The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute a grant late in 2005 to produce a framework for states and districts seeking a flexible, systemic approach for swift, significant improvement in schools (particularly high schools) that have clearly failed their mission, producing track records of under-achievement that are indefensibly poor. The Turnaround Challenge and corollary resources are the result of that grant.

A follow-up grant from the Gates Foundation is supporting a Mass Insight-led effort to inform national and state leader discussions and actions around the issue of school turnaround, and to carry out a research and development process, in conjunction with national collaborators, that will help states, districts, and others implement the report’s turnaround framework at three levels:

• State and District Strategies for Turnaround at Scale: Developing work-plans and templates for the strategic approaches, organizational structures, and policy language states and districts need to undertake effective turnaround in the bottom five percent of under-performing schools – and to invite schools not yet in NCLB’s Restructuring category to perform “preemptive turnaround,” using similar strategies.
•  School Cluster/Partner Network: Defining a new model for integrated school network partnerships – school clusters that amount to “mini-districts” supported by lead external partners and special district turnaround offices – and building a new generation of lead turnaround partners as key implementers.
• School: Producing detailed strategy choices, work-plans, and practical tools for school leaders and their partners in implementing turnaround.

This research-and-development effort will also lay initial groundwork for three potential national initiatives to build out these strategies:

• Pilot Cohort of Tur