The schools that serve Ohio's poor, urban youngsters overwhelmingly fall short when it comes to academic performance. But there are a small handful of schools that buck these bleak trends and show serious achievement for disadvantaged youngsters from depressed inner-city communities.
Needles in a Haystack: Lessons from Ohio's high-performing, high-need urban schools profiles eight of these high-performing outlier schools and distills their successes, in hopes that state policymakers and educators can learn from them and create the conditions necessary for more schools like them.
To study the schools, Fordham commissioned two researchers, Theodore J. Wallace and Quentin Suffren, who spent 16 days and hundreds of hours in eight schools in five cities to observe what makes them successful. Check out our video here that introduces the report and highlights what staff at each school believe are the keys to their success.
Needles in a Haystack: Lessons from Ohio's high performing, high-need urban schools will be released May 25, 2010.
?Eric Ulas