Risk to Renewal

A board chair and a head of school can review the same results and reach different conclusions about what the school needs.

The board chair may see a difficult year that the school is prepared to recover from. The head of school may be concerned about changes that began earlier: more teachers leaving, fewer families returning, or a budget that depends on funding available for only one year.

Those differences matter because they affect decisions about staffing, spending, and the support the school needs. Before the board can approve a plan, the board and school leader need a shared understanding of the concerns, their causes, and what the school can reasonably address.

Risk to Renewal provides a structured process for reaching that understanding and deciding what to do next.

Risk to Renewal guides a charter school board and head of school through the decisions and implementation work involved in school turnaround. It begins with an assessment of the school’s current condition and continues through the work needed to improve results and document progress for renewal.

Within this framework, turnaround describes a school whose academic results or organizational health put its charter at risk and whose current approach is unlikely to reverse the decline within the time available. Both conditions matter. A difficult year alone does not establish that a school needs turnaround support.

The framework uses three questions to distinguish an isolated setback from a pattern that requires a different approach.

School leaders may already understand which practices need to improve. The challenge is organizing that work alongside the daily responsibilities of running a school.

Risk to Renewal establishes who is responsible for each priority, when the work will happen, and what must be in place before a phase is complete.

The framework includes six phases, numbered 0 through 5: Diagnose, Organize, Stabilize, Build, Strengthen, and Sustain.

Each phase prepares the school for the next, although some work can happen at the same time. Completion depends on meeting the written expectations for the phase.

The core systems are drafted in the spring and summer, before staff return. Schools that turned around successfully had their leader in place early, hired staff in the spring, and finished core documents over the summer. A school that waits to build its systems during the school year finds that the schedule has no time for them.

The sequence accounts for the conditions that support improvement. Teachers need predictable routines and consistent support to strengthen their practice. Students need to attend regularly to benefit from that instruction. The school also needs dependable staffing, financial planning, and leadership processes to continue the work from one year to the next.

Risk to Renewal organizes implementation around eight core systems. For each system, the plan identifies the person responsible, the schedule for completing the work, and how leaders will determine whether it is helping.

For schools serving PreK students, the Instructional Support Accelerator (ISA) can support teaching and learning in PreK classrooms as part of the larger plan.

Every Risk to Renewal engagement begins with the Renewal Readiness Diagnostic, the first step in Phase 0.

Your leadership team and I review two to three years of data across six areas:

• Academic results show how students are performing and whether their learning is improving.
• Student culture and attendance data help us understand students’ experiences and participation in school.
• Adult culture and talent data help us examine staffing, retention, and staff experiences.
• Enrollment and family demand data show whether families are choosing the school and returning.
• Finance and operations data help us assess the school’s ability to support its current commitments.
• Governance and leadership information helps us examine how decisions are made and how the board and school leadership follow through.

We also visit classrooms, review student work, and hold conversations with staff, students, families, and board members.

Each area receives a color rating: green, yellow, orange, or red. The ratings appear together on a one-page dashboard, so the board can see at a glance where the school is strong and where it needs attention. For each area rated orange or red, we identify the root cause, and no more than three root causes become the priorities for Phase 1.

Your board receives a written status report and a presentation explaining the findings and recommended next steps. The diagnostic takes about three weeks. Phase 0 takes six to ten weeks overall, including the board’s review and vote on how to proceed.

The diagnostic uses five status levels: Stable, Early Warning, Decline, Intervention Needed, and Critical.

How this saves you time

The diagnostic brings academic, attendance, staffing, enrollment, financial, and leadership information into one written report. Your board can review how the findings relate to one another and use that analysis to make decisions.

Each of the six areas is rated separately. The ratings are never averaged into one score, because an overall score could obscure a concern that needs attention. For example, strong academic results do not resolve a staffing or enrollment problem that may affect the school’s future performance.

When to begin

January through March, before the school year in which turnaround work will begin, is the recommended planning period. Starting then allows the findings to inform hiring, budgeting, and re-enrollment decisions for the following year.

A school already under review can also begin. The diagnostic helps identify which work needs immediate attention and how to organize the remaining phases around the time available.

The Renewal Readiness Diagnostic is $9,500 for one school. Work involving additional campuses is priced in the written scope.

Risk to Renewal is designed for board chairs and heads of school at single-site charter schools and small charter networks. It fits a school when:

• Your school is preparing for a charter review within the next 12 to 24 months.
• Your charter includes conditions or a required minimum level of performance.
• Your school has a federal improvement designation.
• Your school is under financial monitoring.

A board that has noticed early concerns can also begin with the diagnostic alone. The findings help determine whether the school needs focused improvements or a broader turnaround plan.

The board is responsible for overseeing the turnaround and approving the decisions within its authority. The head of school leads implementation with the school’s staff. Growth MindED supports both in organizing the work, reviewing progress, and addressing concerns as they arise.

From the first month, I plan for your team to manage the work independently. The goal is for your staff to run each system by the end of Year 2 and continue without my ongoing support in Year 3. We review their readiness throughout the engagement so that the transition is planned and supported.

Risk to Renewal is an independent Growth MindED framework. It works alongside your authorizer’s improvement requirements and any improvement plan your school must submit. Those requirements remain in effect throughout the engagement.

I developed Risk to Renewal from 25 years of leading schools, principals, and leadership teams in Washington, DC. That experience includes supporting a school through recovery, preparing campuses for charter review, and leading a school recognized for its academic performance.

As interim head of a PreK to 8 charter school serving about 500 students, I led the first year of recovery after the school reached its lowest recorded performance. Over a two-year period, chronic absence fell by about 13 percentage points, truancy declined, and enrollment increased. The school also transitioned from an outside management organization to independent operation under a permanent leader.

As regional vice president overseeing three elementary charter campuses serving more than 1,000 students, I led work that increased teacher retention by 17.5 percentage points and student re-enrollment by 20 percentage points within one semester, ahead of a charter review.

Earlier, as a principal, I led an elementary charter campus to National Blue Ribbon recognition. I later supervised elementary principals across a network of high-performing campuses.

Risk to Renewal draws on that experience and published research on charter and district school turnaround. The full framework includes the sources that inform its approach.