A Large Urban District’s Implementation of Turnaround Policy

The 2001 reauthorization of the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), otherwise known as No Child Left Behind, requires those schools which fail to make adequate yearly progress for five consecutive years to enter into restructuring. Further clarified by the Obama administration's Blueprint for Reform, which describe the president's wishes for the next reauthorization of ESEA, the term restructuring translates into four Turnaround options for intervention: Turnaround Model, Restart Model, Transformation Model, and Closure Model. The Turnaround Model requires the removal and replacement of a majority of a school's staff, a practice which is also allowed under the Restart Model. Often termed Reconstitution in the literature, the application of this approach was not wide-spread in the United States until the latter 2000s. The studies of its effectiveness have revealed no sure-fire recipe for success – particularly at the high school level. This book analyzes a large urban district's implementation of federal school turnaround policy at the high school level.