The German Context: School Turnaround in Ten Schools in Difficult Circumstances: The Need for Adaptive and Contextualized Approaches to Development and Change

In this chapter, we report on the research findings from a school development project which took place in a large city in Germany over a period of 5 years. In 2013, the central educational authorities formed a public-private partnership with a foundation to start a development project that was inspired by school turnaround models in the US and included various interventions and efforts to support change in ten schools that were identified as ‘schools in difficult circumstances’. As such, the adapted school turnaround model serves as an example of introducing policies or models in school systems that have proven to be successful elsewhere. In this chapter, we present findings from our analysis of the changes taking place in the schools related to efforts and interventions to support the schools. Moreover, we discuss challenges regarding measurement of success according to the school turnaround logic and the need for more adaptive approaches for changing and developing schools in difficult circumstances - at least a long-term perspective on school development.

An Urban District’s Struggle to Preserve School Turnaround Change

Leading school turnaround has been conceptualized as a school-level issue focused on immediate change. There has been little consideration about how district leaders change systems to sustain school turnaround successes. This case study research conducted through the lens of Change Theory explores the leadership struggles of one mid-sized urban district’s effort to build on its successful launch of a school turnaround initiative for a subset of underperforming schools. The results suggest that the same pressures that spur initial action can interfere with sustaining success. The dual issues of systems leadership and a sustainable change process are considered as implications.

The Relationship Between School Turnaround and Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

School turnaround has emerged as a predominant strategy to improve chronically low-performing schools, although the approach remains controversial. This meta-analysis synthesizes results from 35 studies to examine the relationship between school turnaround and various student outcomes. We find that school turnaround is associated with improved attendance, standardized test scores, and graduation rates. When separating the results by the different turnaround models, transformation, turnaround, and restart models are associated with improvements in student test scores. We find no evidence of a significant relationship between school closure or state turnaround conducted under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers and student test scores. We describe how changes in organizational operations, human capital, and the governance and/or management of low-performing schools might have contributed to this observed relationship.