Explains how one Houston (Texas) educator (Thaddeus Lott) has turned failing schools into laboratories for learning. It describes how Lott used a charter giving him freedom to train staff, develop a curriculum, and make hiring, firing, and promotion decisions at four schools to improve reading and math skills. Concluding comments address the…

The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health created the School of the Future (SoF) project to enable selected Texas schools to coordinate and implement school-based social and health services on their campuses and to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method of service delivery by evaluating the project. SoF operated in four urban sites in Texas,…

Two elementary-grade activities on geography are combined. The first activity employs a group discussion approach to investigate neighborhoods and residences. Given data about a neighborhood area in Houston, students make predictions and express feelings about future developments in the area. The second activity investigates urban planning in…