Obama to Announce Get-Tough Strategy for Struggling Schools

March 1, 2010

President Obama plans Monday to outline a get-tough str ategy for turning around persistently struggling schools, offering increased federal funding to local school systems that shake up their lowest-achieving campuses.

Obama was expected to promote his initiative in a 10 a.m. appearance Monday before an organization called America’s Promise Alliance, founded by former secretary of state Colin Powell and his wife, Alma. The president and the Powells were to be joined by Education Secretary Arne Duncan to announce a campaign called "Grad Nation." One of the campaign’s goals is for 90 percent of today’s fourth-graders to graduate high school on time.

The president’s budget for the fiscal year that begins in October proposes $900 million for school turnaround grants, up from $546 million in fiscal 2010. The economic stimulus law enacted last year provided an additional $3 billion for the turnaround initiative. The budget, released last month, awaits action in Congress.

Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers have signaled that they may seek to revise Obama’s funding plan, which would provide $50.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Education Department — an increase of more than 9 percent — but would freeze or consolidate some major programs favored by Congress.

 With the proposed $900 million in school turnaround funding, Obama is placing a bet on four strategies to fix thousands of schools in which reform ideas have come and gone without success. Targeted schools include those with low graduation rates and the lowest-achieving schools in impoverished neighborhoods.

Each of the strategies, at minimum, appears to require replacing the school’s principal. The "turnaround" model would also require replacing at least half the school staff. "Restart" schools would be transferred to the c ontrol of independent charter networks or other school management organizations. "Transformation" schools would be required to take steps to raise teacher effectiveness and increase learning time, among other measures. The fourth strategy would be closing a school and dispersing its students.

Obama’s initiative seeks to tighten school accountability policies. Under the No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002 under President George W. Bush, the possible sanctions for low-performing schools range from school closure to a more open-ended requirement for schools to adopt an "alternative" governance strategy to raise performance.

Critics of school accountability programs say that the remedies are unproven and that the circumstances of struggling schools vary significantly. The mass teacher firings last week at a school in Rhode Island showed that drastic interventions can touch off political controversy.