The Answer Sheet: turnaround models

It didn’t long for the Education Department to try to link its school turnaround policy to a new report that says that the number of high school “dropout factories” has declined in the last decade. The problem for the department is that there is no link.

The Obama administration’s approach to improving the country's most troubled schools are nothing more than a toughened version of largely unsuccessful strategies concocted under president Bush and should be replaced with a flexible system that involves parents and communities, according to a new report that includes a list of more than 2,000 targeted schools and a demographic analysis.