A successful turnaround depends on many people working together to achieve extraordinary results. Attaining the necessary level of commitment to achieve these results requires a dramatic culture shift toward both high academic expectations and concerted effort. A turnaround culture fuses strong community cohesion with an academic press; one without the other is insufficient. Leadership establishes the structures and opportunities for faculty and staff to work together around common goals, engendering a culture of mutual respect, shared responsibility, and focused attention on student learning.
State, district, and school leaders engage families to support their children’s learning and the overall turnaround effort. A strong school community attends to the culture both inside and outside the school, gathering input from stakeholders and gauging perceptions about the school and the turnaround effort. Students are challenged and supported to aim higher, work harder, and realize the satisfaction of accomplishment. A positive school climate reflects a supportive and fulfilling environment, learning conditions that meet the needs of all students, people sure of their roles and relationships in student learning, and a culture that values trust, respect, and high expectations.
Build a strong community intensely focused on student learning
Practice Description
Celebrate successes—starting with quick wins early in the turnaround process—of students, family, teachers, and leaders. Early success promotes an expectation for further success and engenders confidence in the competence of colleagues.
Provide explicit expectations and support for each person’s role (expected behaviors) both in the turnaround and in students’ progress.
Create opportunities for members of the school community to come together to discuss, explore, and reflect on student learning.
Champion high expectations (of self and others), embed them in everyday practice and language, reinforce them through shared accountability, and follow through on strategies for dramatically improving student outcomes.
School-Based Example
Establish systems (i.e., structures, policies, procedures, and routines) for focused collabora- tive work; recognize student effort and academic mastery; and recognize job satisfaction and camaraderie among staff as essential assets in a turnaround. Maintain a positive, encouraging classroom and school culture for students, one in which they feel safe and supported to share their needs, struggles, and concerns. Recognize each incremental improvement, but keep the focus on ultimate results at the student, teacher, and school levels. Celebrate team accomplishments and offer recognition for hard work and improvement. Frequently and openly review data on turnaround progress (including implementation and leading indicators) and discuss the data with community members.
Recognizing groups of teachers who work together effectively to improve student learning is important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
Ensure that protocols and expectations for effective collaboration are clear and outlined.
Build routine opportunities into faculty and grade-level meetings to share teachers’ best practices for engaging in highly effective instruction and improving student learning.
Build opportunities into teacher collaboration time to share “problems of practice.” Create a system to revisit and monitor the effectiveness of newly developed strategies. Celebrate growth.
Create an opportunity for teachers to reflect on and share their perceptions of the effectiveness of grade-level and across-school collaboration times.
Create opportunities to celebrate all community members’ contributions to students’ academic, behavioral, and social–emotional growth.
Create a culture of continuous improvement that celebrates new ideas to improve academic achievement.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What are the expectations of staff collaboration? What are the expected outcomes?
Are there protocols in place for collaboration?
Are there groups of teachers who work together effectively to improve student learning?
How are systems such as teacher collaboration monitored to measure improved student outcomes?
Teachers and staff generally work with school leaders to make significant changes.
Strategies and Suggestions
Create leadership structures that include opportunities for staff input from lead teacher teams and decision-making committees.
Ensure the organization of teacher teams and that all teachers understand the structure and benefits of the model to drive sustainable change.
Create PLC opportunities for other staff groups to engage in work that supports the mission and vision of the school through collaboration and ongoing discussion, action, and monitoring of goals.
Build regular collaboration time for teachers to use data in responsive instructional intervention plans, including targeting curricular resources and instructional strategies to support all students throughout the school year.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What routines are in place for the administration to receive feedback from teachers and staff?
What process is in place for teachers and staff to provide feedback to the administration about significant changes?
How are you working with turnaround school leaders and teachers to acknowledge and include their ideas in creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
How are you inviting parents and community members to engage in meaningful dialogue? How are you including their ideas in the process of creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
Do teachers and school leaders have structured time together to discuss the needs of the school?
How are major decisions around instructional changes developed? Whose input is included?
Is there a system to elicit feedback once an initiative is in place and throughout the process?
School discipline policies are extremely effective at addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Strategies and Suggestions
Examine current policies and data on behavioral issues and patterns of
Collaboratively build a positive behavior management
Consistently enforce and emphasize designs that effectively manage behavior while keeping students in the learning environment.
Establish a dedicated leadership team to examine student behavior and discipline and invest in the continuous improvement of the system.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What is the current discipline plan?
What adjustments can be made so that the discipline plan has a greater impact on student behavior?
Are the timelines associated with the current discipline plan appropriate and effective in impacting student behavior?
Analyze the source of behavioral Who is involved? What is the scope of the problem? What is the strength of positive relationships with the students involved?
Consider how the school engages the students involved. Are there instructional interventions such as project-based learning, place-based learning, real-world applications, or innovative uses of technology that better engage these students? What is their academic progress? How is the school better supporting academic and behavioral success? What role does the instructional program play in promoting unsafe behaviors
Consider those affected by safety issues. Who are these students, and how is the school working better to support the safe pursuit of quality education?
In classrooms, in hallways, in bathrooms, and on school grounds, students and staff feel extremely safe. They do not feel threatened, in danger of being bullied or intimidated, or concerned about their physical or emotional safety.
Strategies and Suggestions
Provide clear and consistent expectations for student behavior, including expectations of student actions in the classroom, hallways, and common areas.
Consistently uphold these expectations for all students.
Survey the condition of the facility and facility-related learning goals and establish a facilities plan that advances school goals by addressing maintenance, renovation, and repair.
Establish clear expectations with the school community to maintain a clean environment.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Is there an up-to-date safety plan? Where is it located? Who is aware of what is included in the safety plan?
How often is the school’s safety plan updated?
How do community members communicate safety concerns regarding physical spaces at the school?
Consider particularly problematic areas of the Where do the problems occur? What is the level of adult presence in these areas? How are the areas better managed (e.g., through more intensive supervision, shifts in traffic patterns, closing the area)?
Analyze school resources and increase resources dedicated to campus security as needed. Consider if there are ways to restructure the resources for a more significant impact.
Analyze the source of behavioral Who is involved? What is the scope of the problem? What is the strength of positive relationships with students involved?
Consider those affected by safety Who are these students?
Ninety-six to 100 percent of students have a meaningful personal relationship with teachers or staff, characterized by relationships that are close enough to enable teachers and staff to notice changes that occur in the student’s life that could impact student engagement, safety, or learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
Assess student/adult relationships and intervene to ensure that every child has a meaningful relationship with at least one adult in the building.
Expand professional development on classroom management models, which focus on building positive relationships with students, creating a classroom community, and having positive interactions with students.
Consider adopting interaction and relationship-building principles across the schools for all adults that address how to get compliance and ownership of decisions from students around expectations.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What practices are in place to support meaningful student/adult relationships? What additional practices could be considered?
How do adults communicate which students they are engaging to provide meaningful support?
What percent of students currently have a meaningful relationship with an adult?
Are school leaders modeling the desired interactions with students?
Are structures, activities, and time in place for staff to build meaningful personal relationships with students?
How do the positive relationships with students tie into the mission and vision of the school?
All staff in the school have high expectations for students.
Strategies and Suggestions
Design a survey to administer to students throughout the year to collect data on student perceptions of the expectations adults on campus have for them. Review the data quarterly and plan actions to increase student perceptions of adults having high expectations for all students on campus.
Gather artifacts formally communicated to students, families, and teachers regarding expectations for Enlist a group to review the artifacts to determine if they are consistent in messaging and convey sufficiently high expectations. Make adjustments in future communications as warranted.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How are you communicating a culture of high expectations for students?
What strategies can be shared with teachers and staff to encourage high expectations for students?
How are you communicating the progress of turnaround efforts?
Who is accountable for this communication at each level?
How is the path made clear to everyone?
Do all adults in the school have high expectations for all students? What evidence is collected to address this?
Which students are outliers to staff expectations? How are these students similar?
Has the school undergone professional learning focused on adult expectations for student learning, growth mindset, and culturally responsive teaching?
Solicit and act upon stakeholder input
Practice Description
Collective perceptions—held by school personnel, students, families, and the broader community—about the degree to which their school climate is or is not positive are gathered and used to gauge the climate-related work to be done by a school striving for turnaround.
Community perceptions are considered when identifying priorities and improving the underlying conditions that contribute to school climate issues.
Acknowledge and respond to constructive feedback, suggestions, and criticism.
School-Based Example
Learn what constituents think by conducting surveys, holding forums and focus groups, and making suggestion boxes available. Share and act on what is learned. Take constituent input into account when making program decisions. Consistently demonstrate that all voices are heard.
There are a range of communication systems, co-created by teachers and leaders with consistent feedback loops, to give staff the information to follow through on responsibilities.
Strategies and Suggestions
Meet with teacher teams to establish effective ways to communicate information that needs teacher follow-through. What times and modes are best? What are the expectations for feedback and questions?
Develop transparent systems of communication to involve all staff in the understanding of goals, expectations, and responsibilities.
Provide information to staff members through various modes and communicate how to expect the information. Be clear and intentional in stating expectations and needed follow-through.
Establish a process of reserving regular blocks of time for collaboration between the leadership team and staff.
Be intentional in including paraprofessionals and itinerant teachers in communications in a way that enables them to stay informed about decisions and provides them with opportunities to offer feedback and ask questions.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What systems of communication are currently in place?
How does leadership currently communicate the responsibilities of teachers and staff?
How are you working with turnaround school leaders and teachers to acknowledge and include their ideas in creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
Has the leadership team surveyed or met with teacher teams to discuss practical ways to share information that meets the needs of the teaching staff?
Are efforts made to ensure that there are consistent feedback loops?
Are the communication systems currently used in schools co-created by teachers and leadership staff?
Do the communication systems result in the desired impact and connections between staff and leadership?
Scheduling community forums for listening to parent and family concerns is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
Examine parent communication processes and consider how well these processes provide opportunities for meaningful communication with parents.
Establish clear goals for parent communication.
Identify expectations for teacher and school leadership communication with Use research on parent involvement.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What opportunities exist to broaden the representation of voices?
Do all voices have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions?
How are you inviting parents and community members to engage in meaningful dialogue? How are you including their ideas in the process of creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
How are you including members of the community in the turnaround efforts? How are you encouraging them to participate in the turnaround process?
Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
How are school leaders creating a forum where families feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued when raising concerns?
Scheduling group meetings to talk to parents and families about school curriculum and testing is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
Continue to support academic partnerships between the school and families by scheduling two or three times throughout the year for parents to come into the school to learn in detail about their child’s courses and how to support them.
Create a parent engagement committee that includes the school’s parent liaison. The committee collects relevant data that drive planning for the format of meetings and the selection of offerings to families.
Utilize the parent liaison for additional follow-up contact with parents who do not attend.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What consistent community forums and/or meetings are currently in place?
What current community forums and/or meetings are consistently well attended and/or supported? Why do you think that is?
Do parents think their voice is valued? How do you know?
Are meetings designed so that parents are fully informed and can ask questions and discuss school curriculum and testing?
Are meetings held at a convenient time and place for parents and in a format that works for them?
Which families are historically attending the meetings? Is the school reaching the majority of its families? Who is not in attendance?
Are parents made aware of the curriculum and testing programs that enable them to assist their children?
The school creates structures for problem solving in which teachers and school leaders engage in meaningful, challenging conversations.
Strategies and Suggestions
Organize staff into meaningful collaborative teacher teams that take collective responsibility for student learning and work interdependently to achieve shared goals for which members hold themselves mutually accountable.
Engage collaborative teacher teams in both vertical and horizontal conversations around student learning and instructional needs.
Provide professional learning for all staff on “crucial conversations” as a method to strengthen staff relationships.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
What systems of communication are currently in place to allow for challenging conversations?
What is the plan for engaging in challenging conversations when the traditional path does not allow for all teachers and staff to share their thoughts?
How are school leaders and teachers working together to problem-solve to address the school’s instructional needs and the students’ academic needs?
How open are teachers to engaging in meaningful, challenging conversations with colleagues? With the administrative team?
How open are school leaders to engaging in meaningful conversations with staff that result in thought-provoking dialogue?
How are school leaders creating a forum in which community members feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued when engaging in challenging conversations?
Feedback from parents and families is provided through surveys and other methods such as forums, focus groups, and suggestion boxes.
Strategies and Suggestions
Conduct a survey of families and students to gauge perceptions about the school, its effectiveness, and their place in it.
Use different formats to elicit feedback from parents, including direct and indirect outreach, such as surveys, online meeting forums, focus groups, parent meetings, and suggestion boxes.
Build opportunities for the teaching staff, school leadership, and parents to provide feedback to each other regarding a child’s well-being and academic process.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How are you soliciting input from interested parties regarding their perceptions about the schools?
How are community members from often-underrepresented voices represented?
Do all voices at the table have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions?
What tools need to be created to solicit such input?
Who is accountable for developing and distributing those tools?
What is needed to adjust community members’ perceptions about turnaround schools, if negative?
How are you showing them turnaround school progress?
Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
Collecting constructive criticism and applying that feedback to the decision-making processes is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
Collect feedback from teachers throughout the year to determine the effectiveness of the decision-making processes used by the school.
Create a process allowing constructive feedback around the school’s instructional strategies and students’ and teachers’ needs.
Provide professional learning opportunities for all staff on ways to engage in challenging conversations that lead to problem solving.
Provide teachers and paraprofessionals with constructive feedback, giving them clear goals, strategies, and support for instructional improvement.
Structure meetings to provide opportunities for engagement in thoughtful dialogue.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Is constructive criticism valued in your school community? How do you know?
What systems are in place to respond to constructive feedback?
What systems are in place for collecting constructive criticism? What is the desired result of these systems?
Does school-level leadership apply feedback to staff for the decision-making and problem-solving processes?
Engage students and families in pursuing educational goals
Practice Description
Intentionally build students’ personal competencies to pursue goals, persist with tasks, appraise progress, hone learning strategies, and direct their learning to further enhance their capacity to learn and succeed.
Provide students with opportunities to connect their learning in school with their interests and aspirations.
Meaningfully engage parents in their child’s learning, progress, interests, and long- term goals.
School-Based Example
Programmatically and systematically build students’ skills in setting learning goals, managing their learning, and pursuing their goals by charting progress on coursework and toward their postsecondary goals; inform and engage families in planning and supporting their children’s education goals; provide students and their families with a full explanation of assessment results and interest inventories to help them make the best decisions; tap community resources and expertise to expand students’ understanding of potential careers and education options.
Our school works with family and community groups to determine the best time and location for public meetings and provides transportation and childcare to increase attendance.
Note: For relevant strategies and suggestions and reflection questions, see 4.3.30 below.
There is sufficient time, and parents and teachers have meaningful discussions to develop strategies to help students’ progress.
Strategies and Suggestions
Family outreach
Support staff in building their capacity to facilitate the development of strong, trusting family relationships that lead to collaboration.
Encourage teachers to make positive personal connections.
As a school leader, make one positive phone call each day.
Increase staff knowledge of ways to engage families through resources, materials, meetings, discussions, and hands-on opportunities that support student academic growth.
Establish a system for school-to-home and home-to-school communication that occurs weekly and monthly. Provide opportunities for families to collaborate and communicate with staff.
Connect with parents through mobile phone apps, classroom-based websites, and the student information system; provide parents with training on how to monitor their child’s progress.
Family engagement
Create a welcoming school climate. Provide printed information (in the parent’s home language if possible) that includes school policies, school contact information, and the school calendar. Hold an open house at the beginning of the school year. Provide translators during school activities.
Provide families with accessible and relevant resources to use at home with their child to increase engagement and improve student growth.
Involve parents in volunteer activities.Recognize volunteers regularly.
Student learning goals
Provide families with workshops and materials that engage them in grade-level learning goals. Print suggestions for parents on ways to support their children at home.
Encourage homework assignments that require students to share their work with their families.
Engage parents in holding their children to high expectations and supporting their success at home.
Build level-to-level (e.g., elementary to middle school) transition strategies to prevent student struggles and help them succeed.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How are parents and your school community made aware of public meetings?
How do you keep track of parent and other family attendance during family engagement opportunities?
Do parents and/or other family members only interact with teachers? What opportunities do they have to interact with staff and administration?
Other than the teacher, do parents and/or other family members have an additional individual with whom they can connect for support?
How are you sharing assessment results and explanations with families?
What needs to be in place to ensure that all families have access to this information?
How are you assisting families in educational planning?
How are school leaders scheduling and planning meetings for families in such a way as to respect them as individuals and value their time?
Family visitors are sought out by teachers and welcomed as a key asset for student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
Conduct parent surveys gathering parents’ perceptions as visitors in the building and classrooms. Align these data to perception data collected from teachers regarding the helpfulness and effectiveness of parent visitors in their classes.
Create a vision statement including parents as Working with the teaching staff and parents, develop guidelines to indicate what successful implementation entails.
Communicate the school-parent involvement vision to all interested parties.
Clearly outline the purpose, benefits, and responsibilities of both parent visitors and teaching staff.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Are parents and/or families allowed to observe and/or visit classrooms? Are families aware of classroom visitation opportunities?
What efforts are made to gather parents’ perceptions of the school as partners in their child’s education?
Has the school developed a system that gives parents access to the school and classroom?
Are parents aware of the grade-level expectations for students and given ways to support their child’s learning?
Is the school aware of the parents’ expertise to support student learning through volunteer work, classroom visits, or other opportunities?
Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
A program to enhance personalized learning opportunities for students is developed, actively used, and shown to improve student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
Adopt technology-usage learning experiences for students that promote personalized learning.
Prioritize which learning opportunities to personalize for remediation and acceleration of student learning.
Incorporate individual goal setting where students set short- and long-term goals around foundation grade-level skills, including opportunities to accelerate learning.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
To what extent are teachers helping students articulate their aspirations and connect their learning to the pursuit of these aspirations?
How are school-based programs developed to enhance personalized learning opportunities? Are they shown to improve student learning?
Do extended learning opportunities give space for students to pursue personal learning goals?
How are personalized learning opportunities monitored and selected?
How successful are the school’s graduates in completing post-secondary work or obtaining work in their chosen careers?
The numbering system corresponds to the Four Domains framework and the numbering of items in the CALL surveys. in the example 1.2.30, the first number represents the domain (ex. Domain 1), the second number represents the practice (ex. Practice 2), and the third number represents the item number from the CALL survey that is most relevant to this practice item (ex. item 30).
