Tennessee’s costly, disruptive school turnaround work didn’t help students long term, says research

Students gather outside of a campus that's part of Tennessee's Achievement School District during the school turnaround program's early years in Memphis. (Kyle Kurlick for Chalkbeat)

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. .at/newsletters

New research shows middle school students exiting Tennessee's two primary school turnaround models experienced few educational gains in high school, raising new questions about the much-scrutinized strategies.

In fact, there's evidence that assignment to a school operated by the state-run Achievement School District, the more ambitious and aggressive of the two models, generally worsened high school test scores.

And assignment to a middle school campus in the Innovation Zone, a locally run school improvement program in Memphis and other cities, led to worse math scores in high school.

Neither initiative made a significant dent on ACT scores or high school graduation rates. Data related to attendance, chronic absenteeism, and disciplinary actions wasn't encouraging, either.

The research , published by Brown University's Annenberg Institute, offers the biggest indictment so far of the Achievement School District, where most students didn't show short-term gains either.

And it fills a crucial gap in data about the Innovation Zone, where early achievement gains faded as middle school students moved on to non-iZone high schools that offered fewer interventions and support.

"Our findings suggest that reform policies may need to be designed in a way that is connected across school levels to support students throughout their K-12 educational experience," the paper says.

Long-term effects of school turnaround reforms have been understudied

Both of Tennessee's turnaround programs launched in 2012 during the Obama administration's push for systemic reforms to improve teaching and learning in America's public schools.

But so far, most research on their effectiveness has focused on short-term results such as annual standardized test scores.

The latest analysis looked at how students performed in high school after attending a turnaround middle school up through the 2017-18 school year. It's based on data from test scores, attendance, chronic absenteeism, disciplinary actions, dropouts, and graduation.

The research should inform imminent state and local decisions about changes to turnaround work across Tennessee. It also has national implications for reforms aimed at making swift and dramatic improvement to persistently low-performing schools. The models pioneered in Tennessee, with Memphis as their hub, overlap with ongoing turnaround work in states such as Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and North Carolina.

Such reforms have received billions of dollars in federal funding through the Race to the Top competition and school improvement grants, plus from philanthropic groups. Their success is especially important to students of color and from low-income families, who are disproportionately served by those campuses. These students also experienced the largest decreases in student achievement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lam Pham, who led the research team's work in Tennessee, said a major takeaway is that school improvement work needs to broaden its focus beyond raising annual test scores.

"Educators respond to the accountability system that's set for them, which in this case was test scores," said Pham, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.

"If we're thinking about how to model this in the future, yes, we want improved test scores, but we also want a better schooling experience for our students," he continued. "Our accountability systems need other measures so that educators respond more holistically to improving long-term student outcomes."

The paper also suggests a more comprehensive approach that supports students' social-emotional learning, engages surrounding neighborhoods, and includes resources like mentoring, mental health services, out-of-school programming, and family assistance.

Tennessee's school takeover district was controversial from its outset

The Achievement School District, the most controversial of Tennessee's two turnaround programs, introduced dramatic changes to school governance by removing chronically low-performing schools from their local school systems in Memphis and Nashville.

The state placed them in its own district and typically used a charter management organization to relaunch the campuses. The thinking was to remove bureaucratic oversight and give school leaders flexibility to adapt staffing and curriculum to individual school needs.

The ASD is still in operation, though significantly smaller.

As charter operators have cycled out of their 10-year contracts, the initiative has shrunk from a peak of 33 schools serving more than 10,000 students in 2016 to currently three Memphis schools with a total enrollment of 1,300 students.

Many lawmakers, including top Republicans who have stuck by the model, acknowledged earlier this year that the ASD has mostly failed.

"This new research just confirms what we've known for some time — that we need to be doing something different," said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who sponsored legislation to phase out the ASD and shift its schools to state-approved but locally managed intervention models.

The legislation passed in the state Senate this year but not in the House, where Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also a Memphis Democrat, advocated for a different approach that would turn the ASD into a school improvement resource hub for the entire state.

Akbari plans to reintroduce her legislation in January.

"We really need to get on the same page and get this one done," she said, "because ultimately it's the kids who suffer."

Under federal education law, the state can't close the ASD without replacing it with a new rigorous improvement plan for its "priority schools" that are academically in the bottom 5%.

This week, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education said the agency "will continue working with the General Assembly and the governor's office to evaluate the best way to serve students in priority schools as we finalize next year's legislative agenda."

Locally run iZone fared better initially

The Memphis iZone, which remained under the control of the local school district, also gave its principals charter-like autonomy over staffing and curriculum but offered an extra hour of instructional time every school day and additional pay for educators.

The model has operated in the state's four largest cities, with the largest program by far in Memphis. It began there with eight schools under the leadership of turnaround specialist Sharon Griffin and a team of coaches, then peaked in size this year with 36 schools.

The iZone showed early promise in improving student test scores. But its gains began to stall by 2015 as its portfolio of schools grew quickly , partly to stave off ASD takeovers. Funding became more difficult to sustain, and the churn of iZone leadership was another challenge.

As soon as you take your foot off the pedal on school turnaround, the gains go away.

– Lam Pham, assistant professor, North Carolina State University

But perhaps most significant was the limited supply of teachers who are rated as highly effective and willing to transfer to and remain with low-performing schools.

"It's a pitfall we see in many turnaround models in many places," said Pham, the researcher. "There are usually strong plans for improvement, but virtually no plans for sustaining and growing and expanding."

One reason might be that federal school improvement grants that helped launch such programs lasted for only three years.

"When you get one of these grants to start with, you're not thinking about eventual expansion. You're thinking about whether it's going to work in the first place," Pham said.

The iZone is now being phased out of Memphis-Shelby County Schools as part of a district-wide reorganization under its new superintendent, Marie Feagins. She hired Roderick Richmond, an early iZone architect, to work with low-performing schools but offered few details about the kinds of resources they would receive.

"It may be time to reassess the iZone," said Akbari, the state lawmaker, "but I would like to see the model as the foundation for what comes next for school improvement work in Memphis-Shelby County Schools. This model was working. But it matters who's at the wheel and how much support that leader is getting from the district."

Human capital is the most important factor in turning schools around

Low-performing schools that relaunched under both the ASD and iZone replaced their principals and at least half of their teachers as part of coordinated, schoolwide changes aimed at achieving swift and dramatic improvements in student performance.

The changes didn't translate into higher test scores at ASD schools, where researchers surmise that the reforms "likely disrupted the schools' staffing, culture, and daily operations" and created "instabilities in students' instructional experiences" without adding effective interventions and support.

But the changes at iZone schools told a different story in the program's early years.

Its leadership recruited highly effective principals and teachers with a long tenure and a track record of success to staff the turnaround schools. And they rewarded them with sign-on, retention, and performance bonuses, plus compensation for the added hour of instruction.

"Staffing is the most expensive part of schooling, and you get what you pay for," Pham said. "If I were going to invest in one thing to really improve low-performing schools, it would be the teachers and principals — first to get them there, then to support them well and keep them there."

Unfortunately, the Memphis iZone model changed through the years, probably contributing to its students' achievement fade in high school, Pham said.

"It's also possible," he said, "that the improvement that students experienced during middle school just wasn't big enough to last into high school. Or students may just need more time under these interventions. Middle school only lasts three years."

Another factor: the pandemic. The sudden rush of overwhelming needs in lots of schools systemwide diverted attention and resources away from low-performing schools.

"As soon as you take your foot off the pedal on school turnaround, the gains go away," Pham said.

He said the disappointing long-term data shouldn't take away from early successes by both programs, whether boosting test scores or creating a sense of urgency to improve education in a city that also struggles with widespread intergenerational poverty. It's a position echoed by some local education advocates.

"You have to remember that the circumstances were dire in 2012, with so many of our schools in the bottom 5%," said Terence Patterson, CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, which helps coordinate local philanthropic work.

"I would make the case that the ASD wasn't a failure," he continued. "As a whole, the ASD certainly didn't perform as we had hoped, but there were pockets of success, several schools did have gains, and many students benefited."

Patterson has called school turnaround "heavy, hard heart work" that doesn't result in magical outcomes, but offers lessons for the future . Among them: the need for collaboration at all levels and a greater emphasis on interventions and wraparound supports like social-emotional learning across the K-12 continuum.

"We've learned a lot together," he said. "We also know that there are things we can do better."

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. at .

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.