Turnaround school leadership: from paradigms to promises

Abstract

Turnaround School Leadership is a contemporary term for a method of school reform and school improvement. It emerged in the US, circa 2004, as a new category of school leaders: individuals with the skills to turn around struggling or “low-performing” schools into “successful” schools. It is typically an attempt to blend both transformational and heroic leadership theories with business models of accountability. As a result, individual school leaders are held accountable for turning around schools by raising test scores. This definition is rooted in U.S. law (No Child Left Behind), U.S. policy (Race to the Top) and state and local governments’ political cultures. The authors of this chapter deconstruct the U.S. government’s definition as well as research-based definitions grounded in school improvement studies (e.g., Fullan, Murphy, Leithwood, and Duke). The authors argue that turning around schools should be a systemic educational idea grounded in social constructions of meaning based on curriculum inquiry (Reyes-Guerra and Bogotch 2011). The chapter describes the collaborative professional development model (PROPEL) of a university-school district partnership for developing turnaround school leaders. Central to the model is the use of program and course metaphors to help participants articulate effective answers regarding the purpose of U.S. public education in the twenty-first century.