Turnaround for Children is a New York-based nonprofit that works with schools and districts serving low-income communities. Children growing up in poverty face multiple challenges that affect their health and ability to learn. Turnaround’s operating theory is that schools can develop systems to address these challenges, helping teachers and students overcome multiple barriers to school success and creating, instead, school cultures that promote learning, order and healthy interactions.
The Turnaround model gives educators tools to transform their schools by building systems, creating effective linkages to services, and embedding the knowledge and skills that are essential for school staff to create the conditions for teaching, learning and healthy youth development. Over a three-year period, a team of senior educators and social workers from Turnaround provides extensive training and coaching for school staff and helps them build models for effective problem-solving teams within the school.
The Turnaround intervention reorganizes how schools deliver support to students facing poverty-related barriers to learning. Turnaround helps schools embed the work of three student support teams into the daily life and functioning of the school, such that the “dosage” of help required is matched to the school’s needs, and the teachers and staff have the support, training and infrastructure they need to solve problems quickly and systemically. The three teams, formed from existing staff, use the “whole-school ownership” approach to identify and address barriers to learning in the schools. These teams are:
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The Student Intervention Team;
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The Instructional Support Team; and
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The Core Team.
In December 2009, Turnaround for Children hired three local practitioners and established an office in Washington, DC, with CityBridge Foundation as the lead local funder. Turnaround for Children started work in DC by mapping out the existing mental health services available to support schools’ student intervention work. The first cohort of three schools—all public charter schools (Arts and Technology Academy; Cesar Chavez Parkside Middle School; and Friendship Blow Pierce Junior Academy)—were located in Ward 7, and the partnerships launched in August 2010. In the 2011-2012 school year, Turnaround expanded to serve two DCPS schools—Wheatley Education Campus and Miner Elementary—and continued to work with Cesar Chavez Parkside Middle School. In addition, Turnaround created partnerships with Hillcrest Children and Family Center and CHAMPS (Children and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Unit), which will serve as local service providers for Turnaround’s “Pathways to Care” model.
Turnaround for Children has successfully instituted this model in more than 60 New York City public schools, and—so far—results are encouraging. Compliance rates are high—meaning the model is “sticky” after the consulting period ends; and academic results show significant improvement. School transformation is a very promising strategy to create long-lasting results for students facing multiple barriers to learning in high-poverty environments.