COMMUNITIES FOR EXCELLENT PUBLIC SCHOOLS (CEPS) s a newly formed coalition supported by 24 local, state and national parent and community organizing groups across the country. CEPS has launched a national campaign calling for dramatic action to improve low performing schools by emphasizing parent, student and community engagement and research-based educational practices.

On July 28, 2010 CEPS issued a report, Our Communities Left Behind: An Analysis of the Administration’s School Turnaround Policies, with the support of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University documenting that students in schools identified under the U.S. Department of Education’s school turnaround program are overwhelmingly poor, African American and Hispanic and that the majority of schools are in our nation’s cities. The report, and our accompanying proposal for Sustainable School Transformation, critique the Administration’s school turnaround policies for focusing too much on who runs and works in schools and not enough on what needs to happen within classrooms and school buildings and for lacking an adequate research-base in formulating policy options. The top-down choices that school districts are given are too restrictive and the timeframe for making decisions—a few months—is far too short for a comprehensive, thoughtful and inclusive process. These policies have their basis in top-down prescriptions sanctioned by No Child Left Behind. Sustainable and successful school reform requires a different approach, which is why CEPS has developed the Sustainable School Transformation proposal. This proposal draws on the best of research and decades of parent and community experiences with education reform across the country.

We applaud Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for focusing the nation’s attention on low performing schools and for providing financial resources to enable reform in these schools. These schools are in our neighborhoods and our communities and we have been out front in demanding action for many, many years. But dramatic action is not enough; we need to get it right. We are asking the Secretary, and members of Congress to reconsider the approach outlined in The Blueprint. Research and experience supports replacing these policies with Sustainable School Transformation.