Restarting
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Restarting a school creates a pathway for community and district leaders to provide existing students with new opportunities. Restarting a school means there will be new teachers and a new campus number, providing a blank slate for the school community to improve student outcomes. This option allows districts to leverage existing resources and allow students to remain in the same school building from year to year while improving the quality of their school options. The Center for School Actions encourages districts to be responsive to the needs of their communities and do what is best for their students and families, particularly in restart situations.
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Key Elements
To restart a school, you need the following elements:
A community or neighborhood whose students would benefit from a model with new teachers and a reinvigorated mission and vision.
Restarts are limited to Turnaround Partnerships or an implementation of the ACE model.
A commitment to identify a new academic model and new leadership and instructional staff.
Or, the willingness to partner with a high-quality or high-potential operator on a restart.
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The Impact
Restarting a struggling school can be a powerful path toward creating new opportunities for students. Highly skilled teachers and community input serve as critical levers in getting the school back on the right track.
While restart can be difficult, it has proven to be one of the most effective pathways to improving student achievement in persistently low-performing schools, making it a worthwhile effort on the part of district and community leaders. |
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Restarting with a Texas Partnership
To restart a school with a Texas Partnership, the district will contract with a new or existing partner to launch and operate the school. Before starting the process of restarting with a Texas Partnership, the district should set a vision for the restarted school in concert with the existing school community, particularly with the existing students and parents. Upon identifying the needs of the school, the district should publish a call for quality schools to invite potential operators to apply. Those operators that apply could be existing operators that work with other districts in the state or new teams that do not yet operate schools. After the call for quality schools has been published, the district should proceed to evaluate the applications through a formal evaluation process.
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Set a vision for the school in concert with the community. 
Publish a call for quality schools to invite potential operators to apply. 
Proceed to evaluate the applications through a formal evaluation process. |
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District Managed ACE Model
In 2015-16, Dallas ISD launched its first seven ACE academies, which invited highly effective teachers and leaders to reconstitute campuses, identified as Improvement Required by TEA, or those with significant achievement gaps by family income/race that needed intensive support to improve student outcomes. These teachers and leaders were incentivized with stipends to join the schools, while the schools received additional supports such as extended learning time, parental and community engagement, afterschool enrichment and social and emotional support. Additionally, the schools received extensive support from the district to ensure they had the teachers they needed, tools to track data on performance, and differentiated professional development in areas that would be relevant to the staff.
In its first year, the program saw strong results. It is important to note that these interventions were sufficient in a single year to get all but one of the ACE campuses to move from Improvement Required to Met Standard according to the TEA and Level I, II, and III disciplinary referrals decreased by 67 percent from the previous year. Dallas ISD has implemented two additional cohorts of ACE campuses since the initial launch. When asked about why the schools have been so successful, leaders often point to the shared culture of teachers in the building. ACE teachers make a strategic and thoughtful decision to choose to teach in an ACE school and are committed to the success of that school. The culture supports student learning and teacher engagement and therefore supports student outcomes. |
Partner-Managed Spotlight
In 2017-18, Fort Worth ISD launched its first five Leadership academies. Building off of Dallas ISD’s successful ACE model, the Leadership Academies invited highly effective teachers and leaders to reconstitute the campuses which had all been previously identified as Improvement Required for consecutive years. These teachers and leaders were incentivized with stipends, while the schools received additional supports such as extended learning time, parent and community engagement, afterschool enrichment and social and emotional support. The Leadership Academies were given informal autonomy to operate differently from the rest of the district campuses; they used a different scope and sequence, had different staffing structures, received professional development from separate expert partners, and adopted their own cultural norms and traditions.
In its first year, the program saw strong results; all five of the Leadership Academy campuses moved from Improvement Required to Met Standard in a single year. In fact, four of the five schools started the 2018-19 school year with overall grades of B on the TEA Accountability System. But the district knew that it wouldn’t be able to sustain the Leadership Academy model indefinitely; both financial and political constraints could erode the success of the program over time. Early the following school year, Fort Worth ISD issued a Call for Great Schools seeking an “internally cultivated partner to assume governance of a network of five existing Leadership Academies.” Through a careful process and months of community engagement and partnership exploration, the district officially selected Texas Wesleyan University to be the nonprofit partner to operate the Leadership Academies. Fort Worth ISD was especially confident about a partnership with Texas Wesleyan University because Texas Wesleyan’s leadership fully understood and supported the philosophy and program design of the Leadership Academies. Texas Wesleyan University will officially begin operating the Leadership Academy Network for the 2019-20 school year. |
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