"Miracle" is a word you would expect to hear from people familiar with the Assumption Catholic School story--but don?t wait for it. More likely you will hear a name: Mary Anne Stanton. In just more than five years, Stanton has led Assumption and 12 other Catholic schools from high-poverty Washington, D.C. neighborhoods into a consortium--the Center City Consortium--that has not only strengthened each school?s financial health, but has also greatly improved the academic performance of the children the schools are charged with educating. The 13 consortium schools have achieved remarkable growth in grades 2 through 8 proficiency rates on the standardized Terra Nova test from 2000 to 2005: reading growth of 60.6 percent, 78.1 percent growth in math, and 34.1 percent growth in language arts over those five years. More remarkable, those growth rates include test scores from 2004-05, when 300 high-poverty children from failing District of Columbia public schools entered consortium schools through the new D.C. voucher program. Despite the problems, Stanton and the diocese have reason to be confident. And this, perhaps, explains why the word "miracle" isn?t used to describe what is happening at Assumption. This miracle did not drop from the sky, nor did it come about through some supernatural display of power. Rather, the miracle came in the form of a 5?4 sandyheaded dynamo with a plan, and the will to make change happen.