杏吧原创

Through its School Improvement Grants, the Obama administration has funneled $3.5 billion to turn around schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 15,000 schools, or 16 percent of schools nationwide, were eligible for the grants. According to Department of Education data, SIG-awarded schools tend to be high-poverty (75 percent), high-minority (86 percent) schools concentrated at the high school level in urban areas.

SIG funding permits four different intervention models: transformation (the most flexible, but requiring replacement of the principal), turnaround (requiring replacement of the principal and at least 50 percent of staff), closure, and restart (closing and reopening a school as a charter school or under an educational management organization).

To consider turnarounds, we spoke with Joseph Murphy, Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Education and associate dean of Peabody College. He is a past school administrator, including at the district and state levels, and the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium. He is widely known for directing the development of the ISLLC Standards for School Leaders and for the revision of those standards in 2008.聽He is also one of the authors of the 杏吧原创 Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED).

Murphy is the author or co-author of Lessons for School Leaders (2011), Homelessness Comes to School (2011), The Educator鈥檚 Handbook for Understanding and Closing Achievement Gaps (2010), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Leadership Lessons from the Organizational Sciences (with Coby V. Meyers, 2008).

IA: In your book with Coby Meyers, you discuss turnarounds in non-education sectors, including business, and draw contrasts and comparisons with schools. How different are they?
JM: The term turnaround has a more concrete meaning in the private sector. Turnaround companies have bogged down or are within six months or a year of going under. So it鈥檚 very tangible what the problem is. When it comes to the social sciences and social services, it鈥檚 tougher to define. In education, it took on a whole new definition which basically meant helping schools that someone viewed as failing. Failing and turnaround became synonymous. Then the definition of failing got tied into NCLB, and a failing school is now defined as a school that doesn鈥檛 meet NCLB criteria.

IA: Secretary of Education Duncan has said that this year 82 percent of schools could be failing under NCLB.
JM: It tells you on the surface that the concept is bankrupt. You can鈥檛 have an industry where half of the companies in the industry are failing. So a definition like that is not very helpful. You need crisper, clearer definitions that sort out the bottom organizations that are failing and that don鈥檛 label everyone that isn鈥檛 doing great as failing.

IA: What led you to look outside of education for comparisons?
JM: We were to the point where people were talking about turnarounds and there was no empirical evidence. We studied all the other turnaround industries that had been involved鈥攃orporations, churches, political parties鈥攖o see what we could learn that we could apply to education. And we found a significant body of work. We can鈥檛 swear that it鈥檚 all applicable, but if everyone else is doing it and they seem to be getting success, it does seem foolish not to consider it.

IA: So how do other sectors handle turnarounds?
JM: One thing you see consistently is that they change leaders. It鈥檚 almost universal that failing organizations change leadership at the top. The theory is, if you are the leader and the boat hit the big rock and is sinking, you鈥檙e responsible. There is no way around it. Even if somehow magically you weren鈥檛 responsible, the perception is that you are. So you have to go. Public schools are beginning to do that.

Interestingly, in no other industry that we studied do people start by terminating their employees. In education, we have reconstitution, where all employees are fired and then have to reapply for their jobs. No other turnaround industry in the history of the world has followed that pattern. It鈥檚 completely isomorphic to the education industry.

The other thing that鈥檚 different is that all the other industries centralize control. A turnaround situation is a crisis, and no one talks about five years down the horizon. You will be bankrupt. So it鈥檚 much more aggressive.聽 In education it鈥檚 like three years, four years鈥f it鈥檚 really a crisis, we have an amazing timeline.

The other thing they do is that all the first moves revolve around budgets and money. That doesn鈥檛 happen in education. Why is it that every turnaround in other areas begins with efficiency moves?

If you鈥檙e saying these places are going over a cliff, this isn鈥檛 a time to get committees together. This isn鈥檛 a time to decentralize and get people involved. This is a time for someone to say, 鈥淚 just put the brake on. We鈥檙e turning the car and we鈥檙e going in a different direction.鈥�

IA: Are there comparisons with non-business sectors?
JM: The New York Police Department is a great example鈥攁 guy named William Bratton. It was right in the period where people didn鈥檛 even want to go to New York because they thought they were going to get mugged in the street. He looked at it and the first day there, he said, 鈥淲e鈥檒l have a 25 percent reduction in crime in two years.鈥� He didn鈥檛 have a committee. He said. 鈥淭his is where we鈥檙e going. This is the benchmark. The boat鈥檚 leaving, right now.鈥� And I think that鈥檚 what turnaround situations require. They need someone to get up and put the stake in the ground about where the new vision is or what鈥檚 going to happen. They need to do it fast, and they need to do it from the top.

IA: How would this work in education?
JM: I think your first move is to get a new principal. I think your second move is to get control of the budget and figure out what gets cut quickly, and those resources get pulled back to what you want to accomplish. I think the third thing is you unilaterally and very quickly put a stake in the ground about what the future will be. And in one sentence: 鈥淭his is where we are, and this is where we will be in two years.鈥澛� Then you have a platform for action.

IA: Don鈥檛 principals face a lot of budget constraints?
JM: You don鈥檛 want to use a budget that is determined centrally as an excuse. So you look at the budget you do have and you figure out where your degrees of freedom are. It鈥檚 a lot easier to turn around if you are in a supportive environment where the superintendent and the district are saying, 鈥淵es, we will support you to make these kinds of moves. You don鈥檛 have to hire a librarian next year. You can use that money for creating an afterschool tutoring program. Or you can eliminate night custodians and put the money into a Saturday program for at-risk kids.鈥� If the district can support those kinds of moves it certainly makes life a lot easier.

IA: What about the argument that there are factors beyond even district control?
JM: The issue that people need to be sensitive to is that these failing districts are places of high poverty and high minority status. This is a not a condition in the rest of turnaround world. If there鈥檚 a company that鈥檚 failing in the chemical industry, it鈥檚 not related to these kinds of issues. When you look at turnaround districts in the U.S.鈥攔eal turnarounds鈥攖hey are overwhelmingly poor places and very heavily minority places. That requires an acknowledgment up front and an additional set of intervention strategies that go beyond normal turnaround.

IA: What is it that needs acknowledging?
JM: That an awful lot of the cause of the failure is outside of the school. And I don鈥檛 say that as an apologist. Schools are culpable. But the point is a lot of the failure is explained by variables outside of schooling. It seems to me a lot of the solution has to extend beyond what schools historically have done. If poverty is a critical issue, we need a broader social attack on these schools. Health policy, welfare policy, social policy and transportation policy are all critical dimensions of helping kids in schools that need to be turned around. I don鈥檛 get a sense that the education powers that be have been as forthright as they should be about this reality.

You鈥檝e got to attack poverty. If it鈥檚 anchored in issues of race, than you have to address issues of race, not just a new reading program or a new math program. Again, this is not an apology for schools that aren鈥檛 helping kids. But to solve the problem you need a large-scale societal attack. Not just an educational attack. You need six or seven battalions to take the hill. To send just the education battalion is not wise. It鈥檚 a big hill, a tough hill, and to ask one battalion to win that battle鈥攅ven if it鈥檚 a big battalion鈥攊t鈥檚 still not a wise social policy.

IA: Where do you see current turnaround efforts leading?
JM: My sense is it鈥檚 going to collapse. You can鈥檛 have a situation where the majority is failing and no one is going to hit the targets. That鈥檚 not sustainable. I don鈥檛 have any empirical knowledge that reconstitution works. We don鈥檛 have any evidence that turning schools over to private management companies or making them charter schools works. I like charter schools, but there鈥檚 no widespread empirical evidence that they鈥檙e going to solve the problem. And I don鈥檛 think we have evidence on the school improvement strategy. So I don鈥檛 think any of the current turnaround strategies has a deep empirical base.

One turnaround strategy that does seem to have promise, if it could be done, is actually closing the school. The problem is when we close schools in education, it closes on a Friday and it reopens on a Monday under a different name or different structure. If you actually close the school down and those kids had to go somewhere else, and you could target where those kids go, that does seem to me to be a promising strategy. And it鈥檚 much more consistent with the non-educational turnaround literature.

The question is, you have to be pretty strategic about where you put the kids. Just to send them to another school of mediocrity is not going to do the trick. If you鈥檙e in a city like Detroit where the entire system is failing, where are you going to send them? You don鈥檛 have a lot of alternatives.

IA: That doesn鈥檛 sound promising.
JM: Here鈥檚 the question that educators don鈥檛 acknowledge. In the rest of the world, once you鈥檙e in a turnaround situation, somewhere between 75 and 90 percent go out of business. The notion that all turnaround schools are going to be saved is completely unsupportable. Almost all turnarounds fail. Why would we assume that we鈥檙e in an industry where 100 percent of turnaround situations are going to work? I don鈥檛 find any logic to it.

IA: So are bad schools here to stay?
JM: I think that argues again for the liquidation strategy, if you can find reasonable places to put these kids. I wonder if we鈥檙e in just another chapter in a well-intentioned shell game. We have had comprehensive school reform, we have had effective schools, we have had restructured schools, and we鈥檝e got turnaround schools. None of these have made a significant dent in improving troubled urban schools.

I believe people care about kids. I believe they work hard. This isn鈥檛 the problem鈥攖hat people don鈥檛 care, they don鈥檛 invest resources, they don鈥檛 try. So why they don鈥檛 turn around really seems to be the big issue. And if you get to that question, I think you do very quickly come back to issues of poverty, race, and community.