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Restructuring Schools Under NCLB Found to Lag

Washington

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education’s favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal school restructuring strategies have not been effective.

The questions raised by the new study were on the agenda Monday as the Center on Education Policy , which issued the report, hosted a forum on its findings that included a top Education Department official. The exchange highlighted tensions in the debate over “turning around” low-performing schools as federal officials prepare to hand out billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for that purpose, and as they gear up to advocate school improvement strategies for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The center studied what 23 school districts and 48 schools in six states learned during the past five years about improving struggling schools. It found that the five strategies for restructuring spelled out in the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA, did not offer much help to schools that were trying to improve after five or more years of failing to make adequate yearly...