When Jerry D. Weast became the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools in 1999, he spent the summer poring over student-achievement results and demographic trends. Then he created a map to illustrate what he'd found. The map divided the suburban district, just outside the nation's capital, into two distinct areas, which…

When Erik G. Brown launched his teaching career at the Cesar Chavez Academy in East Palo Alto, California, four years ago, he was not alone. Seventy-five percent of the teachers in the 400-student middle school were new to the district, and two-thirds of those were new to the field. The school had gone through six principals in six years, and its…

Proposals to make high school more rigorous continue to surface in the states. Governors, lawmakers, and blue-ribbon panels are championing the plans, which are fueled by local and national concerns about economic competitiveness and jobs. But the agenda is growing to included calls for better middle school preparation, more flexible options for…

During workshops held in March and April of 2005, Michigan educators got a lesson in how to benchmark their work against promising practices in higher-performing schools with similar socioeconomic profiles. Teams of teachers, educational supervisors, and principals from 13 elementary and middle schools that had been struggling to make adequate…