Doing What Works: Turning Around Low Performing Schools
New for our ‘Courageous Conversation’ and ‘Discussion’ catagories:

Our friends over at WestEd (thanks Sanjay) shared with us a great multi-media site that is a wonderful clearinghouse for research based education practices online. This site is a joint venture lead by the Department of Education to create an online library of resources that may help teachers, schools, districts, states and technical assistance providers implement research-based instructional practice.
What we at GEAR UP particularly like about this site is the well produced videos, slideshows, and information under each topic. It is hard to think of another website that has as much information and is as user friendly as Doing What Works.
One example that fits nicely into the organizational capacity building efforts of California GEAR UP is the topic of ‘Turning Around Chronically Low Performing Schools”. It has an easy to implement step-by-step process with multimedia presentation that makes it easy to share at Leadership Team meetings.
Check it out:
Signaling the Need for Dramatic Change With Strong Leadership
Here are the recommended best practices with video:
- Improved Leadership
Signal the need for dramatic change with improved leadership. - Focus on Instruction
Maintain a consistent focus on improving instruction. - Quick Wins
Make visible improvements early in the school turnaround process. - Committed Staff
Build a staff committed to the turnaround process.
Here, from the California GEAR UP Community, we present proven practices, thought provokers, walk the talk, and other exemplary stories and articles of information for you to peruse. The idea is to stimulate or reframe the conversation during the next meeting in the teachers lounge, lunch break, supervision duty, staff meeting, conference or professional development or other gathering of your committed colleagues.
Share your thoughts, ideas, comments, or just give us a thumbs ‘up’ or ‘down’.
We want to hear from you.
[...] make sound decisions and take action in their school reform efforts. You may remember our post on Doing What Works, also a WestEd [...]
[...] you may remember from previous posts, Doing What Works from WestEd is a great multi-media site that is a wonderful clearinghouse for [...]