Beyond the School: Exploring a Systemic Approach to School Turnaround

Educators have long grappled with the challenge presented by chronicallyunderperforming schools. Environments that consistently fail to prepare students forhigher levels of education threaten opportunities for high school graduation, postsecondaryeducation, and career success. The U.S. Department of Education reinforcedthe urgency of reversing sustained poor performance in early 2009 when it identifiedintensive supports and effective interventions in our lowest-achieving schools as one ofits four pillars of education reform. However, federal and state policies have oftensituated the cause—and thus the remedies—for persistent low performance at theschool level. This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts—allmembers of the California Collaborative on District Reform—to suggest a more systemicapproach to school turnaround.We explore the district perspective on school turnaround by describing several broadthemes that emerged across the eight districts in the California Collaborative on DistrictReform. We also profile three of these districts to illustrate specific strategies that cancreate a coherent district-wide approach to turnaround. Building on these districtperspectives, we explore considerations for turnaround efforts in the upcomingreauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)

Exploring weighted student formulas as a policy for improving equity for distributing resources to schools: A case study of two California school districts

This paper presents a case study of two California school districts, San Francisco and Oakland, each of which have implemented their own versions of what is popularly known as a weighted student formula (WSF). One primary goal of the WSF policy is to increase the equity with which resources are distributed to schools. With respect to equity, the findings suggest that for particular schooling levels per-pupil spending became more responsive to student poverty and that the increase in responsiveness appears to have coincided with implementation of the WSF in the two districts. Moreover, each district relies on a different mechanism for driving resources to the schools: San Francisco relying to a greater degree on the unrestricted funds, while Oakland relies more heavily on restricted sources which, as directed by law, drive dollars to special need populations. Interestingly, neither district exhibited any significant change in the distribution of teacher experience after implementation of their SBF models; schools serving the highest proportion of students from low-income families continued to employ teachers with the least experience after implementation of the SBF models. While an additional goal of WSF was to drive more resources down to the school level to be spent, our analysis found little substantial change in the proportion of resources expended at the school versus the district level.Weighted student formula Resource allocation Educational equity