students to meet acceptable standards. Many schools have lingered on the failure list for years. No Child Left Behind is meant to change this.

But while the law energetically and precisely outlines a cascade of interventions and other consequences for persistently failing schools, surprisingly little is known about what kinds of interventions are most likely to turn faltering schools into successful educational institutions. Although many states and districts have sought in recent decades to overhaul their failing schools, up to now there have been few systematic efforts to glean lessons from their experiences. This report attempts to do exactly that.

It begins by describing the interventions set forth for state and local policymakers as part of No Child Left Behind. It then categorizes and reviews 17 interventions that have been attempted by states or school districts since 1989, interventions that resemble those mandated (or offered as options) by NCLB. Finally, it takes a close look at three interventions in particular: the Schools Under Registration Review process in New York State, the implementation of comprehensive school reform in Memphis, Tennessee, and the reconstitution of schools in Prince Georges County, Maryland. These efforts are examined with an eye to understanding what works under what circumstances and assessing how likely NCLB is to succeed in its effort to ensure that failing schools are turned around.

Author Ronald C. Brady is admirably suited to this task. A graduate of Bowdoin College and Princetons Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, he is a veteran of state-level intervention efforts who formerly headed New Jerseys office of state-operated school districts and worked closely with that states former Education Commissioner, Leo Klagholz. He has worked on school reform and intervention at the district level, too, first as an assistant to former New York City school chancellor Ray Cortines, and currently under the State District Superintendent in Paterson, New Jersey, Edwin Duroy, one of New Jerseys most accomplished urban superintendents. Brady has also done distinguished service for the Edison Project (now Edison Schools), where I came to know, like and respect his intellect, his integrity, and his passion to better the education prospects of poor and minority youngsters languishing in inadequate urban schools.

Bradys conclusions are sobering. While the United States can boast a number of examples of successful turnarounds, it appears that no particular intervention strategy has a success rate higher than 50 percent, and most interventions yield positive results in less than half of the schools they touch. No one strategy can be counted upon to succeed in all contexts. In most cases, solid school-level leadership seems to be critical to successyet that is precisely whats missing in many failing schools.

The author warns that interventions can be difficult, costly, unpredictable, and hard to sustain. He argues that the experience of the past decade suggests that there are limits to what can be accomplished by any wholesale intervention strategy, including the one enshrined in No Child Left Behind. Brady suggests that NCLB may expect too much improvement (as gauged by results) too soon. Given that many interventions are unlikely to yield improved schools, he urges policymakers to consider additional options for children trapped in failing educational institutions.

We are pleased to publish this important study. Heartily as we applaud NCLBs magnificent vision of a nation in which every child is proficient in core academic skills, sound public policy argues for a measure of candor when it comes to appraising the likelihood that a single intervention sequence can work everywhere in this vast nation. Time may show that the intervention quiver needs more and more varied arrows. In the meantime, those charged with aiming the arrows that have already been provided should benefit from this insightful study of which past archers have hit their targets and the circumstances that accompanied their success.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a private foundation that supports research, publications, and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the Dayton, Ohio, area. Further information can be obtained at our web site (http://www.edexcellence.net/) or by writing us at 1627 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. (We can also be e-mailed through our web site.) This report is available in full on the foundations web site, and hard copies can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free). The foundation is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., President
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Washington, D.C.
January 2003

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Can Failing Schools be Fixed?

Contents

Foreword