We have entitled the fourth book in the series Rural School Turnaround and Reform: It’s Hard Work! Overall, the body of scholarly work and research that examines school turnaround and reform in rural areas is slim; as such, this volume adds to the body of work and contributes to new knowledge in a much-needed area. In this volume, we present chapters that speak to the challenges, successes, and opportunities to improve low-performing rural schools. Chapters range from conceptual arguments to policy analyses or research findings, as well as some combination of these or other ways to consider rural school turnaround and reform.

LEADING SCHOOL TURNAROUND Leading School Turnaround offers new perspectives and concrete, evidence-based guidelines for the educational leaders and administrators faced with the challenge of turning our low-performing schools around. Using the tools outlined in this groundbreaking book, school leaders can guide their schools to higher levels of achievement and sustained academic success. Based on research conducted in the United States, Canada, and England, Leading School Turnaround addresses in three parts the dynamic context of the turnaround environment, what turnaround leaders do, and the incredible challenges of moving from turnaround to "stay around." Filled with illustrative examples, the book outlines the best practices and behaviors successful turnaround leaders exercise. The authors include detailed information for applying the four main categories of turnaround leadership: direction setting, developing people, redesigning the school, and managing the instructional program. This important resource can help any school leader get their school back on the track to academic success.

To better identify and assist struggling students and avoid unnecessary placement into special education services, the service delivery model response to intervention (RTI) is used with the general education population. Even though RTI has been studied in elementary schools for many years, further research on its use at the secondary academic level is scarce. Advanced Strategies and Models for Integrating RTI in Secondary Schools provides emerging research exploring the advanced theoretical and practical aspects of the use of RTI to assist teachers in providing research-based instructional strategies to students who are failing their academic subjects. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as behavioral response, progress monitoring, and career readiness, this book is ideally designed for educators, researchers, and academic professionals seeking current research on the most effective models in place to promote positive student academic achievement.

This volume provides an analysis of what we know about turning around "failing" schools in the United States. It starts with an in-depth examination of the barriers that hinder action on turnaround work. The book analyses the reasons why some schools that find themselves in serious academic trouble fail in their efforts to turn themselves around. Beginning with a discussion of what may best be described as "lethal" reasons or the most powerful explanation for failed reform initiatives, which include an absence of attention to student care and support; a near absence of attention to curriculum and instruction; the firing of the wrong people. Covered in this volume are "critical" explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as failure to attend to issues of sustainability, and "significant" explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as the misuse of test data. The volume concludes by examining what can be done to overcome problems that cause failure for turnaround schools and reviewing ideas in the core technology of schooling: curriculum, instruction, and assessment. As well as exploring problems associated with the leadership and management of schools to see where improvement is possible and an analysis of opportunities found in relationships between schools and their external partners such as parents and community members.

No greater challenge faces our society than improving the educational opportunities for millions of young people trapped in chronically low-performing schools. Overcoming this challenge requires talented and dedicated school leaders whose knowledge and skills extend far beyond what is covered in conventional principal preparation programs. This book draws on extensive research by the author and others on the actions needed to turn around low-performing schools. First, however, the book examines the personal qualities needed to undertake the turnaround process. Following chapters provide guidelines on diagnosing the school-based causes of low achievement and developing a school turnaround plan. The author focuses on the importance of continuous planning – a departure from standard practice. A major portion of the book is devoted to examples of first-order and second-order strategies for raising achievement. Specific recommendations for launching the turnaround process and sustaining gains beyond the first years of turnaround are provided. The concluding chapter addresses the role of school districts in supporting school-based turnaround efforts.

There's no mystery in turning around low-performing or failing schools, but there are also no recipes. In Turnaround Principals for Underperforming Schools Rosemary Papa and Fenwick English identify the essential ingredients for success. The causesof failure are complex and interactive. Schools are not inert structures but living organisms. Putting schools back together is a collaborative venture. It takes a team to turn around a school, but it all begins with the leadership. The key to success rests in a school leader who has a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of schooling, human motivation, and possesses the resiliency and energy to engage in altering the internal landscape of an unsuccessful school. Two veteran educators have put together a work based on their research and experience for the past half-century. They pull no punches. The challenge is not only to turn low-performing or failing schools around, but to enable them to become more socially just places for all students.

For more than two generations, the traditional urban school system—the district—has utterly failed to do its job: prepare its students for a lifetime of success. Millions and millions of boys and girls have suffered the grievous consequences. The district is irreparably broken. For the sake of today’s and tomorrow’s inner-city kids, it must be replaced. The Urban School System of the Future argues that vastly better results can be realized through the creation of a new type of organization that properly manages a city’s portfolio of schools using the revolutionary principles of chartering. It will ensure that new schools are regularly created, that great schools are expanded and replicated, that persistently failing schools are closed, and that families have access to an array of high-quality options. This new entity will focus exclusively on school performance, meaning, among other things, our cities can thoughtfully integrate their traditional public, charter public, and private schools into a single, high-functioning k-12 system. For decades, the district has produced the most heartbreaking results for already at-risk kids. The Urban School System of the Future explains how we can finally turn the tide and create dynamic, responsive, high-performing, self-improving urban school systems that fulfill the promise of public education.

In the continuing quest to turnaround the lowest performing schools, rapid and sustainable reform, or school turnaround, seems most elusive for secondary schools. Secondary schools are rife with challenges due to their wide-ranging mission and organizational complexity. With the continued emphasis on college and career readiness and the vast learning possibilities enhanced by technology, our third book in this series, Contemporary Perspectives on School Turnaround and Reform, focuses on rapid school turnaround and reform in secondary schools. In this edited volume, researchers and scholars consider the doubly perplexing challenge of school turnaround or the rapid improvement of the lowest-performing secondary schools. Although there is some evidence that school turnaround policy can impact student achievement scores, research across international contexts seldom identifies schools that substantially changed student learning trajectories and sustained them. Separately, many societies have found improving secondary schools a relatively intractable problem for multiple reasons, including school size and complexity, the micropolitics of teaching and leading within them, and cumulative widening student achievement gaps. In combination, there are almost no examples of low-performing secondary schools turning around. The chapters in this book begin to offer some hope about how policymakers, practitioners, and researchers might begin to reconceptualize how they engage in and undertake the work of rapidly improving low-performing secondary schools. The authors provide theoretical and conceptual advancements, offer lessons learned from both successful and unsuccessful initiatives, and address practical issues with potentially accessible ways forward.

The real reform agenda -- Turning schools around -- Change -- Turning a whole system around.

"This book provides critical understandings on the causes of organizational decline, a comprehensive conception of the turnaround process, and powerful insights for transforming failing schools into the kind we all want for our children." —Kenneth Leithwood, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Ontario Institute for Studies in Education "Murphy and Meyers do a first-rate job of mapping the territory of school turnarounds and identifying the options for educators to consider and researchers to investigate." —Daniel L. Duke, Professor of Educational Leadership and Research University of Virginia The guide to successfully restructuring schools in trouble! This insightful resource integrates research, strategies, and lessons from business, government, and not-for-profit organizations that have transformed their substandard performance into a proactive approach for renewal. The authors provide: A comprehensive overview of the literature on organizational deterioration An in-depth examination of the causes and symptoms of degeneration A two-part model for preventing educational collapse and crafting an effective turnaround A review of the efficacy of educational reform initiatives This indispensable text is ideal for district administrators, superintendents, policy makers, and individuals with an interest in organizational accountability and meaningful school reform.