Inside the ‘Crucible’ of School Reform

Turning Around America’s Worst-Performing Schools

By William Guenther & Andrew Calkins

You’re a new big-city superintendent. Your honeymoon seemed to end before the ink on the marriage certificate was dry. The challenges you face would give pause to even the most intrepid urban school leader.

It’s clear to you that all of those challenges crystallize in the group of schools that are your district’s chronic underperformers—the schools that by anyone’s definition are failing the students they serve. There are a hundred reasons why. High-poverty students who arrive with enormous skill deficits and disengaged parents, schools with multiple languages and cultures, constant upheaval from persistent student migration, disproportionately inexperienced teachers, overextended leaders, a stubbornly entrenched culture of low expectations … the all-too-familiar list goes on.

These schools are your crucible—the place where all the challenges of urban education in 21st-century America have come together. Solve them, turn these schools around, and the rest of your job looks almost, well, easy ...