Networking for the Turnaround of a School District

Abstract

The 20-year partnership between Boston University and the school district of Chelsea, Massachusetts, came to an official end in June 2008. Although the partnership is by many measures successful, the continued success of the district will depend on how well Boston University is able to share with stakeholders management techniques and the intellectual capital that the university helped to accumulate and produce. This article discusses how the partnership provided for Chelsea's future by working with stakeholders to promote student achievement and to capitalize on a network of private and nonprofit institutions to improve the school system.

Making Student Achievement a Priority: The Role of School Counselors in Turnaround Schools

“…Thus, collaboration in the school environment, especially in turnaround schools, is essential to student success. Paletta, Candal, and Vidoni (2009) posited that improving the quality of a failing school system necessitates that all stakeholders join forces to construct the change process rather than leaders continually mandating changes.…”

“…Some approaches in the school turnaround process have more consensus than others, although replication of strategies perhaps should not be performed in a one-size-fits-all manner (Travers & Christiansen, 2010). However, it may be worthwhile to explore the practicality of additional options such as creating partnerships with area colleges and universities to improve the quality of education and assist schools with functioning more autonomously once the partnership has ended (Paletta et al, 2009).…”

Networking for the turnaround of an underperforming school: understanding the role of multiple external providers in China

“…All three external provider types helped the school address policy requirements. Universities aligned the school’s development path with policy (Paletta et al ., 2009), adopting Shanghai’s emphasis on comprehensive quality assessment and its newly-issued career education policy to finalize career adaptability education as the school’s guiding turnaround measure and adjust its memorization-focused assignment design. Unlike universities, which “mediate[d] between policy and institutions … to make policy manageable and sensible to schools” (Ball, 2009, p. 85), public institutions faithfully implemented policy.…”

“…Ishimaru (2018), Peck and Reitzug (2018) and Wright and Kim (2022) examined how districts and schools interacted with minoritized family/community leaders to transform schools. Researchers have also examined universities (Paletta et al ., 2009), teacher unions (Futernick and Urbanski, 2014) and private organizations (Alonso and Andrews, 2021; Corbett, 2014) as important external providers of turnaround solutions. These studies help explain major external providers’ contributions to school turnaround but not their complexity and differing effects (Kowal and Arkin, 2005).…”

Strengthening education through collaborative networks: leading the cultural change

“…However, to develop a networked and comprehensive approach, the establishment of interdisciplinary collaborative teams is needed (Miller et al 2012;Mediratta, Shah, and McAlister 2009). Thereby, other efforts are focused on environmental or political management (Moore 1995;Milward and Provan 2006;Paletta, Candal, and Vidoni 2009) by integrating parallel projects within a territory, searching for community alliances and linking with new partners (Carpenter et al 2010;Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002), such as working highly interdependently with local policies (Agranoff and McGuire 1999). Consequently, transversality is directly related to the social capital variable of participation and diversity, based on the idea that associations with more heterogeneous memberships constitute platforms for forming ties between socio-economic cleavage lines (Marshall and Stolle 2004;Putnam 2000).…”