Context for turnaround costs
Sam Dillon of the New York Times wrote an article on June 24th examining the "high" costs of the turnaround at Locke High School. The reason I mention this piece now is because it still needs to be placed into its proper context. The article shows much concern for the fact that Green Dot Public School's total expenditures to successfully turnaround Locke have surpassed $15 million—a sum which, as Dillon accurately notes, "is more than twice the $6 million in federal turnaround money that the Department of Education has set as a cap for any single school."
However, the article fails to offer readers a nuanced discussion about these high costs and incorrectly infers that Locke’s turnaround may "give pause" to future school turnarounds (as per the article’s title). By including some vital omissions, the article begins to construct an insufficient discourse about school turnarounds. First, it is important to understand that Locke is a unique case and not every turnaround—particularly at the elementary and middle school level—will be comparable. In addition, there is no serious acknowledgement in the piece of California’s more-than-dismal budget for K-12 education. California has dropped to 44th in how much it spends on students—and the evidence suggests that this will only get worse in the near future.
By not giving all of the relevant facts, the Times article potentially misleads its wide readership into believing that turnarounds are—more generally speaking—infeasible. It does, however, document some of the wonderful changes that have taken place at Locke. This aspect of the article offers us a sobering reminder of the wonderful benefits that do, in fact, come with school turnarounds--despite their individual costs!
