The Echo

We do a lot of waiting here. 
For snow removal. 
For schools to reopen. 
For the Gov. to forgive snow days. 
For the State Sec. of Education  to announce the schools that will pilot the Mass Insight Turnaround Zone. 

The News Journal initially pegged last week for the big "announcement," but those who've been around a while know that DOE is more strategic than that, or rather their waters are too muddy for the transparency tax payers deserve.  If they had played the transparency card with Race to the Top, chances are some school boards would not have signed on.  And so, I can't help but hypothesize as to why our turnaround schools have yet to be named.  Perhaps, they are busy lining up their lead partners, partners, DOE employee Dan Cruce earlier speculated, that must be local due to Delawareans' deep trust issues.  (Any wonder why we have trust issues?)

Or perhaps, they are busy aligning to Mass Insight's latest Turnaround Strategy -- Internal Lead Partners.

Or waiting for M.I. to release any of the following reports:

Leveraging Title 1 School Improvement Grants (scheduled for release in February 2010)
Provides recommendations to states on the most effective process to allocate the Title 1 School Improvement grants under the new federal guidelines.
Best practice state policy (scheduled for release in March 2010)
Offers advice on how policy can be created to encourage optimal conditions for school turnaround, drawing on promising practices from existing and forthcoming state legislation.
Building a District Turnaround Office (scheduled for release in May 2010)
Provides guidance on creating a District Turnaround Office, an organizational structure designed specifically to manage turnaround efforts within the district.
Building a State Turnaround Office (scheduled for release in April 2010):
Describes the structure and functions of the State Turnaround Office, an office of the State Education Agency responsible for all turnaround efforts within the state.

It's all conjecture, but in lieu of transparency and hard facts, conjecture is all we have.