The recent public school test-cheating scandals in Atlanta and Washington D.C. are insidious not only in their impact on their own communities, but also in feeding a broadly held misperception that urban school districts are beyond salvaging. Reports suggesting progress in any city are now more likely to be dismissed out of hand as the product of selective data collection or outright misconduct. That's what makes the case of Cincinnati, Ohio, so interesting and instructive.
The Cincinnati school district has improved both test scores and graduation rates since 2003 while -- unlike Atlanta and Washington -- transparently pursuing highly collaborative reform strategies that, counter to the current trend, don't rely on rigid hierarchy and punitive accountability. Because Cincinnati has implemented proven instructional approaches while nurturing a culture in which administrators, teachers, parents, and community groups closely communicate and work together as teams, the case serves as an important counterweight to the public school stories that have been dominating the news in the past few years. It also can serve as a roadmap for reversing course from the high-pressure tactics that gave rise to the cheating scandals and led to little progress elsewhere...