Today, as part of meeting new Federal requirements the California Department of Education (CDE) published a list of 187 "persistently lowest achieving schools" which will be required to implement one of four school intervention models:

• Turnaround Model: The local educational agency (LEA) undertakes a series of major school improvement actions, including but not limited to, replacing the principal and rehiring no more than 50 percent of the school's staff; adopting a new governance structure; and implementing an instructional program that is research-based and vertically aligned from one grade to the next, as well as aligned with California's adopted content standards.
• Restart Model: The LEA converts a school or closes and reopens a school under a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO), or an education management organization (EMO) that has been selected through a locally determined rigorous review process using state educational agency provided guidance. (A CMO is a non-profit organization that operates or manages charter schools by centralizing or sharing certain functions and resources among schools. An EMO is a for-profit or non-profit organization that provides "whole-school operation" services to a LEA.) A restart model school must enroll, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend the school.
• School Closure Model: The LEA closes a school and enrolls the students who attended that school in other schools in the LEA that are higher achieving. These other schools should be within reasonable proximity to the closed school and may include, but are not limited to, charter schools or new schools for which achievement data are not yet available.
• Transformation Model: The LEA implements a series of required school improvement strategies, including replacing the principal who led the school prior to implementation of the transformation model, and increasing instructional time.

Given that our state's previous efforts at school accountability have been sabotaged by the very leaders and organizations that are supposed to hold schools accountable, I have a certain level of pessimism about whether this new program will have any impact. The good news is that the possible intervention models don't include the usual "some other reform strategy" excuse that has allowed schools to languish in Program Improvement for years with very little real improvement. Hopefully, this new scrutiny on these bottom 5% schools will promote changes that will being to have an impact on improving the education of the students in these schools.