Education leaders launched a program this month that bears close watching for its potential to help so-called “underperforming schools” considered to be lagging in academic achievement. If nothing else, the program could help identify just what it means for a school to be successful.
The Utah State Board of Education implemented new policies under the School Turnaround and Leadership Development Act passed in the Legislature last year, although there remains some discussion about just what criteria should be used to identify the schools needing the most help. The success of the program will depend on whether its implementation builds a database of knowledge that allows education leaders to better hone in on the root causes of underperformance.
As it stands, the policy will use the state’s school grading system, which has been somewhat controversial, as the principal standard of measure for struggling schools. Board members have agreed that as the program progresses, other metrics should be added, including attendance data and other methods of measuring academic success.
The intent of the policy is sound. There is a wide disparity in academic performance among public schools that can be the result of any number of factors, but are basically tied to the way the schools are run and the demographic nature of their student bodies. The turnaround program will work best if it is surgical and tailored to the individual needs of each institution.
As state Superintendent Brad Smith told the Deseret News, “We had copious school improvement plans, which often neglected any kind of root cause analysis, and there was often total incongruence between what was really happening in the school and what the plan would call for.”
We appreciate the philosophy behind the approach, calling for an aggressive campaign to help individual schools overcome their struggles, including consultation services for administrators and requiring a rigorous, stage-by-stage plan to accomplish a turnaround. The law also creates financial incentives for schools to demonstrate quick and measurable progress.
Troubled schools will not benefit from a cookie-cutter approach that requires conforming to a rigid set of common standards. But at the same time, there must be common criteria by which we can assure there is not a wide and intransigent gap in the performance of our public schools. Regardless of their location or the nature of the community they serve, schools should be expected to meet high standards of performance, and that will happen only if schools found lagging are given the proper attention, which, over time, the new policy should accomplish.