Chapter 4: Engaging Families and Communities in School Turnarounds: When Students Can’t Wait

School turnaround is not school improvement plus.¹ Rather, school turnaround is a focused change effort designed to dramatically improve the performance of an organization on an aggressive timeline that benefits the students currently enrolled in the school. Unlike typical improvement efforts focusing on implementing incremental changes in three to five years, turning around the lowest performing schools requires urgent and focused efforts that will generate positive growth in one to two years. Examples of such growth would be improving fourth grade reading scores by 12% or reducing the achievement gap between affluent and poor middle school students by 5%. Whether the process entails the components defined by the U.S. Department of Education as turnaround, transformation, restart, or other approaches, these efforts require disruptive change that mandates not only district-and school-level personnel examine and change their behavior, but also students, parents, and communities.