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As executive vice president and superintendent of schools for ACCEL Schools, I’ve had the challenge and opportunity of guiding nine historically underperforming schools -- a portfolio we’ve dubbed our “turnaround schools” -- as they re-envisioned how they serve their students and not only got back on track, but in some cases became top performers in their cities.
The key to our success has been our three pillars to turnaround. The first two pillars are academics and culture. I think any educational organization is going to say those are basic foundations, but our third pillar is coaching, and I don’t think that’s quite as common. We’ve developed an all-encompassing culture of coaching -- beginning with leadership coaching for our principals and flowing down to instructional coaching for our teachers and even coaching for our school office managers.
Unique Challenges Facing Ohio Charter Schools
Charter schools in Ohio can only operate in certain cities, which prevents the creation of charter schools in high-performing suburban districts. As a result, all the charters are local to low-performing districts, with the vast majority concentrated in Northeast Ohio. Our turnaround schools are all urban, and they all serve a largely socioeconomically challenged demographic.
The percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunches at these schools ranges from 97-100%. The racial and ethnic diversity varies more across the schools. In some of our turnaround schools we have no English language learners and in others we have as many as 10 -15%. In terms of students with disabilities, our schools range from 12-24%.
Demographically speaking, then, pervasive poverty is the only near-universal trait of the student bodies across these schools.