Giving Compass' Take:

• The first study of the federal school turnaround plan under former President Obama found that the program was unsuccessful. However, a new report is challenging those findings.

• Whether the program failed or not, how can education policy leaders move forward and gain knowledge from the grant program? 

• Read about why strategic leadership is essential when improving schools. 

It has become a talking point for Betsy DeVos and a powerful example of the challenges of turning around struggling schools: a national study, released by the federal government, showing that its multibillion-dollar turnaround program failed.

A new report says, not so fast. It points to studies of places like San Francisco, where the approach seemed to help students, and the limitations of the government’s study to conclude that the federal report painted too grim a picture.

“The autopsy on the grant program is flawed and its core conclusion faulty,” says the analysis, released by FutureEd, a Georgetown-based think tank generally supportive of Obama-era education policies. It’s a year-old debate that remains relevant, as the study has become a touchstone for the idea that the federal government is unable to help long-struggling schools improve. And it comes as states, now with more freedom, are grappling with how to intervene in their lowest performing schools.

The federal turnaround program, known as School Improvement Grants or SIG, was a signature initiative of the Obama administration. In exchange for federal money, schools had to make changes, but had to use one of four approaches. About three-quarters chose the least disruptive option: firing the principal and making adjustments like lengthening the school day or toughening their teacher evaluations.

The initiative was evaluated by the external research firm Mathematica and the American Institutes for Research and released by the education department’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. The results, released in January 2017, weren’t pretty.

The FutureEd report, written by two former Department of Education officials, suggests those conclusions are flawed for a few reasons, some of which were noted when the study was first released.

Read the full article about school improvement grants by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat