Investing for Sustainable Turnaround. Sustaining School Turnaround at Scale. Brief 2

The Federal government has brought the issue of low-performing schools to the forefront of public conversation by committing $3.5 billion over three years to turn around these schools. As of March 2011, over 1200 schools across the country had been awarded School Improvement Grants (SIG). Given the magnitude of this short-term investment and the urgency of the problem, staff at Education Resource Strategies (ERS), have been studying how districts are organizing their resources--SIG and other--to turn around their neediest schools. This brief addresses the critical question: How can districts use SIG and other, often temporary resources to build lasting change that improves both student performance in target schools and district systems to keep schools from failing in the first place? This brief proposes a set of five practices for organizing turnaround resources to ensure that districts and their turnaround schools land in a permanently better place when temporary dollars run out. This is the second brief in a series produced by Education Resource Strategies (ERS) compiling and analyzing the results of its "Sustaining Turnaround at Scale" Summit held in October 2011. Additional resources are included. (Contains 2 figures and 6 footnotes.) [For "Series Overview. Sustaining School Turnaround at Scale. Brief 1," see ED541226.]