2013 Title I Conference

The ESEA Flexibility Waiver provides states the opportunity to reinvent school accountability while focusing on turning around the nation's lowest performing schools. However, are its requirements sufficient to accomplish large-scale improvement? The waiver emphasizes Turnaround Principles that priority schools must implement. These align to over three decades of school reform literature which confirm that these characteristics exist in effective schools...once they are effective. Yet, more attention needs to be given to how to manage change in under-performing schools as they venture along the road to effectiveness. The waiver is silent on this important topic. Today's leaders need to think differently about how the desired characteristics are influenced by the process of managing change in low performing schools. This session will describe the critical elements that local, state, and national leaders must take into account in order for school reform efforts to be successful.