Take a cursory look around most school districts, schools and classrooms to confirm what the experts tell us: Our student population is becoming more academically diverse with each passing year. There are increased categories of special education identification, a rapidly growing second language population, more students carrying the weight of fragmented home lives, and advanced learners languishing in under-challenging classrooms. Further, the federal policymakers tell us we have a greater need than ever to educate the broadest possible range of learners to work confidently at high levels of sophistication because the world into which these students grow up will require them to be generators of knowledge, not merely consumers of it. In the meantime, teachers feel pressure to raise the standardized test scores of students who clearly are not standardized. More than ever teachers need to know how to teach well in response to diverse learner needs. If that conclusion is evident to many educational leaders, the route to realizing more effectively differentiated or responsive classrooms is less clear. Well-intentioned leaders may feel an impetus to move toward classrooms in which individual variance is acknowledged, valued and taken into account in planning. As in all change efforts, however, the quality of leadership efforts will likely define the quality of outcomes. That is certainly the case with two districts where leaders recently began to advocate an emphasis on classroom instruction that is attentive to the needs of the diverse learners they serve.