Restructuring Restructuring

A new report from the Center for Education Policy looks at how 5 states are dealing with NCLB’s requirements to “restructure” chronically low-performing schools. Under NCLB, schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress for at least five consecutive years are subject to restructuring. School districts must implement at least one of a menu of restructuring interventions in these schools. But the results of these interventions have been decidedly mixed. This year a record number of 3,500 schools nationally–about 7 percent of all Title I schools–are identified for restructuring. Based on in-depth analysis of what districts and schools are doing in these 5 states, CEP concludes that restructuring itself needs to be restructured.

CEP offers five recommendations for how restructuring should be restructured in the law:

• Policymakers should expand the federal options for restructuring and encourage states to create state-specific strategies. Under current law, schools identified for restructuring must choose from a menu of restructuring options, which include reopening the school as a charter school, replacing all or most of the school’s staff, hiring a private management company to operate the school, turning operation of the school over to the state, or “any other major restructuring of the school’s governance arrangement that makes fundamental reforms.” Not surprisingly, between 86 and 96 percent of schools in the states CEP looked at chose the “any other” option. CEP could find no evidence that particular restructuring strategies were more effective than others, so it recommends that federal policy makers allow states and districts to implement a variety of research-based approaches.
• States need to step up efforts to monitor restructuring implementation.
• Federal and state officials need to consider policies to address schools that remain in restructuring. Some of the states that CEP looked at have schools that have now been in restructuring for several years. But NCLB is silent on what should happen to schools that haven’t improved after two years in restructuring (one to plan restructuring and one to implement it). The next iteration of NCLB will need to include provisions to address what happens to schools that fail to improve after restructuring.
• Unless certain criteria are met restructuring schools should not choose to replace staff, and states should not recommend this option. CEP recommends that schools in restructuring replace staff only if districts have effective human resource systems to help schools recruit and hire new staff, there is a pool of potential qualified candidates for positions, and the district can negotiate with the teachers union to remove potential obstacles to restructuring (CEP suggests states help with this).
• States and districts should work to help maintain student achievement in schools that exit restructuring. Schools in restructuring receive additional support and resources from the state and their district, but if those resources are removed once a school makes AYP, there is a danger the school will lose its progress and wind up in restructuring once again.

These seem like sensible recommendations based on CEP’s findings. If Congress follows CEP’s recommendation to expand restructuring options in the next iteration of NCLB, one additional option they should consider is encouraging elementary schools identified for restructuring to restructure themselves as PK-3 Early Education Academies. PK-3 Early Education Academies would (i) serve children in at least ages 3-8; (ii) offer pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten; (iii) deliver a vertically-aligned and research-based curriculum emphasizing literacy, language, and social-emotional development in the context of a full
complement of core academic subjects; and (iv) provide time for teachers to work together in age and disciplinary teams to align curriculum and instruction from pre-kindergarten through grade three. Older elementary students who previously attended the school could continue to be served there within a separate school-within-a-school focused on their educational needs, or could be given priority for transfer to other higher performing schools in or outside their district. Reconstituting chronically low-performing elementary schools as PK-3 Early Education Academies would provide a compelling wholeschool reform vision, ensure schools implement practices and programs that research shows work to improve student learning, focus policy on ensuring children get a firm educational foundation by the end of third grade, and increase early learning time to help meet this goal. New America proposed PK-3 Early Education Academies as an option for elementary schools in restructuring in an issue brief we published last year offering ideas to improve early education in NCLB.