Last resort for schools: Closure

11-16-2009

Editorial/Sacramento Bee

What do you do when year after year after year a school continues to struggle? You can opt for marginal change, but the school still flails. Or you can do something dramatic to bring about fundamental change. That's what California must do to turn around its chronically underperforming schools. It can be done. And despite resistance, some school districts already are doing it. We've seen four basic strategies for turnaround, and we've been featuring them on these pages: • Reconstitution. The children stay and the staff leaves. Teachers reapply for jobs. • Transformation. Replace staff and leadership and turn the school over to a charter. • Closure. Students re-enroll in other schools. • Culture change. Keep most of the existing staff but make major changes in scheduling and curriculum. (more...)

Document Actions

Print this

Personal tools

Sections

Last resort for schools: Closure

Document Actions