The State Approach
One of the ways Virginia is meeting the leadership needs of struggling schools is in training “turnaround specialists,” a concept borrowed from business. Under the leadership of former Governor Mark R. Warner, legislation initially adopted in 2004 earmarked $1.4 million to train a cadre of senior education leaders to turn around the Commonwealth’s consistently lowest performing schools and raise student achievement quickly. This program involves both innovative and interdisciplinary training, as well as shifting key leadership resources to where they are needed most.
The University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and Curry School of Education have jointly designed an executive education program to train the turnaround specialists. The program focuses on leadership challenges, strategic change, decision-making, communications and partnerships.
A district accepting a turnaround specialist must agree in writing to provide these leaders over a three-year period with the support needed for them to be successful: for example, the authority to move experienced teachers to the highest needs classrooms. After the three-year period, the district must ensure that leadership is in place to take over and build on the school’s progress.
Results
Since 2004, 20 turnaround specialists have been placed in Virginia schools. All specialists from the first year’s cohort are already seeing positive results in their schools. Eight have received financial incentives by meeting or exceeding their student achievement targets and have met their goal of reducing failure rates in math and/or reading by 10%, thus making adequate yearly progress or obtaining state accreditation at their schools.
In the 2005-06 academic year, a second group of ten educators were placed in schools across Virginia. While it is too soon to evaluate this “turnaround specialist” model, the promising results to date suggest that it may hold promise as a statewide approach for training the kinds of leaders struggling schools need in order to significantly improve student achievement.