Study Shows Uncommon Turnaround Strategy Leads to High Academic Achievement

In 2016, Uncommon Schools was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to support TurnNJ, a project intended to scale the initial implementation work of Uncommon’s whole-school turnaround strategy across Camden and Newark, NJ.

Uncommon typically opens new schools, building up from the earliest grades. However, as a part of broader urban renewal initiatives and school turnaround efforts in New Jersey, Uncommon sought to apply its school model in a turnaround setting. The project hypothesized that the Uncommon School model will lead to success when implemented in a turnaround setting and lead to increased high school graduation, postsecondary attainment, and earnings, as well as reduced criminality.

To assess the effectiveness of the TurnNJ project, Uncommon engaged with independent evaluator, Mathematica. In Mathematica’s evaluation, two key findings emerged:

• Enrollment in a TurnNJ school had positive and statistically significant impacts on student achievement in math that persisted up to four years after enrollment. After one year of enrollment, TurnNJ students had test score gains equal to an additional 1.8 years of learning in math compared to similar students at other schools. TurnNJ’s cumulative impact after four years of enrollment exceeded the size of the poverty test score gap in math. 
• Enrollment in a TurnNJ school had positive and statistically significant impacts on student achievement in English language arts that persisted up to four years after enrollment. After one year of enrollment, TurnNJ students had test score gains equal to an additional 1.9 years of learning in ELA relative to similar students at other schools. TurnNJ’s cumulative impact after four years of enrollment was about 89 percent of the poverty test score gap in ELA. 

Read the full evaluation below.