Successful Schools Avoid False Choices

By Karin Chenoweth

I know I am not the first to notice that education as a field tends to get whipsawed between what seem like incompatible alternatives: We can teach phonics or surround children with literature; we can teach skills or content; we can prepare students for the workforce or for college; we can provide schools that are equitable or schools that are excellent. The examples are endless.

For the past five years, I have been examining schools that have, for the most part, sidestepped these battles. They are schools I have visited as part of my work for the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. The job involves identifying and writing about schools with significant populations of low-income children and children of color that are also high-achieving or rapidly improving. In many of these, just about all of the students meet or exceed state standards, and achievement gaps are narrow, or sometimes nonexistent.

Ultimately, there’s no magic to how these schools achieve success. As one teacher told me, “It’s not rocket science. You figure out what you need to teach, and then you teach it.” She makes teaching sound easy, the way Tiger Woods...