Going Back to School: In the City

By Robert C. Johnston

Washington

Valyncia Lindsey made two moves last year that stunned her family and friends. First, she quit her suburban job as a computer-graphics specialist where she'd worked for eight years to become a teacher. Then Lindsey, fed up with accounts of crime and educational blight in her childhood community, insisted on returning to her old elementary school in the fiscally troubled District of Columbia.

"It may sound corny, but I wanted to do more," Lindsey says. "You need to get people who care back in,...