School Turnaround Leaders

As 2008 more than 3,500 schools (3.6%) were in restructuring status under No Child Left Behind. Some of these schools narrowly missed but many have failed to provide students with even an adequate education for years, and in some cases decades. Now that we can identify these chronically low-performing schools, the need to address the problem and rapidly improve student outcomes has never been greater, and education leaders need better tools to choose change that works and make chosen changes happen. Public Impact has developed a series of resources to help district officials identify and hire the right leaders for this demanding role. One of these resources is this "leader toolkit" which can be used as a step-by-step guide by districts and other organizations seeking to hire individuals to serve as turnaround principals. It includes detailed levels of increasingly effective competence, selection questions, guidance on how to conduct interviews that reveal information about competencies, and scoring rubrics.