When focusing on the Turnaround Leadership domain, state, district, and school levels collaborate to improve struggling schools, emphasizing their interdependence. They swiftly implement policies, allocate resources, and hire staff to drive rapid progress. When coordinating efforts, they tailor turnaround plans to local needs, use data, and take responsibility to ensure all students receive a quality education.
How to Apply the Practices
The Four Domains practices are action items for state, district, and school leaders. There is no set order for implementing the practices, and a turnaround plan should prioritize them. Ideally, many practices may be started simultaneously, but focusing on too many at once can be counterproductive.
Prioritize improvement and communicate its urgency
Set the strategic direction for the turnaround and establish clear policies, structures, and expectations for constituents to work toward ambitious improvement goals.
Articulate a commitment to turning around the lowest performing schools and advocate fiercely across audiences for these schools.
Closely monitor, discuss, report, and act upon the progress of schools undertaking rapid improvement.
School-Based Example
Develop and update the turnaround plan to ensure that it has clear short- and long-term goals. Monitor the progress of strategy implementation and make changes in personnel, programs, and methods as needed to keep the effort on track. Intervene swiftly if waning progress is detected.
Members of the school community feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued as they surface ideas that may conflict with historical or current practices. Opportunities to surface ideas are available at least monthly.
Strategies and Suggestions
Create opportunities for staff members to understand and empathize with the challenges faced by students.
Make it clear that the school is one of only a few places that effect change for students.
Inspire staff members to embrace the opportunity to improve student lives.
Set the tone of urgency and the importance of substantial improvement.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How often are leaders meeting with staff around the school’s mission and vision?
Are the conversations collaborative?
What is the vision for student learning?
How are school leaders supporting community members to feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued as they surface ideas that may conflict with historical or current practices?
A vision for teaching and learning that is anchored in shared values and connects with all community members is routinely shared and sharpened.
Strategies and Suggestions
Step 1: Lead collaborative conversations to build a shared vision by setting aside time for focused discussions in which the leadership team and entire school staff have an opportunity to
identify shared values;
acknowledge contextual opportunities and challenges, such as school pride, demographic shifts, achievement gaps, and other challenges;
develop and reinforce a shared vision focused on student learning with an emphasis on establishing core values that drive action;
build improvement plans based on the vision;
regularly assess progress toward achieving the vision; and
revise or fine-tune improvement plans based on progress
Develop clear meeting agendas at the department, grade, or team level focused on building shared understandings of
teaching pedagogy;
student learning outcomes;
student work;
grading;
best practices in the school, district, and field;
vision gaps (the distance between where we are and where we want to be); and
the work needed to move the school forward toward achieving the vision.
Step 2: Enact the shared vision, including by clearly defining the leadership roles (principal, assistant principal, dean, guidance counselor, coordinator, department chair, etc.) with instructional leadership role responsibilities.
Activate and support distributed instructional leadership.
Clearly define leadership roles (principal, assistant principal, dean, guidance counselor, coordinator, department chair, etc.) with instructional leadership role responsibilities.
Activate and support distributed instructional leadership.
Clearly define formal and informal leadership roles in terms of how they support student learning.
Provide professional development and support to enable distributed leadership to have the capacity to carry out the vision.
Legitimize distributed leadership roles through clear communication of expectations with the entire school community.
Focus leadership on providing the tools to achieve the vision.
Continually reframe “Why we can’t” to “How we ”
Hold all staff members, including naysayers, accountable to the shared vision.
Clearly communicate vision-aligned actions to district staff and community members and seek resources and support to carry out plans to achieve the vision.
Retell success stories to staff, students, and the community to provide a pathway for future success.
Step 3: Continually reinforce the importance and centrality of the vision; keep the vision in front of the staff at all times.
Include a vision tagline or statement on agendas and communications with staff; use it in morning announcements.
With staff, regularly review data on progress toward achieving the vision and remaining gaps.
Frame the rationale for implementing new initiatives in terms of their proven ability to address the vision gaps.
Continue problem-solving progress.
Use symbolic action to reinforce the importance and centrality of the vision.
Refuse to get sidetracked with other topics during staff meetings, staff development sessions, and so on.
Utilize meeting techniques such as establishing meeting agendas in advance and using parking lots to emphasize the importance of defining the focus of collaborative conversations.
Celebrate staff and student successes that align with the school’s vision.
Invite staff to develop creative problem-solving activities and ideas to address vision gaps and reward those who effectively fill those gaps.
Provide training for administrators and teacher-leaders on effective meeting facilitation.
Hold teacher-leaders accountable for instructional improvement by regularly discussing department- or grade-level progress and challenges in leadership team meetings.
Recognize that leadership is challenging and include problem-sharing and problem-solving discussions in the leadership team and department- or grade- level discussions.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How are leaders publicly advocating for the lowest performing schools and the turnaround process?
What steps need to be established for this advocacy process, and who is accountable?
It is clear which individuals have instructional leadership roles, and the supports are in place to facilitate their growth in these roles.
Strategies and Suggestions
Identify strong instructional leaders and enlist them to help spread excellent instruction.
Build instructional leadership capacity in others through expanded leadership opportunities, professional learning, leadership coaching and feedback, and the development of collaborative instructional leadership teams.
Selectively tap into district-provided instructional supports to accelerate the work of instructional leaders.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Who are the instructional leaders in the building?
Are instructional leadership roles such as department chair, grade-level leads, team leaders, and so on formally defined?
How are leadership skills being developed for those staff members who are in instructional leadership roles?
What tools, systems, and structures need to be established to give turnaround school leaders adequate decision-making authority and autonomy?
The school leadership team’s function, decision-making process, and decisions are effectively communicated to the staff.
Strategies and Suggestions
Consider the following points for planning school improvement team meetings.
Develop a schedule for school improvement team meetings.
Ensure that key community members who are not on the school improvement team know how to contribute thoughts and ideas to the meetings.
Establish an agenda template or protocol with adequate time for discussion of all items.
Ensure that relevant materials are accessible to all
Consider the following points for conducting engaging school improvement team meetings.
Adhere to a protocol
Report on the progress of key strategies
Ensure adequate time to discuss selected guiding questions that deepen understanding
Make decisions and agree on any adjustments to previously agreed-on plans
Get clarity and commitment on the next steps around what is being done, by whom, and by what date.
Consider the following points for translating school improvement team meetings into results.
Provide timely minutes (or communication) after each school improvement team meeting.
Proceed with follow-up actions, paying attention to progress indicators and
Engage in self-reflection on what worked well and what needs improvement
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Does a leadership team exist?
How often does the team meet?
What are the functions of this team?
What opportunities exist to broaden the representation of voices at the table?
Do all voices at the table have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions?
How are school leaders making school leadership team members feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued as they confront tensions that may exist between current practices and desired practices?
Frequent and understandable communications regarding school improvement progress are made available to the community at large.
Strategies and Suggestions
Determine who is responsible for monitoring the school improvement plan.
Determine how members of the school community are engaged in the process of collecting data, analyzing data, and proposing adjustments to the plan.
Ensure that there is adequate time and trust for confronting and resolving tensions that may exist between what is in the plan and what is happening in the school.
Make data highly visible and transparent to all members of the school community, including data showing progress toward goals and changes to proposed actions.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How is the school improvement process communicated?
Who is responsible for ensuring the school improvement process is communicated to the school community at large?
What processes are monitored throughout the school year to track progress on school improvement goals? Which data are collected for this purpose and by whom?
What student outcome data are monitored throughout the school year to track progress on school improvement goals?
Monitor short- and long-term goals
Practice Description
Develop goals informed by assessments of recent performance trends and identify practices aimed at realizing a clearly articulated turnaround vision of significantly improved student learning.
Establish milestones for gauging progress. Continually update timelines and tasks to maintain the pace needed to accomplish meaningful goals quickly.
Respond to regular feedback on progress toward goal-directed milestones and make timely changes in policy, programs, and personnel to get on track in achieving desired results for students.
Capitalize on initial turnaround successes and momentum to shift the focus from the change itself to incorporating and establishing effective organizational processes, structures, and interactions that contribute to continuous organizational processes.
School-Based Example
Develop and update the turnaround plan to ensure that it has clear short- and long-term goals. Monitor the progress of strategy implementation and make changes in personnel, programs, and methods as needed to keep the effort on track. Intervene swiftly if waning progress is detected.
A school improvement plan is developed, actively used, and shown to improve instruction.
Strategies and Suggestions
Write specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that articulate clear targets, actions, and timelines aligned with the school’s mission and vision.
Provide support and coaching to grade-level and content-specific collaborative teams at every grade level to develop quarterly SMART goals for all core subject areas.
Administrators support individual teachers in developing and monitoring individual SMART goals that support the goals of the collaborative team.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Has a school improvement plan been developed?
What are your school turnaround goals?
How is success defined regarding meeting school turnaround goals?
How can the plan be used to monitor and improve student learning?
Data from formative assessments of student learning are used to set and evaluate progress toward meeting goals for improving student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
Work toward clarity and precision when identifying school-based goals that match the vision for success to improve student outcomes.
Work with the staff and school community to set high-impact, ambitious, long-term goals that result in high levels of achievement.
Use assessment data to identify areas of student need through conversations with teacher teams.
After establishing goals, create short-term objectives that enhance student Utilize these short-term objectives as progress indicators to measure change toward priority goals.
Develop action plans aligned with the vision by analyzing data to determine the current state of low school performance, identifying root causes for that low performance and planning strategies to address root causes and achieve goals.
Use opportunities for different ways of knowing and of expressing knowledge, as success is defined and measured in many ways.
Ensure that all students have the opportunity to develop their higher order thinking skills.
Use data, such as from surveys, on access and opportunities to learn in order to analyze and identify inequities.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How is progress on data-referenced goals monitored, tracked, and communicated?
What measures are monitored to identify successes and challenges in student outcomes for school turnaround?
How are data used to customize support for turnaround and improvement efforts?
The school improvement plan is monitored frequently based on embedded milestones, and adjustments are made if necessary.
Strategies and Suggestions
Make adjustments to the school improvement or action plans based on data; discontinue unsuccessful strategies if appropriate. As goals are achieved, include additional areas of focus.
Clearly articulate the implementation actions required of adults and schedule implementation For each strategy, there are two levels of accountability: Was the strategy implemented with fidelity and intentionality, and did the strategy improve student outcomes?
Examine all teacher and leadership activities to identify the essential actions; focus time and effort on high-leverage actions and eliminate those actions not contributing to student growth.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Is the school action plan or improvement plan monitored frequently?
Are adjustments being made when necessary based on progress toward goals?
What structures or processes are in place to assess whether improvement efforts are successful?
Who is accountable for creating timelines and updating the team regarding continuous progress?
Who is accountable at each level to monitor and report changes in student outcomes?
All goals are growth-oriented, practice-based, and practical in nature.
Strategies and Suggestions
Relentlessly work to build a high level of cohesion around academic culture, goals, relationship building, instructional excellence, and so on.
Identify meaningful shifts in adult practice that are SMART.
Articulate what school leaders, teachers, and other staff are doing differently as a result of implementing strategies aligned with effective turnaround practices.
Include measurable indicators that show student learning and tasks are improving due to the changes in educator practice and that show the school is making progress toward meeting its annual goal for student achievement.
Measurable indicators address academic and nonacademic areas of student success and meet the SMART determination.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Are all goals growth-oriented?
Are all goals based on instructional and leadership practices?
What does success look like for classroom teachers and students at the school?
What are high-impact, ambitious, long-term goals that could result in the school reaching high levels of student achievement?
What are high-priority, short-term goals for targeted “early wins” to use as proof points of success?
How are you reducing time spent on unrelated activities to ensure focus on priorities?
Customize and target support to meet needs
Practice Description
Provide customized, targeted, and timely support for turnaround efforts.
Align support to ensure coherence and integration with other necessary initiatives; eliminate unnecessary initiatives.
Regularly monitor progress to identify support needs and then act quickly and competently to address those needs.
School-Based Example
Identify the priority needs of the school, focusing on three to five immediate priorities. Request flexibility with established policies and/or procedures as justified by the data, turnaround plan, and school capacity.
Regular instructional programs and student support services have similar goals.
Strategies and Suggestions
Build a professional learning plan to address instructional strategies to support multi-lingual learners.
Ensure teachers and members of the student support services have time to collaborate with one another to develop student goals and instructional strategies to meet the needs of specialized populations.
Have teachers use student achievement data to plan differentiated instruction for multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and all students at risk of not scoring at the proficient level.
Provide professional development in differentiated instruction and use data to plan instruction. Monitor the implementation of effective strategies and determine if teachers need additional training.
Offer all students many opportunities to develop cognitive skills, preparing them for advanced academic tasks.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
How do the school leaders develop similar goals for all students, including for students designated as English language learners and those identified for special education? How is this communicated to all interested parties?
How has learning for most students improved through regular instructional programs and student support services? What inconsistencies are found?
To what extent does professional development focus on special populations, monitoring for effectiveness and results?
District consultants fully understand current problems in the school, their work is relevant to school needs, and they support the school as changes they suggest are implemented.
Strategies and Suggestions
Engage district consultants to support student learning or professional development to expand school-level capacity.
Share relevant data and context with district consultants so they better understand current problems.
Ensure that the work provided by district consultants is directly relevant to school needs.
Request that district consultants adjust support as needed to ensure that support has the intended impact.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Which district experts have been used to support student learning or professional development?
Do the district experts have an understanding of the issues currently facing the school? How is this assessed or communicated?
Is the work of the district experts relevant to the school’s current needs?
Do the district experts support the school as the changes they suggest are implemented?
How are leaders selectively tapping into district-provided instructional supports to accelerate the work of turnaround efforts?
What opportunities does the district provide to support turnaround efforts, professional learning opportunities, school-to-school collaboration, curriculum resources, and incentives?
External consultants fully understand current problems in the school, their work is relevant to school needs, and they support the school as changes they suggest are implemented.
Strategies and Suggestions
Engage external consultants to support student learning or professional development to expand school-level capacity.
Share relevant data and context with external consultants so they better understand current problems.
Ensure that the work provided by external consultants is directly relevant to school needs.
Request that external consultants adjust support as needed to ensure that supports have the intended impact during implementation.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Which external experts have been used to support student learning or professional development?
Do the external experts have an understanding of the issues currently facing the school? How is this assessed or communicated?
Is the work of the external experts relevant to the school’s current needs?
Do the external experts support the school as changes they suggest are implemented?
How are leaders selectively tapping into consultant expertise to accelerate the work of turnaround efforts?
Is the work of the external consultants aligned with the vision, mission, and goals of the school?
Do the external consultants provide job-embedded coaching to support the improvement efforts?
School leaders use multiple sources of data, engage various interested parties, and lead a collaborative analysis of findings that results in the development of an action plan.
Note: For relevant strategies and suggestions and reflection questions, see 1.3.53 below.
To identify a school’s needs, school leaders use a collaborative analysis of findings a great deal as part of the needs assessment.
Strategies and Suggestions
Use a needs assessment as a point-in-time snapshot that may be comprehensive or segmented.
Consider using a comprehensive needs assessment to examine all aspects of the school and its context. A comprehensive needs assessment provides information about organizational direction, including goals and strategies; systematic functions; and long-range plans.
Consider using a segmented needs assessment to examine only one or a few aspects of the school and its context. A segmented needs assessment provides information about improvements to targeted functions or aspects of the school; incremental change; and short-term plans (typically less than a year).
Revisit and update the needs assessment regularly to ensure its alignment with the school improvement plan and to check for progress against the original findings.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
Which data are used as part of the school’s needs assessment? Are there multiple sources of data?
Did the needs assessment engage various interested parties? Which interested parties participated?
Has there been a collaborative analysis of the findings?
How are the findings from the needs assessment informing the creation of the school improvement plan?
How are the results from the needs assessment informing immediate next steps for the school?
What early actions are taken as a result of the needs assessment?
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).
