THE ANNOUNCEMENT last week that the state will begin to unwind its nine-year control of the Holyoke Public Schools put a renewed spotlight on the state’s use of its power to take over troubled schools and districts.
The controversial move to put local districts into state receivership has been defended here and in other states as a necessary step in extreme cases when schools have struggled with chronically low achievement or poor local oversight. The overall record of such takeovers, however, has not been particularly positive. In Holyoke, a district of 5,000 students, achievement levels remain among the lowest in the state, and students there have yet to show progress in recovering from a sharp decrease in scores following the pandemic.
In a paper released three years ago, Beth Schueler, an education professor at the University of Virginia, and Joshua Bleiberg, of the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform at Brown University, examined outcomes in 35 school districts, spanning 14 states, that were taken over by state authorities between 2011 and 2016. Their verdict: “Overall, we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement.”
Massachusetts has used a 2010 reform law to take control of three low-performing, low-income districts – Lawrence, Holyoke, and Southbridge. In a new paper, Schueler and two colleagues at the University of Virginia focus on results in the three Massachusetts takeover districts as well as a cohort of 16 middle and high schools in Springfield, which are overseen by an independent board and fall somewhere between state takeover and full local control.
While some had theorized that a finding of no overall impact of state takeovers could be the net result of positive outcomes in some states and poor results in others, the earlier research showed that takeover results are not consistent within states, a finding that the new paper on Massachusetts supports. “In other words, it does not seem to simply be the case that some states are better at implementing takeover than others,” Schueler and her co-authors write.
In the new paper, they found generally positive results in Lawrence and the Springfield Empowerment Zone on math, English, and science scores, but negative results in Holyoke and Southbridge.
Schueler said it’s hard to conclude with any certainty what has led to better results in Lawrence and Springfield, but the research pointed to the focus in both cases on giving educators more “school-level autonomy” to pursue improvements, backed by support from the district’s central office, an approach they said has “appeared to be a potent combination in other contexts.”
“It is striking that leaders in the two districts with the more positive outcomes – Lawrence and [Springfield] – took a more similar policy approach than the other two districts,” they wrote.
Differences in the teacher staffing patterns, say the researchers, also might “hint” at explanations for the disparate outcomes. “The two districts with less positive turnaround effects – Holyoke and Southbridge – experienced the greatest post turnaround increases in teacher turnover, resulting in a less experienced workforce,” they wrote.
Other, more nuanced differences in teacher staffing could also be at a play. While not as extreme as the record in Holyoke or Southbridge, Lawrence has nonetheless experienced considerable teacher turnover. But the researchers said state and local leaders they interviewed consistently pointed to the greater challenge of teacher recruitment in Holyoke and Southbridge than in Lawrence, which is able to draw from the deeper Greater Boston talent pool. Lawrence, they say, may have been able to replace less effective teachers with more effective ones.
It’s been eight years since the state last exercised its receivership powers, with the 2016 takeover of Southbridge, and it’s not clear that it’s a tool officials are eager to deploy again soon.
Strong gains in the early years of the Lawrence takeover, the first one executed by the state, in 2012, prompted hopeful talk of an exciting new model to drive improvement in districts that had been unable to move the needle for low-income students. Lawrence received national attention as “a rare positive proof point for the improvement of a persistently low-achieving district serving a large concentration of low-income students of color,” Schueler and colleagues write in their new paper. But it’s been hard to replicate those results.
“Overall, the evidence makes me feel less optimistic about takeover as an intervention that can guarantee improvements in academic outcomes,” Schueler said in an interview. “That said, we do have some cases where it really has generated positive outcomes for students and for communities.” The upshot, in her view, is that states should “be judicious” in looking to takeovers as the answer to local district woes.
