Dive Brief:

• Education Week takes a deep look at the Evansville Vanderburgh district in southwest Indiana and its success with a five-school “Transformation Zone,” comparing it to a state takeover model that could have been its alternative.
• The Evansville Transformation Zone is made up of the district’s five lowest-performing schools, and three district administrators set up new offices in the schools, helping rewrite curriculum, plan new discipline policies and brainstorm ways to pay for new programs, taking a hands-on approach that has contributed to the schools’ improvement.
• These schools almost went through a state takeover instead, like five other Indiana schools since 2012, but critics of that alternative say administrators and local experts are often left out of improvement plans, even when they know student needs the best and are arguably most passionate about their futures.

Dive Insight:

The concept of systematically identifying failing schools and expecting them to improve is relatively new in the U.S. education system, along with the idea that every student should succeed. States and cities have tried a range of strategies to force rapid, wholesale changes in educational opportunities in failing schools, all to a mix of results. Sometimes charter operators have been able to come in and make a difference. Sometimes replacing most of a school staff has created space for more dedicated teachers. Though these schools also sometimes continue to do poorly, only now under new management.

In Tennessee, the Shelby County Innovation Zone has been successful at improving student outcomes, in contrast to the state’s Achievement School District. But Innovation Zones are not universally successful. A similar initiative in Hamilton County has stalled. And without sustained investment, short-term gains often do not persist.