Abstract
In this chapter, we analyze state approaches to low-performing and turnaround schools in the approved Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 plans. We focus primarily on three categories of school status entrance and exit determinations and intervention approaches evident across the plans: Targeted Supports and Interventions (TSI); Comprehensive Supports and Interventions (CSI); and More Rigorous Interventions (MRI). We found that states’ approaches to TSI, CSI, and MRI entrance and exit determination as well as support and sanction interventions varied considerably. We posit that there are three primary state approaches to turnaround schools, framed by the subsequent categorizations: regulatory, mixed, and local control. These categories reflect various tensions and contradictions in state-level educational governance approaches, tightly to loosely coupled, that have long endured in the United States. We provide a descriptive landscape of state-level approaches to TSI, CSI, and MRI policy, and highlight distinct approaches to intergovernmental relationships between state departments of education and school districts. Given the enormously disproportionate number of low-income students and students of color attending schools in TSI, CSI, and MRI status, it can be argued that the plans for turnaround school intervention represent an important de facto and limited state policy lever for social justice intervention.
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Black, W.R., Rea, A.C., Reck, B.L. (2021). Equity, Effectiveness, and Control. In: Mullen, C.A. (eds) Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29553-0_64-1
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