How the good schools do it

The recipe for successful schools is: Mix one strong leader with parent and community support, a strong teaching staff, a school climate that supports learning and high-quality instruction.

These are the “five essential supports” for learning, noted in decades of research on effective urban schools and outlined once again in a September 2006 report from the Consortium on Chicago School Research. Schools with strong supports were 10 times more likely to make significant math and reading test score gains, the Consortium found...