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Progress Seen at City’s ‘Turnaround’ Schools
Chicago Tribune | 2/9/12

Behind the Headline
The Big U-Turn
Education Next | Winter 2009

In Chicago, an evaluation of the city’s aggressive efforts to turn around failing schools is spurring heated debate over whether the gains seen in turnaround schools are signficiant  and whether the approach should be expanded to more schools. The study, by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, found that elementary and middle schools that were part of the turnaround effort were catching up to district averages, but high schools were not. In the Winter 2009 issue of Ed Next, Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel wrote about the key ingredients for successful school turnarounds in “The Big U-Turn.” In the Winter 2010 issue of Ed Next, Andy Smarick argued against the turnaround approach in “The Turnaround Fallacy.”