Feel that stretch? You might not be able to touch your nose to your knee, but your district will be feeling more flexible. Education Week (requires subscription) reported "final rules for the $4 billion Race to the Top competition give states and districts" more flexibility "in how they intervene in chronically underperforming schools."
The change, however, "raises new questions about whether the push to turn around struggling campuses will succeed in rehabilitating large numbers of schools." According to Education Week, the US Department of Education guidelines released this month permitted "states and districts using the federal grant money" to "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, 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."
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