Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Blazing a New Trail for the Educational Turnaround Leader 335
building a leadership capability that engages senior politicians and managers in order to
overcome inertia (Jas & Skelcher, 2005).
Education Turnarounds
While there are many educational initiatives utilizing the turnaround concept, there
are only a few well-documented school district cases of turnaround schools in San Francisco,
Chicago, Houston, and Prince George's County, Maryland (Kowal & Hassel, 2005). This is
such a new venture that to date there are few cross-site analyses or published case studies that
highlight successful school turnaround processes (Kowal & Hassel, 2005).
Duke (2007) reported on the "school turnaround specialists" who are emerging from
the pioneering program at the University of Virginia that adapts the business model of
turnaround specialists to reverse the process of school decline. As mentioned previously,
however, this predominant training modality for a turnaround specialist program and drastic
school improvement did not support many state and district individual needs. In an effort to
identify successful turnarounds, Brady (2007) described the interventions proposed by state
and local policymakers as part of No Child Left Behind. He categorized and reviewed 17
interventions that were attempted by states or school districts since 1989. Three interventions
were examined: the Schools Under Registration Review process in New York State, the
implementation of comprehensive school reform in Memphis, Tennessee, and the
reconstitution of schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. Brady's conclusions were that
no particular intervention strategy was successful. In other words, most interventions yielded
positive results in less than half of the schools where they were implemented. However, in
most cases, solid school-level leadership seemed to be critical to success and missing in most
low performing schools. This concept about finding and developing the right school leader
and developing critical leadership skills is also supported by other researchers (Bossidy, 2001;
Buchanan, 2003; Joyce, 2004;). In fact, Hassel and Steiner (2003) found that 70% of
successful turnarounds include changes in leadership.
Murphy (2008) reported that Prince George's County, Maryland, hired turnaround
specialists to lead failing schools, but they received no specialized training nor had special
certification. These specialists were chosen based on state certification and notable experience
(Neuman & Sheldon 2006). However, this criterion for selection was not enough according to
Steiner (2009). School turnaround specialists need certain competencies, knowledge and
skills. Murphy (2008) supported the notion of certain dimensions of leadership defining
turnaround leaders, but a solid research base has not been established for competencies,
knowledge and skills. Turnaround schools need special expertise and must be managed by
educational leaders with the necessary training (Calkins et al., 2007). One organization that
has achieved some success is the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE)
housed in the University of Virginia. The initiative sought to combine business and education
concepts in order to improve schools. The goal for the initiative was to develop and deliver
the training necessary to provide low performing schools with high-impact principals trained
in the knowledge and skills needed to accelerate and sustain student achievement.
In 2009, Mass Insight published a summary report that cited the limitations of state
and district led school turnaround efforts (Calkins et al., 2007). States and districts had: (a)
little political appetite/capacity to close schools; (b) few positive incentives for change with
no negative consequences; (c) multiple improvement plans that become compliance
documents rather than strategic action plans; (d) external improvement teams that did not help
implement recommendations; (e) limited professional development and technical assistance;