To convert or to replace struggling high schools?

IRRE’s latest analytic paper is raising eyebrows. Written by IRRE president Jim Connell, Apples to Apples: Ways to Compare Replacement and Conversion Approaches to High School Turnaround suggests we can quantify differences between turnaround approaches that vary along several continua: selectivity of students and staff, rate of implementation, the impact on students system-wide, and rates of student success on common metrics. One education expert hailed the paper as “exactly what we need.” Another expert panned it, saying, “Any effort to quantify these comparisons risks making the situation worse.”

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