Chapter 9: Autonomy and Accountability in Turnaround Work: The Myth of Portfolio Districts and Organizational Learning¹

Many states are experimenting with new governance structures designed to rapidly improve learning outcomes in their most chronically underperforming schools. This chapter will focus on Tennessee’s statewide turnaround district, the Achievement School District (ASD), which was established in 2011 as part of an aggressive plan to improve the state’s lowest-performing schools. Specifically, the discussion will examine the ASD’s effort to support organizational learning—the process of creating and sharing knowledge within organizations to help them improve—among a handful of charter management organizations (CMOs) that operate schools within its jurisdiction. We argue that while advocates have depicted these districts as fertile ground for collaborative learning and collegial exchange, this is a myth. In reality, the structural and normative environments that define turnaround districts undermine any effort to promote collective learning among school operators. Ideological commitments to maximize each CMO’s operational autonomy coupled with the extreme diversity of turnaround strategies within the district renders collaboration, while not impossible, impractical and unwieldy.