Citing a decade-plus of failed reforms at a Los Angeles middle school, a new report by the Education Sector credits President Obama’s effort to turn around the nation’s lowest performing schools, but raises serious questions about the administration’s execution of it.

Deadline pressures and insufficient turnaround dollars could stymie the first round of restructuring troubled schools this year, including 188 in California, concludes “Restructuring ‘Restructuring’: Improving Interventions for Low-Performing Schools and District.” And the least restrictive restructuring option that most school districts will choose – the vague “transformation strategy” – could encounter significant obstacles, says author Rob Manwaring.

Manwaring, is an old hand at California education policy. Before becoming Education Sectors senior policy analyst, he was K–12 education director of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office and the policy chief for the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence.

Manwaring recounts the history of Markham Middle School in the Watts area of Los Angeles both to make the case for strong measures and to foreshadow difficulties.

Markham has been poked and prodded more times than a patient in intensive care. But after 13 years at rock bottom with California’s lowest test scores, the 1,500 student school  still hasn’t been cured.

Starting in 1997, the school was identified by the federal government for help. It’s gone through a series of continuous, often overlapping programs – curriculum and leadership changes and staff training and retraining. Manwaring calls them serial, halfhearted attempts at a school turnaround. Three of the programs – the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration, the state’s Immediate Intervention/Under Performing Schools program and its successor, the High Priority School Program – were discontinued after weak results and funding cutbacks.  Two years ago, Markham became eligible under the state’s Quality Education Investment Act for an extra $900 per student per year, bringing the school more teacher training and smaller classes. Still, no progress.

For the past five years, Markham has been subject to restructuring sanctions under No Child Left Behind. But, contrary to the popular perception, NCLB did not force districts or schools to close, bring in a charter or replace the staff. Three-quarters of districts chose the “other” restructuring option,  which included breaking the school into small learning communities or converting, in the case of a middle school, to a K-8 structure. Some low-performing schools have remained in the “restructuring” phase for nearly a decade.

Turnaround undone by layoffs

Markham actually went through the “turnaround” strategy of hiring a new principal and replacing its staff – one of the four options President Obama will now allow. In May 2008, Markham became one of 11 schools taken over by Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, an organization run by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to improve low-performing Los Angeles Unified schools. But Partnership schools were given only three months to prepare a management plan and were late in recruiting staff. Markham ended up hiring mostly first- and second-year teachers, some without full credentials.

If that weren’t hard enough, these were the first teachers to be given notice, under seniority rules that the Partnership schools still fell under, when the district gave pink slips to 9,000 employees last year. The result, as Manwaring points out, as of last November, “almost three months into the school year, the school still had six teaching positions unfilled. And by March 2010, over halfway through the year, 20 percent of the classes were taught by long-term substitutes.”

Anticipating the same process again this year because of continued budget cuts, the ACLU has sued Los Angeles Unified and the state on behalf of students at Markham and two other schools, saying that state budget cuts, combined with seniority rules, disproportionately harm low-income, minority children.

In their Race to the Top applications, other states have taken stronger approaches. Some have waived seniority rules for “persistently lowest performing schools” and guaranteed that highly qualified teachers would work here. Because California has not, many of its lowest performing schools likely will continue to have unstable, inexperienced teachers.

After more a decade and $3 million in extra money, Manwaring says, Markham remains, “educationally speaking, a wreck.” A sixth of the current teachers have emergency credentials, and nearly a third of teachers in core academic subjects are not “highly qualified” under No Child Left Behind.  In 2008, only 11 percent of seventh graders were proficient in English, only 8 percent proficient in math.

To no surprise, Markham made the just-announced list of the 188 California schools facing restructuring under a $3 billion program that’s part of Obama’s stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. California is entitled to $415 million over three years, starting in September.

Because it’s stimulus money, the government is in a hurry to get it out the door. As Manwaring explains in a blog post, schools will have less than three months to choose a restructuring option, draw up a plan and apply for the money. Schools are entitled to between $50,000 to $2 million per year, but there won’t be enough of the larger grants to go around. Once  notified, schools will have about a month to put it into effect before school starts. That’s a crazy timetable.

Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan want to prove that the worst performing schools can be fixed.  They may be setting up themselves – and the children in many of those schools —  for more failure.