“My Progress Comes From the Kids”: Portraits of Four Teachers in an Urban Turnaround School

This article uses elements of narrative and portraiture to acknowledge the voices of four teachers who participated in a 3-year effort to turn around an urban elementary school. Turnaround is a sanctioned reform effort intended to produce rapid, dramatic improvement in student academic achievement in a low-performing school. We present the teacher portraits as descriptive testimony to the individuals’ work under turnaround conditions. We conclude by offering some educational improvement solutions tailored to address specific issues reflected in our participants’ portraits.

[1]  Terrance L. Green.  School as Community, Community as School: Examining Principal Leadership for Urban School Reform and Community Development , 2018 .

[2]  Ezekiel Dixon-Román,et al.  “Urban” Schooling and “Urban” Families , 2017 .

[3]  Richard F. Elmore,et al.  “Getting to scale…” it seemed like a good idea at the time , 2016 .

[4]  Julie A. Marsh,et al.  Metrics Matter , 2016 .

[5]  M. Mwavita,et al.  An Empirical Test of Oklahoma's A-F School Grades. , 2016 .

[6]  Nicole Simon,et al.  Working Paper : Project on the Next Generation of Teachers Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools : What We Know and Can Do , 2014 .

[7]  M. Gooden,et al.  Transforming Out-of-School Challenges Into Opportunities , 2014 .

[8]  Ian M. Mette,et al.  Turnaround, Transformational, or Transactional Leadership , 2014 .

[9]  C. Peck,et al.  School Turnaround Fever , 2014 .

[10]  A. Johnson.  “Turnaround” as Shock Therapy , 2013 .

[11]  Susan Johnson,et al.  How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement , 2012, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[12]  H. Milner,et al.  But What is Urban Education? , 2012 .

[13]  Rae Shevalier,et al.  Culturally Responsive Teaching as an Ethics- and Care-Based Approach to Urban Education , 2012 .

[14]  M. Khalifa.  A Re-New-ed Paradigm in Successful Urban School Leadership , 2012 .

[15]  Sam Stringfield,et al.  Responding to the Chronic Crisis in Education: The Evolution of the School Turnaround Mandate , 2012 .

[16]  C. Craig.  Research in the Midst of Organized School Reform: Versions of Teacher Community in Tension , 2009 .

[17]  L. Tillman.  (Un)Intended Consequences? , 2004 .

[18]  B. Malen,et al.  The Human Costs of Education Reform: The Case of School Reconstitution , 2003 .

[19]  Ulrich Reitzug,et al.  "I'm Not Going to Lose You!" , 1998 .