Evaluation Fact Sheet

School Turnaround AmeriCorps Grant Program

Office of Research and Evaluation, Corporation for National and Community Service

nationalservice.gov/research

July 2016

1

What is the community challenge?

The Department of Education (ED) provides funding to the country’s lowest performing schools designated as School‐

Improvement Grant (SIG) or Priority schools. The SIG‐ and Priority‐ funded schools are implementing one of four school

intervention models: turnaround, transformation, restart, or school closure. These intervention models are designed to

improve academic outcomes for students.

What is the promising solution?

The School Turnaround AmeriCorps grant program, launched in 2013–14, is

a joint initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service

(CNCS) and ED. The program funds low‐performing schools’ efforts to

achieve their school improvement goals by placing AmeriCorps members in

schools. The AmeriCorps members increase these schools’ capacity by

helping to improve students’ academic performance, academic engagement,

attendance, high school graduation rates, and college readiness. By 2015–16,

its third year, the program was operating in nearly 70 schools.

What did the evaluation find?

Program At-a-Glance

Intervention: School Turnaround AmeriCorps 

Grant Program. 

Grantees: 13 grantee programs. 

Funders: Corporation for National and 

Community Service (CNCS) and the U.S. 

Department of Education (ED). 

Focus Area(s): Education, Capacity Building. 

Focus Population(s): Students at schools 

implementing school turnaround interventions. 

CNCS engaged an independent evaluator to evaluate program implementation effectiveness, program‐school partner

relationships, and stakeholder perceptions of program impacts in improving student outcomes.

School Leader Perceptions of Level of Influence of School

What worked:

• The School Turnaround AmeriCorps

program is perceived as contributing

positively to achieving key outcomes,

including improving students’ academic

achievement and socio‐emotional health.

• Stakeholders in the majority of School

Turnaround AmeriCorps program schools

perceived that AmeriCorps services  

support turnaround efforts by offering

helpful supports, serving as partners in

improving student outcomes, and providing

activities frequently enough to be valuable.

• Case study findings demonstrate how the

program helps to build school capacity,

leverages resources to increase services for

students, uses AmeriCorps members to

review student data, supports classroom

teachers’ efforts, and also contributed

to some schools’ success in exiting

turnaround status.

• All grantee programs and the majority of

Turnaround AmeriCorps on School Turnaround Goals

(Year 1, 2014–15 and Year 2, 2015–16)

schools reported that strong relationships between members and students have a positive impact on students’

academic engagement and behavior and/or are effective at meeting school turnaround goals by helping to bridge a gap

between students and the school and forging relationships that other school staff could not.
Evaluation Fact Sheet

School Turnaround AmeriCorps Grant Program

Office of Research and Evaluation, Corporation for National and Community Service

nationalservice.gov/research

July 2016

2

Promising practices for delivering effective

interventions and serving in schools:

• Programs’ focus on communication and relationship

building with school stakeholders helps build

program buy‐in, increase program understanding, and

ease challenges inherent in serving in low‐performing

schools, such as high turnover of school leaders and

staff.

• Programs ensure member quality and consistency by

improving member recruitment and retention,

providing specialized member training and

preparation, and providing on‐site supervision and

support.

• Members effectively deliver school‐based services by

establishing trusting relationships with students,

maintaining a consistent presence to aid with

classroom management, collaborating with teachers to

review student data and target supports to students’

needs, and being flexible in meeting schools’ needs.

What are the design and goals of the evaluation?

Lessons learned and programs’ strategy adjustments

to tackle challenges:

• Program start‐up and grant administration challenges

typically associated with launching a new program

became less prevalent, while other challenges intrinsic

to the AmeriCorps program model persisted,

including member recruitment, retention, and role

definition.

• Programs made strategy adjustments to tackle these

challenges; these included providing more tailored

and specialized training to members, school

administrators and staff.

To access the full evaluation

report and learn more about

CNCS, please visit

nationalservice.gov/research.*

This comprehensive report summarizes findings from the two‐year School

Turnaround AmeriCorps national evaluation conducted during the 2014–15 and

2015–16 school years. It presents contextual information about the 13 grantee

programs funded by the School

Turnaround AmeriCorps grants, which

recruited about 450 School Turnaround

AmeriCorps members annually to provide school‐based services. The report

describes AmeriCorps members’ contributions to low‐performing schools’ success

in their turnaround efforts, and discusses the mechanisms underlying those

contributions. The report also presents findings on a set of schools studied more

intensively in 29 case studies, including both program schools and similar matched

comparison schools without School Turnaround AmeriCorps services. Stakeholders

in these schools reported how AmeriCorps members helped to build school  

capacity and contributed to achieving turnaround goals, and provided additional

Evaluation At-a-Glance

Evaluation Design(s): Comparative 

Case Study, Implementation Study. 

Study Population: School leaders 

and staff, grantee staff, AmeriCorps 

members, and parents. 

Evaluator: Abt Associates. 

information on members’ added value across School Turnaround AmeriCorps programs.

How are CNCS and ED using the evaluation findings to improve?

In response to the evaluation’s findings, CNCS clarified the expectations for allowable activities, and added the

expectations that programs would update the written program‐school partnership agreement annually and describe how

their activities align with schools’ turnaround plans and how they will collaborate with school partners throughout the

grant period. CNCS also provided targeted training and technical assistance to programs and prospective applicants.

* The content of this brief was drawn from the full evaluation report. All original content from the report is attributable to its authors.