Chicago Turnaround Strategy Comes Up Short

A new study of schools that were zero-base staffed by Chicago's main "turnaround" vendor shows that they were outperformed by 33 neighborhood schools with similar demographics. And the neighborhood schools did better without the significant additional funding given the "turnaround" schools in Chicago. The study comes at a time when the school board is trying to decide whether to continue to commit resources to the turnaround strategy begun by now secretary of education Arne Duncan that has become increasingly controversial.