Strategies for School Turnaround: Synergies and Complications of a State Government and Nongovernmental Collaboration to Support Large-scale Improvement of Priority schools
The improvement of federal designated ‘priority schools’ remains a pressing problem in the U.S. Federal policies have increasingly positioned states to engage in this work of school improvement, and states have adopted diverse approaches to support rapid improvement of student achievement in chronically underperforming schools, a process referred to in this study as ‘school turnaround.’ However, little research or experience guide these efforts. In this study, I investigate one such approach in one state: a hybrid model where a statewide school district and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) partner to support large-scale, state-led school turnaround. Through an embedded case study, I examine how these two types of educational organizations distribute the educational work of school turnaround, which is framed as five domains of activity: building educational infrastructure, supporting its use, managing performance, managing the environments, and distributing instructional leadership. I specifically investigate the contributions to the educational work of school turnaround both organizations make, and also the types of complications and synergies that emerge in practice in this hybrid model. I find that in this hybrid model, the state agency largely delegates the five domains of educational work to the NGO. Further, I find that in practice a complex story unfolds, one which highlights the synergies and complications that surface in this hybrid model and also an imperative for organizational learning in this work. A primary objective of this study is to forward a provisional framework to support comparative analysis of state-led hybrid models for school turnaround. A secondary objective is to provide a detailed account of one such model to contribute to the knowledge base on approaches for school turnaround.
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Beuche, B. E. (2019). Strategies for School Turnaround: Synergies and Complications of a State Government and Nongovernmental Collaboration to Support Large-scale Improvement of Priority schools [Ph.D., University of Michigan]. https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/151490