Charging the Gap

By bettering the teaching staffs at its inner-city schools, a Tennessee district is lessening the differences in achievement between such schools and their suburban counterparts.

Chattanooga, Tenn.

A superintendent typically does not ask principals, point-blank, to take on the weakest teachers from elsewhere in the district. And if a superintendent were to make the request, the principals likely would protest. But Superintendent Jesse B. Register did make it when the Hamilton County district and its community partners undertook to pull nine inner-city Chattanooga schools off a list of Tennessee’s 20 worst-performing.

“We’re only as strong as our weakest links,” Mr. Register told administrators, reminding them that progress at their schools might have been stymied, too, with a bunch of flagging teachers.

In his appeal, he didn’t need to point out one reality: No jobs could be a potential deal-breaker with the local teachers’ union. Would each of the principals take one or two of the leftover teachers, he asked, and help them...