An ongoing challenge for education leaders – at school, district, and state levels – is discerning how best to transform chronically low-performing schools. Today, a tentative line can be drawn between two competing, though not wholly divergent, approaches.
The first, replacement, includes the creation of charter schools, magnet schools, and new schools to replace existing low-performing schools. The second, conversion , instead targets intensive interventions in existing schools to significantly transform a wide range of practices. “Apples to Apples” sets out to clarify some basic assumptions underlying these two approaches and to introduce a proposed tool for comparing their relative impacts and potentials for turning around chronically low-performing schools.
