"No One Knows If Turnarounds Work"

You hear this all the time from folks inside the reform machine, but rarely ever see it said out loud:

"No one knows if turnarounds work," said Andrew Calkins of the Mass Insight Education and Research Institute [which studied turnarounds with a grant from the Gates Foundation]. "We spent two years looking at turnarounds and could not find a single example of turnaround work that was successful and sustained and done on scale, not just one school."

From the Chicago Tribune:  Brave new world for Chicago schools

Not quite as good as the Garrison Keillor line from yesterday, but it will do.