Attitude Adjustment

The Stockton, Calif., district gets serious about lowering—and verifying—its dropout rate.

Stockton, Calif.

When church bells rang out before dawn on a Saturday morning last winter, it was a sign that change was afoot in this hard-luck city. An even clearer sign was what the bells helped deliver: hundreds of sleepy teenagers tumbling from their warm beds to take the SAT.

Fewer than 300 students typically turned out for the college-admission test here. But on that December day, the number topped 1,300. Something was definitely up in a city that even its biggest boosters say tends to expect too little of itself.

“In many respects, Stockton has been a no-can-do town when it comes to education and the quality of life,” says Clem Lee, a former teacher who served on the school board and City Council before becoming an assistant to Superintendent Anthony Amato. “So those church bells were something new for us. It was like the community was telling the kids,...