SCHOOL TURNAROUND AMERICORPS 

NATIONAL EVALUATION

Study Brief | July 22, 2016

PREPARED FOR

Corporation for National 

and Community Service

250 E St. SW

Washington, DC 20525

SUBMITTED BY

Abt Associates

55 Wheeler Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

To access the full evaluation report and learn more about CNCS, please visit nationalservice.gov/research.
July 14, 2016 |1

The School Turnaround AmeriCorps Grant Program 

The School Turnaround AmeriCorps grant program, launched in school year 2013–14, is a joint initiative of 

the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the U.S. Department of Education. It 

places AmeriCorps members in specific types of low-performing K-12 schools—those designated as School 

Turnaround or Priority campuses, or those among the lowest five percent of a state’s persistently lowestachieving schools. The School Turnaround AmeriCorps program is intended to increase such schools’ 

capacity to meet ambitious school improvement goals, primarily through members’ efforts to improve 

students’ academic performance, academic engagement, attendance, high school graduation rates, and 

college readiness. 

The first cohort of 13 School Turnaround AmeriCorps grantee programs received funding for three years. By

the third year, 2015–16, these programs had partnered with approximately 70 SIG/Priority schools, and 

recruited about 450 School Turnaround AmeriCorps members annually to provide services in those schools.

In the over 50 schools that participated in the evaluation, School Turnaround AmeriCorps members served 

from 11,000 to 13,000 students in 14 states each year. Most of the grantee programs served multiple 

schools (ranging from 1 to 11 schools) and, on average, programs reported 25 to 28 students received 

services for every AmeriCorps member serving in host schools. About half of School Turnaround 

AmeriCorps grantee programs were new to the AmeriCorps program, and the other half were experienced 

AmeriCorps grantee programs when the program began in 2013.

For more information on school eligibility, please see Guidance on Fiscal Year 2010 School Improvement Grants under 

Section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, available at 

https://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/sigguidance02232011.pdf; for more information on current grantee programs and 

participating schools, please see Corporation for National and Community Service. e-Grants service location and member 

data for the 2014–15 and 2015-16 school years.

This brief summarizes highlights from a recently completed national evaluation of the School Turnaround 

AmeriCorps Program. Overall, the study was designed to address the following broad objectives:

• Describe School Turnaround AmeriCorps program implementation in schools, including how 

stakeholders perceive the program, and the contexts within which the program operates 

• Identify promising practices for the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program in supporting schools’ 

ability to implement their turnaround plans

• Describe how program-school partnerships affect program implementation

• Compare turnaround efforts in School Turnaround AmeriCorps schools to matched comparison 

schools‘ efforts on such dimensions as: 

o Overall success in school turnaround 

o Academic achievement

o Students’ socio-emotional health

o School climate

o School capacity to implement its turnaround effort

• Identify the strategies used by School Turnaround AmeriCorps programs in schools that have 

successfully exited SIG/Priority status that helped them engage students and school stakeholders to 

reach their turnaround goals, in order to inform other education-focused programs at CNCS. 

The two-year national study collected information about the School Turnaround Program from grantee

programs, school administrators and staff, parents, and from the AmeriCorps members to address the 

objectives summarized above. The study is designed to describe how AmeriCorps members contribute to 

grantee schools’ capacity to implement turnaround models successfully and improve key turnaround 

outcomes. 
July 14, 2016 |2

Evaluation Overview

CNCS contracted with Abt Associates to conduct an implementation-focused national 

evaluation of the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program that began in 2014–15 and 

continued into 2015–16. Year 1 represents the first year of the evaluation, which corresponds 

to the second year of program operation (2014–15 school year), and Year 2 references the 

evaluation’s second and the program’s third year (2015–16).

The goal of the evaluation was to deepen current understanding of the perceived effect of 

AmeriCorps members on the capacity of host schools to implement their respective turnaround 

model successfully and to improve key turnaround outcomes. The evaluation describes School 

Turnaround AmeriCorps members’ contributions to low-performing schools’ success in their

turnaround efforts, and discusses the mechanisms underlying those contributions. The study 

focused on those School Turnaround AmeriCorps schools that met specific study 

requirements, or about three-quarters of the nearly 70 schools in the program. The study also 

collected some limited information on similar schools in SIG/Priority status that do not have 

School Turnaround AmeriCorps members to provide context on program features. 

Data Collection and Analysis 

The study used a combination of surveys (of grantee staff, school leaders, and school staff), 

individual and/or focus group interviews (of grantee staff, principals, teachers, parents, and 

AmeriCorps members), case studies of selected program and comparison schools, and 

administrative data (grantees’ annual progress reports, grantee programs’ member activity 

data, partnership agreements, and student level data collected by grantee programs). Data 

were collected in Spring 2015, Fall 2015, and Spring 2016, to allow the study to describe 

implementation as the program matured into its third year. 

Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to summarize patterns in responses 

across different respondent groups (e.g., school leaders and school staff), and interview and 

case study data were analyzed using qualitative data analytic methods to identify recurring 

themes and patterns. Administrative data were analyzed using a combination of quantitative 

and qualitative methods, as appropriate. For more information on the data collection and 

approach to analysis see the comprehensive final report and technical appendixes on CNCS’s 

Evidence Exchange, http://www.nationalservice.gov/impact-our-nation/evidence-exchange. 

How Stakeholders Perceived the Impact of AmeriCorps Services 

Stakeholders in the majority of School Turnaround AmeriCorps program schools perceived that 

AmeriCorps services support turnaround efforts in multiple ways: 

• By helping to achieve key outcomes, including improving students’ academic achievement and 

socio-emotional health.

• Through developing positive relationships between members and students, which in turn have a 

positive impact on students’ academic engagement and behavior and/or are effective at meeting 

school turnaround goals. 

• By helping schools improve student achievement, consistently described as the most important 

student outcome for school turnaround efforts, as well as increased motivation and attendance. 

• By helping schools address turnaround goals more broadly, whether one or as many as 22 

members worked in a school, and by exerting positive influences on students’ socio-emotional 

well-being and academic engagement.

• Through offering helpful supports, serving as partners in improving student outcomes, and 

providing activities frequently enough to be valuable (see Exhibit 1 on the next page).

• By contributing to improvement in the outcomes stakeholders deemed most important. 
July 14, 2016 |3

Exhibit 1: Perceived Value of School Turnaround AmeriCorps, by Stakeholder and Year 

Percent of School Leaders/School Staff/Parents
July 22, 2016 |4

The study used a comparative case study design of matched pairs of SIG- and Priority- funded schools 

with and without School Turnaround AmeriCorps members to examine both program implementation and 

the perceived impacts of AmeriCorps services in supporting school turnaround efforts. The program was 

perceived as providing valuable support in this set of case study schools studied more intensively. 

Stakeholders in these schools reported how AmeriCorps members contributed to achieving turnaround 

goals: 

• By helping to build school capacity to implement turnaround efforts, leveraging resources to 

increase services for students, using AmeriCorps members to manage/analyze student data; and 

supporting classroom teachers’ efforts. 

• By helping schools achieve turnaround goals, improving students’ socio-emotional well-being and 

academic engagement—enough for some schools to exit Turnaround status. 

The study team also conducted four “SIG Exiter” case studies of schools that exited SIG status with the 

help of School Turnaround AmeriCorps programs. The purpose of these case studies was to identify the 

major strategies school leaders and teachers perceived as supporting their school’s success in exiting 

SIG status, including the role of AmeriCorps members in implementing each strategy. Findings suggest 

that Exiters perceived their partnership with School Turnaround AmeriCorps as one of multiple important 

factors that helped them to successfully exit SIG status, although once schools exited, they lost some of 

the same resources that had helped them exit SIG status, including School Turnaround AmeriCorps 

services. Notably, in all four SIG Exiter schools: 

• Principals were open to robust partnership engagement, including fully integrating members into 

school operations, which they viewed as important in successfully achieving student- and schoollevel outcomes, and

• Stakeholders described how attending to students’ socio-emotional needs enabled them to learn 

and was a crucial precipitating factor to increase their academic performance, combined with 

other interventions. 

Improved Academic 

Achievement

“In English, we saw our [endof-course] scores rise 

significantly; a large part is 

because there is another 

dedicated person that is 

constantly reinforcing what 

we’re teaching. The data is 

there, we’re seeing 

increas[es] in the number of 

kids who are passing. It only 

happens because all oars are 

rowing in the same direction.”

—Teacher Interview (2016)

Improved Academic 

Engagement

“I've had a student come up to 

me and he assists me in some 

of my duties here at the 

school. And he told me once 

... ‘If I wasn't helping you, like 

helping me, I'd probably be in 

detention right now.’ So 

basically he's saying, ‘You 

keep me on track.’” 

—Member Interview (2016)

Members’ Positive 

Effects on Students

“Even when she feels bad 

she wants to go to school, 

so that lets me know that 

they are doing something 

to make her want to come 

back.”

–Parent Interview (2015)

Interestingly, administrative data suggest a different, and somewhat less optimistic, picture than the 

stakeholders’ perceptions of implementation summarized from the case study research. Grantee progress 

reports and student data suggest more limited success. The full evaluation report also describes the 

potential uses and challenges of administrative data for measuring grantee performance. 
July 22, 2016 |5

The Contexts within which School Turnaround AmeriCorps Operates

The School Turnaround AmeriCorps program is designed to serve some of our nation’s most 

disadvantaged schools, schools that can and do face daunting challenges. Even after nearly three years 

of working with largely the same schools, grantee programs continued to experience unpredictable 

changes; the participating schools experienced dynamic conditions beyond the control of grantee 

programs and members. This includes students whose families suffer substantial economic disadvantage 

and the multiple challenges associated with poverty and being able to meet basic needs, high turnover of 

school leaders and staff, insufficient resources, and other factors that contributed to pervasive instability.

1

Whether changes in school leadership and teaching staff were part of the turnaround plan or a 

consequence of morale and retention issues, schools that experienced such turnover had to re-introduce 

their AmeriCorps programs to the new school leadership, start building crucial relationships and earning 

buy-in anew, and train new faculty in the curriculum and in school-specific AmeriCorps interventions. 

Among the pervasive challenges schools faced were student academic performance, disruptive student 

behavior and discipline, poor student attendance, low student engagement, and student depression. 

School Turnaround AmeriCorps members supported school staff efforts to meet the needs of English 

learners, students with disabilities, and students with low levels of math and reading proficiency (as 

measured by state standardized assessments), many of whom required additional instructional support.

The School Turnaround AmeriCorps program was often one of multiple external partners and programs 

working in turnaround schools. 

How is the Program Implemented? 

School Turnaround AmeriCorps programs varied across multiple dimensions: the number of schools, 

number of members serving in partner schools, number of service hours provided by members, and the 

number of students served, as well as the amount of time to reach the minimum dosages of AmeriCorps 

services for students to be counted as having completed the program. Other features of program 

implementation include the following:

• Generally, schools relied on teacher 

referrals as the most common mechanism 

for identifying students for services. 

However, more schools in Year 2 

compared to Year 1 increased their 

reliance on using standardized test data 

over counselor recommendations to target 

students who needed additional academic 

or behavioral support. 

• Members generally provided similar 

services and supports to schools from 

Year 1 to Year 2, focusing their efforts on 

the specific strategies that schools had 

identified. 

• Many programs used on-site coordinators 

to support members in their roles and help 

programs run more smoothly in host 

schools.

 

School Turnaround AmeriCorps 

members support 6 SIG strategies 

• Engaging families and communities. 

• Addressing non-academic factors that 

affect student achievement (school 

climate and students’ socio-emotional 

and health needs). 

• Supporting skill acquisition in reading 

and math. 

• Increasing graduation rates. 

• Providing college preparation and 

increasing college enrollment. 

• Increasing learning time.

1

 The study schools experienced considerable principal turnover rates; a substantial minority (over a quarter in Year 1 and over 

40 percent in Year 2) had fewer than four years of experience as school leaders at their current school. 
July 22, 2016 |6

• Grantee programs experienced persistent challenges with member recruitment, retention, and 

role definition. Programs responded to such challenges by strengthening the member preparation 

and training offered in Year 2, including more tailored pre-training to members about their 

school’s community and demographics, training on how members should carry out their roles in 

the school, and training for school staff on how to use AmeriCorps members appropriately in their 

school.

• AmeriCorps members also used student progress data to inform interventions, providing socioemotional supports and targeted academic interventions to struggling students. 

• Programs operated more effectively when members immersed themselves in the school culture 

and operations and regularly collaborated with teachers, for example, in discussing their 

interventions or reviewing student data. 

• Administrative challenges typically associated with launching a new program became less 

prevalent, according to grantee progress reports from 2014-15, while other challenges as well as 

strengths inherent in the AmeriCorps program model persisted, as summarized in Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2: Tensions between the School Turnaround AmeriCorps Program Model and Serving in 

Educational Settings

Program Model Feature Strength Shortcoming

Member Demographics Ability to build relationships with 

students as “near peers” and role 

models 

Immaturity; lack of content knowledge 

and experience working in lowperforming schools

Term of Service Dedicated, often full-time, 

AmeriCorps members embedded 

in the school throughout the year 

Relationships with students built over 

the year ended, interrupting student 

progress

Living Stipend Not reported Stipend was too low in areas with high 

cost of living and/or high opportunity 

cost of obtaining other full-time work

Service Dosage 

Requirements

Requires that students receive the 

targeted amount of intervention 

hours per student to improve in 

reading/ or math 

Prohibits flexibility in meeting schools’ 

needs or the needs of high transient 

student populations

Building School Capacity Members augment school 

capacity during their term of 

service

Because school capacity improvement 

reflects member presence, such 

improvement is not sustained when 

members leave the school

Grantee Programs Work with Program Schools as Partners 

CNCS requires School Turnaround AmeriCorps grantees to use written partnership agreements between 

grantees and host schools to describe how grantees and schools will collaboratively manage, share data 

and resources, and define roles and responsibilities. Generally, grantee staff and principals reported that 

partnership agreements are useful tools for defining roles and responsibilities in the partnership planning 

stage, yet are seldom revisited if and when implementation challenges arise later in the partnership. 

Instead, most grantee programs used on-site coordinators to supervise members and manage 

relationships with school stakeholders throughout the year, a practice used somewhat more widely in 

Year 2 than Year 1.

Program-school partnerships appeared to function more effectively when partnership relationships were 

stable over time; such stability improved communication and program implementation. Partnerships

suffered when school leader turnover or other external conditions or implementation factors hindered 

relationship building. Overall, all stakeholders reported high levels of satisfaction with their partnerships, 

in terms of program operations and elements of program implementation; few grantee staff reported 

challenges with partnerships.
July 22, 2016 |7

Key Mechanisms of Program and Member Effectiveness and the Value-Added of 

AmeriCorps

The premise of the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program is that its members can help deliver effective 

turnaround interventions and help schools achieve their desired student outcomes. Three themes 

emerged as necessary (yet each is not sufficient on its own) conditions for member and intervention 

effectiveness: 

• School leader receptivity toward using external resources, openness to robust partnership 

engagement, and buy-in to the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program. 

• Having an on-site coordinator manage members and facilitate communication with the school 

staff. 

• Close collaboration between teachers and members about classroom support and how to review 

student data.

Across applicable school turnaround goals (e.g., improving academic performance and increasing 

graduation rates and college readiness), a majority of school leaders reported that School Turnaround 

AmeriCorps members had either substantial or some influence (see Exhibit 3). Leaders were more likely 

to characterize the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program as exerting some rather than substantial 

influence on all goals.

Exhibit 3: School Leader Perceptions of Level of Influence of School Turnaround AmeriCorps on 

School Turnaround Goals (Year 1 and Year 2)
July 22, 2016 |8

Other mechanisms for integrating members into school operations and culture were established through 

members’ consistent daily presence in schools and through participation in other school functions beyond 

service provision alone—the “AmeriCorps presence.” Multiple school and program stakeholders 

described several other key means by which that presence contributes to perceived effectiveness, 

including: 

• Building trusting relationships with students, an important mechanism for supporting students’ 

socio-emotional learning and improving student academic engagement and behavior. 

• Contributing to creating a positive school climate.

• Boosting classroom and overall school capacity.

AmeriCorps members delivered a wide range of activities to their school turnaround partners. Underlying 

the variation in how these services were structured or delivered is a common thread: All School 

Turnaround AmeriCorps programs provided additional human capital resources to their under-resourced 

and under-staffed school partners. Among the central findings of this two-year evaluation is that the value 

of AmeriCorps is based on the consistent presence of additional helpful, caring adults who support 

students by developing strong relationships with them. This defining feature of the School Turnaround 

AmeriCorps model is a unifying element in what program schools most appreciated about the program. 

Exhibit 4: Conditions that Moderate Program Effectiveness

As the first grant period for School Turnaround AmeriCorps comes to an end, the insights that may guide 

future programming include understanding the key mechanisms of program and member effectiveness, 

understanding how School Turnaround AmeriCorps adds value to school improvement efforts in lowperforming schools, and recognizing that some implementation challenges may reflect tensions between 

school contexts and the program model. Other insights reflect learning from the grantee programs and 

partner schools about practices stakeholders have reported to be particularly useful in their local efforts to 

deliver effective interventions (see textbox below). 
July 22, 2016 |9

Promising Practices for Delivering Effective Interventions and Serving in Schools

• Communication and Relationship Building: Communicate proactively at program level 

(grantee programs to districts, school leaders; members to teachers, students, on-site 

coordinator, and school leaders); build sustained relationships to increase program 

understanding and ease challenges.

• Recruitment and Retention: Recruit early, advertise through multiple channels, communicate 

expectations about the service commitment and school conditions clearly, recruit and match 

members with schools’ needs, place members in full-time positions.

• Preparation and Training: Provide pre-service orientation and training, specialized training in 

behavior management and school-specific strategies; include members in faculty and 

professional learning community meetings, school-level training, and teacher professional 

development during the school year.

• Supervision and Support: Rely on on-site coordinators to manage, organize, and support 

members and facilitate communication with school staff; cultivate school leader buy-in, integrate 

members into school culture and operations.

• Service Delivery: Establish effective and trusting relationships with both teachers and students, 

maintain a consistent presence in schools and classrooms to aid with classroom management, 

collaborate with teachers to review student data and target supports appropriate to students’ 

needs, and be flexible in meeting schools’ needs.

Recommendations for Program Improvement

Based on the study team’s observations over the two-year evaluation period, the report also offers 

recommendations about aspects of program implementation and structure for CNCS to consider:

1. Provide grantee programs technical assistance for communications and more opportunities 

for peer learning. By providing additional technical assistance to improve how grantee programs 

communicate with members and schools, some common and persistent implementation challenges 

may be minimized, tensions in the program model may be mitigated, and program delivery may be 

enhanced. Communications assistance could include messaging and materials development, one-onone support, and disseminating promising practices more broadly, for example, by posting 

communications toolkits on the AmeriCorps program website and facilitating peer group learning on 

common program challenges and the successful strategies for both grantee staff and host school 

staff, a strategy CNCS employed with the first cohort of School Turnaround AmeriCorps grantees.

2. Clarify the expectations and standardize the requirements for how programs collect and 

report administrative data. Despite considerable variability in grantee progress reports, member 

activity data, and student-level data, the study identified potential ways to enhance these data for the 

future, both for the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program and other education-related CNCS 

programming. The Year 1 and Year 2 final evaluation reports offered recommendations for improving 

the collection, reporting, and analysis of administrative data, focused on providing more explicit 

guidance, articulating common reporting procedures, and developing common templates, as well as 

an alternative approach to the collection and analysis of grantee program administrative data to 

improve measurement of program performance. 

3. Consider encouraging greater continuity of members’ service within participating schools to 

alleviate some of the implementation challenges associated with member onboarding and 

relationship building that now occur anew each year. The grant program statute requires terms of 

service to be no longer than one year, yet some grantee programs enroll members into two 

consecutive one-year terms to provide greater stability and continuity. Perhaps CNCS could 

acknowledge explicitly that two consecutive years of service for members might be a viable option for 

programs (assuming continuity of funding and satisfactory member performance). This 

recommendation is based on the finding that starting over each year with a new cohort of members 

requires substantial time and energy from programs and schools.