Restart a Low-Performing School
Getting Back on Track
Restarting
Restarting a school creates a pathway for community and district leaders to provide existing students with new opportunities. Restarting a school means there will be new teachers and a new campus number, providing a blank slate for the school community to improve student outcomes. This option allows districts to leverage existing resources and allow students to remain in the same school building from year to year while improving the quality of their school options. The Center for School Action encourages districts to be responsive to the needs of their communities and do what is best for their students and families, particularly in restart situations.
Restarting with a Texas Partnership
District contracts with a new or existing Texas partner to launch and operate a turnaround school. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum purus odio, eleifend quis erat at, laoreet semper felis. Phasellus et posuere est. Mauris malesuada erat et nunc rhoncus sodales. Proin a tristique felis, at pulvinar arcu. Mauris malesuada erat et nunc rhoncus sodales.
Texas Partnerships
Restarting a low-performing school can occur on its own, or as a Texas Partnership. Find out more about Texas Partnerships.
The Impact
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Restarting a low-performing school, particularly with input from the community, can be a powerful path toward creating new opportunities for students, with highly-qualified teachers getting the campus back on the right track.
Key Elements
To Restart a school, you need the following elements:
- To identify a low-performing campus.
- A community or neighborhood whose students would benefit from a model with new teachers and a reinvigorated mission and vision.
- The drive to replace those staff that are low-performing with highly-qualified teachers.
- Or, the willingness to partner with a high-quality or high-potential operator on a restart.
Spotlight: Restarting a Low-Performing School
In 2015-16, Dallas ISD launched its first seven ACE academies, which invited highly effective teachers and leaders to reconstitute campuses, identified as Improvement Required by TEA, or those with significant achievement gaps by family income/race that needed intensive support to improve student outcomes. These teachers and leaders were incentivized with stipends to join the schools, while the schools received additional supports such as extended learning time, parental and community engagement, afterschool enrichment and social and emotional support. Additionally, the schools received extensive support from the district to ensure they had the teachers they needed, tools to track data on performance, and differentiated professional development in areas that would be relevant to the staff.
In its first year, the program saw strong results. It is important to note that these interventions were sufficient in a single year to get all but one of the ACE campuses to move from Improvement Required to Met Standard according to the TEA and Level I, II, and III disciplinary referrals decreased by 67 percent from the previous year. Dallas ISD has implemented two additional cohorts of ACE campuses since the initial launch.
When asked about why the schools have been so successful, leaders often point to the shared culture of teachers in the building. ACE teachers make a strategic and thoughtful decision to choose to teach in an ACE school and are committed to the success of that school. The culture supports student learning and teacher engagement and therefore supports student outcomes.
What’s Next
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