In December, President-elect Barack Obama selected Chicago's Dodge Renaissance Academy, a 400-student pre-K8 school, as the backdrop for choosing Arne Duncan, the Chicago Public Schools' CEO, as the nation's new secretary of education. Touted as a "turnaround school," Dodge represented the idea that if change could come to a high-poverty, failing school with low test scores and most students on free or reduced-price lunches, then there was hope for all schools. A school turnaround is a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in a low-performing school that produces significant gains in student achievement within two academic years. The turnaround model is a careful approach in which either the existing district or an outside partner provides step-by-step strategic oversight and tight operational support. In his speech at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference last June, Duncan suggested four basic turnaround models: (1) Students stay and adults leave; (2) Replace the staff and turn the school over to a charter or management organization; (3) Keep the staff but drastically change the school culture; and (4) Everyone goes. Duncan also noted other accomplishments of Chicago schools that had undergone turnarounds: Dodge and Williams Elementary Schools have more than tripled the percentage of students meeting state standards in science, reading and math in the past five years. This article discusses how the new president and secretary of education bring a new urgency to the task of turning around failing schools nationwide.