Turning Around Our Lowest Performing Schools

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For far too long, we’ve tolerated intolerable schools. In response to persistent low performance, states and districts have generally chosen to do the minimum—providing money and tinkering at the margins, rather than implementing comprehensive, systematic, and effective approaches to school improvement.

As a result, thousands of young Americans continue to attend schools that don’t even provide them with minimal academic skills, much less the rigorous preparation they need to succeed in college or a meaningful career.

For example, for more than a decade, California has tossed hundreds of millions of dollars at low-performing schools in a series of unproductive "reform" initiatives. Instead of drilling down to fix the conditions that create a cycle of under-performance, these programs have skimmed the surface of school improvement and produced minimal gains. Read about the challenge of turning around these schools in "Keeping the Promise of Change: Why California's chronically underperforming schools need bold reform," a report from The Education Trust-West.

Find out in this Fact Sheet how we can support and sustain the best leaders to turn around our lowest performing schools.