How effective is restructuring schools?

There's some question about that.

The Center on Education Policy released a study on Monday that took a look at the restructuring that has been taking place under NCLB. After looking at 23 districts and 48 schools in six states, they found that NCLB did little to help schools that were trying to improve. This led Jack Jennings, the Center's president, to wonder if the restructuring plan under Race to the Top was based "on a hunch rather than evidence" in the four plans for restructuring schools under NCLB.
(take a look at Catherine Gerwertz's very good coverage here and summary here)

As versions of the four models required under Race to the Top have not been proved to work, Jennings (and, I think, many of us) are concerned that we are now requiring an unproven system for our most at-risk students. Much of the argument for RTTT is "you guys blew it; now you have to do it our way" but it isn't clear that "their way" is anything that has worked in the places it's been tried.

This is why we need to have state and local officials having a real conversation about IF this is something for which we want to sign up. The race to Race to the Top is denying a chance to have real conversation about signing away local control, changing working condition, and subjecting our kids to systems that in some places have been shown not to work, and in some places have not given clear results. But the push to have applications for districts in by early January and the state in by mid-January is denying that opportunity. (See the Time principle)

As for Worcester? It's not on this week's School Committee agenda. I've heard the superintendent say in passing that they are putting an application together, but unless it is on the December 17 agenda, the School Committee won't have a chance to fully vet this before approving or not. As this is a budget and a policy issue, that's a problem. This isn't just any grant.