With the nation’s worst schools languishing, there is much talk about the need to turn schools around. But what does a school turnaround actually look like? What obstacles does it face in terms of implementation and policy? What aggressive restructuring efforts have been tried so far, and what impact have they had?  

When a school fails to improve test scores for five straight years, it enters the last-ditch “restructuring” phase of the No Child Left Behind Act. With more than two thousand schools (and counting) planning or implementing school restructuring, the market for turnarounds is ripe.  Recognizing that conventional efforts to restructure schools typically fall short, there has been increasing interest in reconfiguring people, institutions, and support systems to radically improve America’s worst schools.

Please join us on March 11, 2008, as we push past the jargon and examine what it takes to craft and implement a coherent school turnaround strategy. This conference is cosponsored by the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute.