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A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective.

The questions raised by the new study were on the agenda last week as the , which issued the report, hosted a forum on its findings that included a top Education Department official. The exchange highlighted tensions in the debate over 鈥渢urning around鈥� low-performing schools as federal officials prepare to hand out billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for that purpose, and as they gear up to advocate school improvement strategies for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The center what 23 school districts and 48 schools in six states learned during the past five years about improving struggling schools. It found that the five strategies for restructuring spelled out in the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA, did not offer much help to schools that were trying to improve after five or more years of failing to make adequate yearly progress under the law.

More than 5,000 schools were in restructuring in 2008-09, in fact, up from 2,300 two years earlier, according to the center and the Education Department.

At the Dec. 7 forum, Jack Jennings, the center鈥檚 president and a former aide to Democrats on the education committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that in light of the center鈥檚 research, he wondered whether the department was acting 鈥渙n a hunch rather than on evidence鈥� in requiring states to use one of four specific turnaround models when spending stimulus dollars.

The models鈥攃losing the school and sending students elsewhere; handing it over to a charter-management group or other outside entity to run; replacing most of the staff; or 鈥渢ransforming鈥� it through changes in personnel, curriculum, and other areas鈥攂uild on, but are not identical to, strategies called for in the NCLB law. They are described in guidelines for the Race to the Top competition for states, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, and the Title I School Improvement Grants under the stimulus, and are seen asa template for what the Education Department hopes to pursue under the next version of the ESEA.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 think the evidence base is there to say that any one strategy will succeed,鈥� Mr. Jennings said.

鈥楾oo Prescriptive鈥�?

Judy Wurtzel, the deputy assistant secretary in the department鈥檚 office of planning, evaluation, and policy development鈥攚hich helps shape school improvement strategy鈥攕aid states and districts are encouraged to draw on multiple strategies in revamping their poorest-performing schools. The four models the department now advocates, she said, 鈥済o far beyond鈥� the catchall 鈥渙ther鈥� option allowed under the NCLB law, which was chosen by more than 80 percent of restructuring schools in the center鈥檚 study.

Federal Restructuring Options

In six states using various federal strategies in 2007-08, the majority of schools chose the 鈥渙ther鈥� option in implementing restructuring.

SOURCE: Center on Education Policy

Even the transformation model permitted for stimulus spending is 鈥渘ot an 鈥榦ther鈥� model, but a comprehensive set of interventions,鈥� Ms. Wurtzel said. Both the transformation model and the No Child Left Behind Act鈥檚 鈥渙ther鈥� option have been criticized as escape hatches that schools can use to avoid deeper, tougher changes.

Mr. Jennings said he thought federal officials were being 鈥渢oo prescriptive鈥� in making awards of school improvement grants contingent on using the four models, since versions of those approaches had not yielded much success among the schools, districts, and states the center studied.

But Ms. Wurtzel said states have had a good deal of flexibility in trying to improve their lowest-performing schools, and have not delivered the results the Education Department would have liked to see. Her comments were similar to those in issuing the for the school improvement grants on Dec. 3.

鈥淎fter nearly a decade of broad state and local discretion in implementing, with little success, the school improvement provisions of the ESEA, the department believes, for the purpose of this program, it is appropriate and necessary to limit that discretion and require the use of a carefully developed set of school intervention models in the nation鈥檚 lowest-achieving schools,鈥� the final regulations say. (鈥淔inal Rules Set for School Turnaround Grants,鈥� Dec. 9, 2009.)

The Education Department鈥檚 view of school turnaround work aligns with the center鈥檚 findings in key ways, Ms. Wurtzel argued. For instance, she said, it agrees that states have sometimes identified too many schools as needing improvement without targeting supports to those most in need, making it hard to use state resources effectively in helping them improve. That is why the department advocates identifying the lowest-performing 5 percent ofschools and proposing intervention strategies when states vie for federal stimulus dollars, she said.

States that lack the capacity to help all their lowest-performing schools right away, she said, can reserve some of the money to spread the work into the following year or two.

鈥淲e鈥檙e concerned as much about quality and sustainability as we are about quantity,鈥� Ms. Wurtzel said.

Unintended Consequences

In drafting its ESEA reauthorization proposal, which it hopes to complete in the first quarter of 2010, Ms. Wurtzel said, the Education Department plans to incorporate language that better targets aid to schools most in need of improvement and places more emphasis on progress in student achievement, among other things.

The department also will collect detailed information from its school improvement stimulus grantees to help inform its judgments about what works and will make the data public, she said. Two other evaluations will contribute to its understanding of school turnaround work as well, she said: a case study of 50 schools that are doing such work this year, and a coordinated evaluation of the school improvement grants and other stimulus-funded programs.

In the study, all the schools examined found that multiple, coordinated strategies were needed to improve achievement enough for them to 鈥渆xit鈥� restructuring, and that those strategies needed to be revised as the work proceeded.

Sobrante Park Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., for instance, got out of restructuring in 2006-07, but has had to reshape its work to preserve and advance its progress. The following year, the school sharpened its focus on classroom instruction in particular on students who were falling behind. It kept the early-morning tutoring and earlier start to the day that it had adopted during restructuring, but added an intervention teacher to work with small groups during the day. A second such teacher was added in 2008-09.

That year, after noticing that students鈥� reading fluency was improving, but their comprehension was not, Principal Marco Franco paid teachers extra to allow them to develop better strategies for teaching reading comprehension.

Case-study schools that successfully moved out of restructuring status also cited frequent analysis of student-achievement data as central to their efforts. Still, none of the schools reported that restructuring solved all their problems, and just 11 of the 48 schools in the study improved enough to leave restructuring.

Most of the schools that got out of restructuring said they had replaced staff members鈥攁 hotly debated element in the Education Department鈥檚 turnaround models鈥攁nd that it helped improve things in some cases, but that fiing educators could also have unintended negative consequences.

Replacing many staff members in an area where qualified replacements are hard to find, or in a school that lacks a widely publicized vision to help it overcome its reputation as a 鈥渇ailing school,鈥� hampered improvement efforts, according to the study.

Sometimes new hires were the first to go when layoffs occurred because of declining enrollment. The younger, less senior teachers who had restaffed two secondary schools in Detroit fit that pattern.

All six states in the study devised ways to aim tailored supports at the schools most in need. Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Ohio are piloting 鈥渄ifferentiated accountability鈥� systems to do that. Under those systems, the states give more help to schools that failed to make enough progress schoolwide than they give to schools that failed to do so only for a few student subgroups.

Of the other states examined, California focuses on districts with the most severe problems, and Michigan conducts audits and dispatches special teams to schools to help them make changes.