When School Turnaround Meets Decentralization: State-level Policy Innovation for Low-performing Schools

This paper explores how the state education agency develops policy innovation for lowperforming schools in response to decentralization. Drawing on March’s (1991) organizational learning framework, analysis of the case of Florida’s school turnaround reveals that the federal and state government may find Florida has explored a substantial number of temporally new approaches for the least resourced schools, prompted by the decentralization. However, Florida, viewed from a cognitive aspect, continued to pursue locally developed approaches as well as strategies established under preexisting federal guidelines, making only marginal changes to teaching and learning, but radical changes in personnel management. The implications of the conceptual framework and results are discussed in relation to existing literature, policy, and future research.