Dive Brief:

• Eight Michigan districts that are home to 38 schools at risk of being closed because of enduring poor performance may get a reprieve through a partnership model explained in a letter from State Superintendent Brian Whiston last week.
• The Detroit News reports the districts have two months to coordinate assistance from outside partners, including their school boards, a charter authorizer, groups like the Michigan Association of School Administrators, community organizations, business leaders or foundations, and enter into a partnership agreement with the Michigan Department of Education to avoid closure.
• Under the partnerships, schools will have 18 months to show improvement, at which point the state will revisit potential accountability measures, including closure, or — provided the school is making progress — give the partnership model another 18 months.

Dive Insight:

We are in an era of aggressive action; just as charter schools have been targeted for closure for poor performance, district schools have begun to face similar scrutiny. Under No Child Left Behind, nearly every school in the country was eventually considered a failure because 100% of students were supposed to be meeting standards by 2014, and they were not.

Some turnarounds have been successful, as have some charter schools that have opened to give students in poor-performing schools an alternative. Sometimes firing an entire school’s staff and starting fresh has worked. But often it has not. Or it has worked for a few years, while money and attention were plentiful, and then progress reversed. The key for future policy may be focusing outside of schools where poverty has a far greater effect on student outcomes than even the most influential school factors.