Although state-run turnaround districts have grown in prominence as a school improvement strategy with significant equity implications for urban education, little is known about the similarities and differences across states. This article provides a comparative analysis of state-run takeover districts in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia. Although…

In this article, the authors utilize core ideas from Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the nature of education reform in two river cities. Similar to other cases of education reform in urban districts, the reforms in the two focal cities reflect at least four characteristics in common: (1) a form of portfolio management; (2) the growth of…

Improving low-achieving schools is a critical challenge facing urban education. Recent national policy shifts have pressed states to take an expanded role in school improvement efforts. In 2009, a federal grant competition called Race to the Top (RttT) compelled states to improve their capacity to implement ambitious education reform agendas.…

New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) commissioned this guide, in collaboration with the Louisiana Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District, to meet the Investing in Innovation (i3) requirement that grantees disseminate the lessons of their work. To create this guide, NSNO worked with Public Impact to build on prior…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…