Commitment of Educators Cited in Reforms' Success

By Steven Drummond

New York

Both nationally acclaimed school-reform programs and locally developed projects can boost low-achieving poor students to academic levels that match or exceed national averages, a study of 10 such programs has found.

But improvement is neither easy nor automatic. Success depends heavily on commitment from the educators charged with making a given program work, said Samuel C. Stringfield, an author of the study and a research scientist at Johns...