Giving Compass' Take:

• Schools in Evansville, Indiana school district were able to improve and move up within the state accountability system thanks to a partnership with nonprofit Mass Insight. 

• A fundamental lesson for the school district was building sustainable practices that the school will maintain after the partnership ends. How can other struggling schools establish that same sustainability? 

• Read about the comeback of Detroit school districts. 

When the federal Every Student Succeeds Act was enacted, greater responsibility was placed on districts to lead the charge in improving our nation’s most troubled schools. As a result, many educators face the challenge of turning their schools around. They have to look hard at their districts’ shortcomings and find ways to bring systemwide change — and often, districts cannot do it alone.

Together, the district and Mass Insight, a nonprofit working with school systems across the country, have developed a partnership that has played an integral role in the district’s improvement. Evansville has climbed up the state accountability system by nearly four letter grades over the past eight years and now ranks among the highest performers in the state among similar districts.

Here are a few key lessons from that engagement, which continues to this day:

Philosophical alignment is essential. Before agreeing to the engagement, each party chose and vetted the other carefully.

Pick a partner, not a contractor. There’s a big difference between buying a service and creating an engagement with ongoing give-and-take.

A good partnership helps school districts build sustainable capacity. Too often, when a vendor leaves, progress stops. The district couldn’t afford to spend money year after year for extra capacity; it needed assistance in building as much meaningful new capacity as possible.

Schools shouldn’t do it alone. Districts need to adapt, too. A good engagement recognizes the value of change, both on the front lines in the classroom and within the broader organization.

A successful partnership improves over time. Continuing the partnership enables the district and the partner to challenge each other’s thinking, to continue to surface and address hard questions, and to co-create and enact the ongoing improvement efforts in a coherent continuum.

Read the full article about troubled schools by David Smith, Susan Lusi, and Rob Jensch at The 74