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While there currently exists a vast body of research around school turnaround policies, few studies speak to why they have or have not worked. This paper undertakes a systematic review of research literature on school turnaround policies to explore why this lack of understanding prevails in the field. We find key disconnects between "policy" and "practice" research on the topic of school turnaround. We contend that this divide negates the potential to learn from school leadership policy and practice in turnaround settings. We offer implications of these findings within turnaround research and policy while pointing out that this apparent divide seems to extend beyond the example of turnaround.

Leading school turnaround has been conceptualized as a school-level issue focused on immediate change. There has been little consideration about how district leaders change systems to sustain school turnaround successes. This case study research conducted through the lens of Change Theory explores the leadership struggles of one mid-sized urban district's effort to build on its successful launch of a school turnaround initiative for a subset of underperforming schools. The results suggest that the same pressures that spur initial action can interfere with sustaining success. The dual issues of systems leadership and a sustainable change process are considered as implications.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers states increased flexibility in how they identify, rank, label, and support underperforming schools. Initial reviews of state ESSA plans, however, suggest that identification and labeling policies have remained relatively unchanged. In this study, we analyze all state ESSA plans to systematically determine how states' identified Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools and the criteria they set for those schools to exit CSI status. We describe our findings through the theory of institutional isomorphism, noting the many ways states responded similarly to ESSA. We close by considering what the lack of innovation in response to ESSA flexibility might mean for the future of educational policy and the implications for schools identified as underperforming.

Educator leadership requires continuous development, including extended professional learning opportunities for principals in the field. This is also true for district leaders who likely have even fewer robust opportunities to grow professionally. We conducted a comparative interrupted time series of publicly available student achievement data from New Mexico to analyze the impact of a university-based organization that partners with district leaders to provide intensive professional learning opportunities for district leaders and school principals. We found positive impacts on student achievement in math and for English learners in English language arts. Implications for educator preparation and in-service programs are considered.

Purpose: This study investigated how state education agencies (SEAs) articulated their roles and responsibilities with respect to improving underperforming schools and districts after the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. Research Approach: Using a conceptual framework rooted in incrementalism--a theory suggesting that policy makers often make decisions reflecting the status quo--we conducted a rigorous conventional content analysis on the plans that states created in response to ESSA. Findings: Our findings suggest that many SEAs practiced incrementalism with few changes in the categories of improvement supports that SEAs offered to their underperforming schools and districts and the methods by which SEAs offered those improvement supports. Similar to prior years, most SEAs focused improvement supports on improvement planning processes and appeared to provide those supports using mostly passive methods like online resource hubs and document templates. Implications: We discuss how SEAs--even if they lack capacity--occupy powerful positions to amplify the voices and needs of underperforming schools and districts. This study substantiates a scarce literature on SEAs and provides updated insight into how SEAs have espoused to respond to federal demands to improve underperforming schools and districts.

Some governments require that educational leaders working in underperforming schools create school improvement plans (SIPs) to guide change efforts. Extant research describes two common approaches to SIPs: (a) a "traditional" approach where leaders create a single plan for an entire academic year, and (b) a "short-cycle" approach where leaders create two plans during an academic year (e.g., one for each semester). Despite widespread appeal, surprisingly little research has been conducted on SIPs and their influence on outcomes of interest. Nearly all studies investigate the traditional approach, and no published studies examine the potential influence of short-cycle SIPs on outcomes of interest (e.g., student achievement). In response to these gaps, the purpose of this study was to explore potential associations between short-cycle SIP quality and student achievement in English/language arts (ELA) and mathematics. We used a publicly available rubric to score 389 short-cycle SIPs on 12 planning domains and then employed a correlational design to examine potential relationships between short-cycle SIP quality and student achievement. Results concluded that short-cycle SIP quality increased over time, but despite small, positive relationships between increased short-cycle SIP quality and increased student achievement, there were no statistically significant impacts. Given the number of factors found to influence student learning, these results are unsurprising, but nevertheless encouraging. We close by discussing how educational leaders might need training to best leverage the short-cycle approach and how future research efforts can continue contributing to a sparse, but growing knowledge base on school improvement planning approaches.

Recent United States (U.S.) educational policies--especially the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015--have challenged state education agencies (SEAs) to take greater responsibility for and leadership over improving underperforming schools. SEA capacity to accomplish this charge varies, so many SEAs contract with third-party, external providers in the school improvement industry. Yet, little systematic consideration has been given to the processes that SEAs use to work with appropriate, high-quality external providers. In this study, a substantial dataset consisting of publicly-available documents and survey responses permitted the analysis of how 51 SEAs solicited, vetted, monitored, and evaluated external providers that offered school improvement services. Results, which highlight how various U.S. states are responding to a seemingly ever-changing U.S. educational policy context, suggested more SEAs solicited and vetted, but approaches and procedures often differed. Far fewer SEAs, however, monitored and evaluated external providers. The paper closes with a discussion of each stage of the SEA external provider procurement process along with recommendations for future research on the school improvement industry.

Data use has become a priority in educational systems throughout the world under the belief that rational instructional decisions can be tailored to individual learner needs. Despite increasing expectations for school principals to be instructional leaders, there is little evidence that they -- or other system or school leaders -- are responsible for anything more than ensuring structures are in place for teachers to work with data. In this study, we analyze interview and observational data collected over the period of 1 academic year in four elementary schools in one rural school district in the United States. We consider results through a conceptual framing of collective leadership to understand how leaders across district, school, and classroom levels do or do not support data use in the school system. Among our findings, data use is espoused and portrayed but generally unsupported. Data team meetings and structures are embedded in school cultures, but they are mostly managed and routine, prioritizing expediency and process over instructional adaptation or response. As a result, we conclude that the establishment of data team meetings and related structures is critical but insufficient to improve instruction and increase student learning.

Performance-based accountability systems that rank schools based on their effectiveness produce 'winners' and 'losers'. Substantial evidence has pointed to the (side)effects of these classifications, particularly in the most disadvantaged communities. Whilst previous studies have compared schools under different effectiveness categories within and between countries, this qualitative study takes a cross-case comparison approach to analyse education policies, grey literature and previous research evidence to explore the mechanisms that construct 'failing' schools in three notable high-stakes accountability systems worldwide: Chile, the USA and England. After describing (1) the identification and classification of 'failing' schools; (2) the instruments used to justify these classifications; and (3) who make these judgements, we conclude that the construction of 'failing' schools serves the competition and differentiation required for maintaining neoliberal hierarchical and unequal market-oriented regimes. Instead of disciplining only 'failing' schools, these labels also provide a caution for the whole school system.

Given that school districts have considerable discretion over the schools they lead and serve, it follows that district actions can influence school turnaround. Using data from three districts that successfully oversaw transformation efforts in their lowest performing elementary schools, this article provides evidence on how district leaders can orchestrate improvement through supporting and supervising principals and teachers. Using an analytic premise capturing leadership practices derived from the literature, we employed first cycle coding on over 800 pages of documents. Then, using emergent coding we identified "sub practices" within each literature-derived practice. Using second cycle coding, we analyzed the extent to which district leaders work with or through others. Findings provide specifics that better convey how district leaders enact their work with schools. Findings also suggest that these districts work in facilitative roles alongside school leaders. Implications for principal supervision and support are discussed.

School improvement research has insufficiently considered the importance of intervening in schools with declining academic performance. Fields such as engineering and medicine have prioritized predicting decline to save structures or patients before they are in peril. Unfortunately, in education, school improvement policies and interventions are only enacted once schools reach low levels of academic performance. In this study, we apply sophisticated statistical models to analyze more than 10 years of longitudinal student achievement data in English/language arts and mathematics in the US state of Texas. We find that a considerable number of schools consistently decline over time. Some significant predictors of decline included shifting student demographics and changes in the percent of economically disadvantaged students. Higher starting percentages of students labeled as English language learners also increased the likelihood of decline, but increasing percentages of English language learners over timereduced the rate of decline. Leadership stability also appears to be important to impeding decline. We close by discussing implications for research, policy, and practice.

School leaders often neglect a key mechanism for empowerment: The school-improvement plan. In this article, researchers Coby Meyers and Bryan VanGronigen discuss five fundamentals of improvement planning that school leaders can use to ensure their plans are useful, effective, and on-track.

Purpose: Limited research on root cause analysis exists in educational leadership. Accurately diagnosing and detailing root causes--the why--of organizational failure, as is relatively common in other fields, could improve principals' ability to devise situationally- and contextually-responsive solutions in their improvement plans. In this study, the authors analyze school improvement plans to provide insight into how principals use root cause analysis to identify their and their school's failures as a way to respond strategically with goals and action steps. Design/methodology/approach: In this exploratory qualitative study, the authors develop coding schemes and leverage an existing rubric of school improvement plan quality to assess what principals identify as root causes for 216 priorities across 111 school improvement plans. Findings: The overall quality of root causes submitted by principals was low, typically between "beginning" and "developing" stages. The majority of root causes aligned with priorities and desired outcomes, but fewer than one-third had a systems focus. Moreover, less than half of root causes suggested that school leaders played a part in the organizational failures. The vast majority of plans instead identified teachers as the root cause, foundational fault or "why" of the problem. Originality/value: An increased understanding of root cause analysis conceptualization and development seems necessary if improvement planning is to be a strategic response to a school's most serious organizational challenges. The predominant approach to school improvement planning has focused almost exclusively on how to succeed or become better with little investment in identifying root causes of organizational decline or failure. This initial study of root cause quality in school improvement planning is a key first step in critically thinking about how improvement is to be achieved when failure is unconceived.

Governments have injected billions of dollars into the massive school improvement industry, but little is known about the providers that offer services and whether their services actually improve schools. Bryan VanGronigen and Coby Meyers highlight their research the topic, which has found that few states monitor and evaluate provider performance and many state-approved or recommended providers offer services not based in or informed by research. They offer considerations for school, district, and state educational leaders about how to navigate some of the many challenges present within these murky waters.

In the last 20 years, the United States has spent billions of dollars on policies and programs to turn around, or rapidly improve, its lowest-performing schools. Little consideration has been given to the critical role the school district plays in launching and shaping school turnaround. This case study of one mid-sized urban district's effort to prioritize a subset of its schools is one of few empirical studies about how district leadership can be intentional in the ways it supports traditionally low-performing schools. Study results suggest that district leaders can take a number of focused, bold actions to initiate system-wide change.

This introduction to the special issue "Improving Schools by Strategically Connecting Equity Leadership and Organizational Improvement Perspectives" establishes the need for and presents an overview of the issue's empirical research accounts of how anti-racist and social justice-oriented school leaders established organizational structures and enacted collaborative routines to sustain equity, social justice, and anti-racist reforms to benefit students prone to educational under-performance.

Building upon the prior development of a model of turnaround principal competencies, we investigated the extent to which the identified principal competencies correlate with student achievement. Participants met rigorous selection criteria for having effectively turned around their schools during their first 2 years as principal. We conducted correlational analyses to examine the strength of relationship between each of the seven competencies and found that the model appears to reflect the internal states of principals who orchestrate school turnaround. We suggest that this initial effort should be further refined as additional data sources become available, but note that this model, given the popularity of principal competencies in districts, can inform current policies and practices.

To fulfill educational promises such as "every student succeeds," district leaders must embrace an agenda committed to equitable opportunities for students. Doing so requires breaking from managerial norms to identify new ways forward that prioritize historically low-performing schools. Coby Meyers, Lamar Goree, and Keith Burton distill research results from a case study of a team of urban district leaders who ignited change in a subset of their schools that have traditionally been low performing. They highlight how a system-wide shift to equitable opportunities led the district to create new structures, prioritize talent and skillsets, change cultures, and provide essential supports for those schools.

School turnaround--the rapid improvement of student achievement in low-performing schools--is increasingly a major topic of interest in K-12 public education. Federal legislation has left varying degrees of school improvement-related responsibilities up to states, and policy makers have divergent views about how to realize turnaround. We investigate and describe how each state education agency (SEA) is administering school turnaround efforts in federally designated priority schools. To accomplish this, we examined a variety of publicly available documents from SEA websites and summarized the data into three overarching categories. We discuss how this finding has significant implications for policy makers and SEAs, especially as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is implemented.

More than 15 years after the passage of No Child Left Behind, billions of dollars have been spent on school-turnaround policies and initiatives. Yet, this growing "school improvement industry" has received surprisingly little consideration. This study is an initial effort to begin to better understand this industry's supply side. We use qualitative research techniques to analyze the websites of 151 school-turnaround providers that have been endorsed, either directly or indirectly, by 13 state education agencies with publicly available lists of providers. In addition, we conduct a systematic review of the research evidence behind each provider, finding that the types of providers and the services that they purport offering vary considerably. Approximately 50% of providers indicate being research based, but 11% have evidence of impact on student achievement outcomes generally, and only 5% in turnaround contexts specifically. We consider several tensions in policy and practice that arise from this research.

Research suggests that high-quality school improvement planning reflective of the school's needs and objectives is central to a principal's success in leading a school. Some American scholars contend that successfully planned and executed "quick wins" are critically important to launching high-level organizational change processes necessary to turn around low-performing schools. Yet, lack of research suggests that the concept of quick wins may be built more on assumptions than evidence. In this study, we evaluate formal quick wins as planned by school principals participating in a turnaround leadership program in the United States. Our results suggest that principals struggle to develop high-quality quick wins despite their relative simplicity as an improvement planning starting point, especially in comparison with the development of traditional annual improvement or development plans. Finally, we consider the implications of these results in relation to traditional school improvement planning, especially in response to low-performing school contexts.

We understand very little about what is special that leaders do to facilitate improvement that is both transformational and lasting in previously persistently failing schools in the United States. Relatively little is understood about change not just during the initial turnaround stage, but that "endures" on the larger journey as the school becomes a healthy organisation for adults and students. This lack of understanding is likely due to the lack of data sources because schools struggle to attain turnaround, let alone maintain the improvement and continue to grow. We conducted a literature review of frameworks implicated in leading a sustained school turnaround. This study synthesises existing frameworks relevant to implicated constructs of (1) school turnaround, (2) effective educational leadership, (3) turnaround external to education, and (4) sustained improvement external to education through developing a cohesive set of practices to inform the work of researchers and practitioners. We end by suggesting that this framework be tested and refined through examination of principal data so that it more robustly represents the work that leaders of sustained improvement undertake.

Literature in the field of school leadership substantiates principals' influence on student achievement. Less clarity is available concerning principals' influence on school turnaround or the competencies needed for principals to effectively engage in and sustain the turnaround of low-performing schools. This study seeks to illuminate principal competencies that support an individual's ability to influence turnaround as evidenced by increased student achievement. We analyzed behavioral event interviews conducted with 19 principals whose schools experienced a rapid increase in student achievement. This sample is the successful 10% of a population of 200 principals who each attempted to lead a turnaround. From the interview data, we derived seven competencies that capture the specific characteristics and actions of principals leading turnaround. Our research provides an initial framework for the actions, behaviors, and dispositions of successful turnaround principals. Results of this study suggest ways to improve the selection and development of turnaround principals.

Federal legislation requires all low-performing schools to create yearly school improvement plans (SIPs), and in many cases, school principals are responsible for conceptualizing and drafting the SIP. However, this year-long approach may not create the necessary focus and sense of urgency low-performing schools need to learn, adapt, and turn themselves around. School principals facing high-stakes accountability demands for rapid school improvement might be better served by engaging in short-cycle (e.g., 90-day) school improvement planning. In this descriptive study, we review 410 short-cycle SIPs developed primarily by school principals leading turnaround initiatives in 194 schools in the United States. Our results discuss the priorities identified by school principals and how those priorities change over four planning cycles. Additionally, we assess the alignment between plan priorities and the literature on turnaround principal leadership. We conclude with a discussion about reconsidering the reliance upon year-long SIPs and how alternative planning processes might create the conditions for sustained organizational change in low-performing schools.

As the research literature on principals leading school turnaround grows, determining whether or not real differences between good, even effective, principals and turnaround principals becomes increasingly important. Recent federal government policy and investment established turnaround models that emphasize the role of the school principal, suggesting that turnaround principals do need to be different than other principals in some meaningful ways. But any difference in skill or characteristic remains undefined. For this article, we conducted a systematic review of empirical research literature to identify studies of principals who led successful school turnaround initiatives. We reviewed 18 empirical studies to categorize the education leadership areas in which turnaround principals must excel. We also present the limited evidence regarding attitudes, traits, or perspectives principals leading turnaround should likely possess. Finally, we consider implications of our findings for research and practice.

Despite the intensity of funding and numerous intervention efforts in recent school turnaround initiatives, many perspectives, practices, and policies specific to school turnaround appear to be at odds with organizational theory. Yet, many actors in research, policy, and practice arenas appear convinced that their steadfastness will eventually be rewarded. In this article, we identify five myths of school turnaround perpetuated by policy and practice that can often inhibit dramatic positive change in our nation's lowest-performing schools. We conclude by suggesting alternative ways forward that are better aligned with organization change theory and research.

This article presents the findings of an evaluation of the eMINTS (enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies) professional development program. eMINTS is an intensive teacher professional development program designed to promote inquiry-based learning, support high-quality lesson design, build community among students and teachers, and create technology-rich learning environments. This evaluation included 60 high-poverty rural schools across Missouri that were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions and a control condition, with approximately 200 teachers and 3,000 students in the 2011-2012 baseline academic year. The researchers conclude that after 3 years, the eMINTS treatment group and an eMINTS treatment group with an additional year of Intel support resulted in changed teacher instructional behaviors and increased student achievement in mathematics.

Objective: This article describes Phase 1 of a pilot that aims to develop, implement, and test an intervention to educate and simultaneously engage highly stressed Latino parents in child mental health services. A team of Spanish-speaking academic and community co-investigators developed the intervention using a community-based participatory research approach and qualitative methods. Method: Through focus groups, the team identified parents' knowledge gaps and their health communication preferences. Results: Latino parents from urban communities need and welcome child mental health literacy interventions that integrate printed materials with videos, preferably in their native language, combined with guidance from professionals. Conclusion: A 3-minute video in Spanish that integrates education entertainment strategies and a culturally relevant format was produced as part of the intervention to educate and simultaneously engage highly stressed Latino parents in child mental health care. It is anticipated that the intervention will positively impact service use among this group.

Drawing from ethnographic case studies, this article considers issues of women's access to education by exploring the literacy experiences of four women in rural Mexico. Ironically, as physical access to education in this area has increased, women's literacy experiences have become more complex, rather than more libratory. Formal literacy, as it plays out for women in this community, is experienced as both an oppressive force as well as a tool for resistance to other forms of oppression. More importantly, the stories in this article highlight the socially dynamic nature of literacy as these four women utilise interpersonal relationships in order to subvert oppressive norms. These findings have implications both for theories of literacy as well as for educators who wish to work in more engaged ways with women and their children who emigrate from areas like rural Mexico. (Contains 3 notes.)

In this article, we provide a grounded narrative of capacity building in the turnaround equation by exploring the turnaround literature outside of education and applying it to troubled schools. Our analysis is based upon reviews of: (1) 14 comprehensive, historical volumes that examine the turnaround phenomenon; (2) 16 book-length analyses of turnaround in a single organization or a specific industry; (3) articles attending to theory building in this emerging area of scholarship; and (4) a plethora of empirical studies examining turnaround in a variety of different (non-educational) contexts. We organize findings on capacity building in turnarounds into the following broad categories: (1) rallying and mobilizing people (motivating people, building, morale, and communicating openly); (2) growing people (empowering people, building teams, and developing people); and (3) creating a productive culture. We close by teasing out important lessons from the turnaround literature in the non-education sector to capacity building in troubled schools.

A recent nine-month field study considered the relationships among school-sponsored and community forms of literacy practices in a migrant-sending area of rural Mexico. While many teachers in rural Mexico argue that students should remain in school rather than migrate to the U.S., this study demonstrates the ways in which schools in rural Mexico often do not recognize the needs of the communities that they serve. As a result, students in these schools often develop a pragmatic orientation toward formal literacy. While many of the skills that they learn help them navigate commercial and government bureaucracies, these students do not adopt the values embedded in formal education. Rather, they implicitly question the promise of education as a neutral means to social and economic mobility.

High-stakes testing and accountability implicate failing schools more frequently and more precisely than ever before. Consequently, efforts to turn around these schools have become paramount for educators, policy actors, and community members. Through a synthesis of research on failing schools, this article unpacks the constructs of school failure and turnaround. It also details causes of decline and crisis. Finally, it analyzes current educational strategies intended to turn failing schools into successful ones.

Reviews the types of elective mutism and proposes common characteristics of elective mutists' families. Examines the potential for a redefinition of the term "elective mutism." Concludes that family dynamics are an integral part of the problem and need to be considered in a comprehensive treatment plan. (BH)

Many researchers believe that professional development derives from power struggles. This case study shows that the professionalization of nineteenth-century secular French primary school teachers was generated by the interplay between teachers and other participants--particularly the Catholic church, families, and the state--in the funding and control of elementary education. (RM)