Urban Districts Create ‘Subsets’ of Schools

In Effort to Raise Scores, Select Groups Receive Attention, Resources

Under pressure to improve their lowest-performing schools, urban districts are increasingly forming subsets of those schools and remaking them in significant ways, ranging from highly focused instructional changes to total restructuring.

Big-city districts have been targeting groups of struggling schools for special rescue techniques for nearly a decade. After New York City pioneered the strategy in 1996, some other districts saw the potential and tried variations.

But more and more districts are picking the idea up now, as their states’ accountability systems and the federal No Child Left Behind Act increasingly turn the spotlight on...