Research has been showing that the most important development in K-12 education over the past decade has been the emergence of a growing number of urban schools that have been convincingly shown to have dramatic positive effects on the achievement of disadvantaged students. Those with the strongest evidence of success are oversubscribed charter…

Schools and districts rarely have a fair distribution of teacher talent. Poor children and black children are less likely to be taught by the strongest teachers and more likely to be taught by the weakest. Several districts have implemented programs to reduce the teacher quality gap. Hamilton County, Tennessee, launched an initiative that included…

In a field of revolving-door leaders, Thomas W. Payzant is the exception to the rule. Amid the rise and fall of superintendents in city after city, he has led the Boston Public Schools for nearly 11 years. Now, as he prepares to retire, the district offers a rare glimpse of what is possible with stable leadership in urban education. It is a story…

Teachers in inner city schools today are usually unprepared for dealing effectively with a mobile, rapidly changing, culturally varied population. A program to provide such training, based upon the concept of staff self help through collegial supervision, was implemented in the Francis M. Leahy Elementary School in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Over a…