Wendy Lecker,civil rights attorney,says that claims made on behalf of school turnarounds—firing the staff and leaders—are usually inflated or false.
“With their narrow focus on test scores, disruption and structural changes, such as firing staff, education reformers constantly push the notion of school and district “turnarounds.” However, turnarounds been widely proven as ineffective in improving the longer-term educational quality of targeted schools.
“The evidence shows that turnarounds result in, at best, temporary boosts in test scores that often fade after a few years. These policies also often do lasting damage to the school culture by getting rid of teachers and staff who know the students.
“Consequently, experts warn that aggressive turnaround strategies must be viewed with caution. Connecticut’s legislative education committee seemed unaware of this warning as it participated in a day of turnaround presentations, organized by the charter lobby, ConnCAN.
“The failure of the turnaround plan at Hartford’s Milner Elementary was documented in my last column.
“A second turnaround “model” presented by ConnCAN, Lawrence, Massachusetts, had all the characteristics of turnarounds that are more hype the help.”
Despite claims of success without additional resources, Lecker says this is untrue. Lawrence received millions in additional resources, and the results were unimpressive.
“The overall results from Lawrence hardly paint a picture of success. In the majority of subjects and grades reported, there was either no improvement in proficiency rates or an actual decline.”
Even Governor Cuomo of Néw York has looked to Lawrence as a model.
Wendy Lecker says: Keep looking
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Turnarounds are achieving what they were intended to achieve, to wit, or else, the Destruction Of Public Education.
In NYC an arbitrator ruled that the Tuenaround model used on us was against our collective bargaining rights, three years ago.
& Now in the fall two more schools will have to re-interview for their jobs like we did after it was ruled to be “against our collective bargaining rights.” How could this be legal? When will these crooks start going to jail where they belong. I’ve had enough! How many charter school scands do we need?
The deform needs to end.
My school is on his list and will go into receivership in the upcoming school year.
Turnaround models have never made sense to me. Destroy a school culture by firing all the teachers and then go out in the same community and hire a new set of teachers or bring in unqualified temps from TFA. These all seem like the insane acts if the goal is to improve schools. We now know that the “successful” turnarounds instituted by Arne Duncan in Chicago were deemed such failures that Rahm Emanuel had them shuttered. It is clear to me that turnaround models have become little more than scams for pilfering education dollars.
Scores have gone down in some of the renew schools in Newark. Yet Anderson soldiers on. Eight schools are slated for turnaround in September. These schools, however, will only have extended schools days, summer professional development and four Saturday retreats. They will not be subjected to the faculty disruptions renew schools endured.
Before NCLB came along, Alabama had already implemented a system where schools received the rating passing, caution, alert 1 or alert 2 based on spring test scores. Alert 2 schools received state intervention and were subject to transformation if that didn’t work. A couple of years into the program, two elementary schools and two middle schools and I think one high school in my city/county were transformed. One of the elementary schools got a really good (real educator) principal out of the deal and did get better;parents got more involved and other thing that really matter improved such as students needing to shower could shower at school. The other elementary school goes back and forth as being labeled as failing, the high school became a magnet school within a school which sort of helped but I know the kids not in the magnet program get slighted and the two middle schools have been re-transformed more than once and are always unfairly in the news for something. Transformation is not the answer.