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Stimulus Rules on 'Turnarounds' Shift

Stimulus Guidelines Changed for Turning Around Schools

The final rules for the $4 billion Race to the Top competition give states and districts more leeway in how they intervene in chronically underperforming schools, a subtle but important change that raises new questions about whether the push to turn around struggling campuses will succeed in rehabilitating large numbers of them.

Under the guidelines issued last month by the U.S. Department of Education, states and districts using the federal grant money could opt, as a first resort, to use a turnaround approach that many educators favor: providing professional development and coaching for a school’s current staff members and making changes to curriculum and instruction.

Originally, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had sought to make that “transformation” model a last resort for school turnarounds if three other, more aggressive methods—replacing the principal and at least half its teachers — reopening the school under a charter operator or other outside manager — or shutting the school down—were not feasible. He had also called for charter school operators to take the lead in turnaround work, a role that the...