The Costs of Federal Intervention in Local Education: The Effectiveness of America's Choice in Arkansas

Since passage of the No Child Left Behind act in 2001, all states have been under federal pressure to identify "failing schools." The US Department of Education has strongly encouraged "turnaround" as an option for schools to use in order to improve student achievement. The study reported here reviewed the research literature on school "turnaround," with a particular focus on the results in Arkansas of the use of the same "turnaround" partner (America's Choice) for over five years for many of the state's "failing" elementary, middle, and high schools. There was little evidence to support either this partner or this policy option. The lack of evidence raises a basic question about the usefulness and cost of the federal government's intervention in local education policy. Nor is it clear how a new program titled Excellence for All now offered by the developers of America's Choice will differ. It is described as follows: "Excellence for All provides a clear, practical strategy for every student to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in college or in a program of career and technical education that will lead to a successful career." We are also told: "Excellence for All is aligned with the Common Core State Standards, enabling participating high schools to not just lay the foundation for the Common Core but to get a head start on implementation." According to a draft of a yet-to-be-voted-on re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/NCLB), state departments of education are to submit "college-ready" standards for approval by the USDE if they want Title I funds. However, state legislators, local school board members, parents, and a state's own higher education academic experts are excluded from approving the standards their state department of education submits, perhaps to ensure that only the "right" standards are submitted. If the language in the current re-authorization draft is approved by Congress, Arkansas may find Excellence for All one of the few intervention programs recommended for its low-income, low-achieving schools despite its costs and no evidence that this new program can do better than America's Choice did. At this point, it seems reasonable to suggest that there should be no federal or state requirement for "turnaround" partners or the "turnaround" model, whether or not the programs they promote address Common Core's standards. We clearly do not need the federal government pushing states and local districts to pay for consultants and services to solve the problems in low-achieving schools for which they have had no solutions.