Naming Our Best Schools

· Focus schools -- Chris Buja

· Challenge schools -- Patti Davis

· Holistic schools -- Andrew Flagel

· Promise schools -- Erin Kylene

· Firm-But-Fair or Neo-Nudge Schools -- Jim Hayes

· College Cult schools -- Skolnick

Critics offered names emphasizing what they considered the schools' drawbacks. "How about calling them selective enrollment schools?" trunuff said on the washingtonpost.com comments page attached to my column. "That's the label applied to other schools that use the same procedures to control the inputs in order to color the outcomes." Bill57 on the same page suggested "siphon schools," since, he said, they are taking money away from the public schools, "which will remain the backbone of American education long after all of us are gone." A reader identified as bbcrock, with a very specific criticism of one of the schools featured in Whitman's book, should contact me at mathewsj@washpost.com, and tell me more.

Okay. You waited long enough.

Here is our No. 1: No Excuses Schools.

This is, in some respects, a golden oldie. The term gained prominence eight years ago in Samuel Casey Carter's short book introducing these schools, "No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools." It was followed by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's detailed 2003 book analyzing the new phenomenon, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning." Readers who endorsed the winning name included Paul Friedmann, Neerav Kingsland, Barbara Davidson, CrimsonWife and David Whitman himself, since he occasionally used it as an alternative to paternalistic schools in his book.

Carter, now a senior fellow at the Center for Education Reform in Bethesda, told me he and Heritage Foundation Vice President Adam Meyerson wanted his book to show "that there is no excuse for the academic failure of most public schools serving poor children." The title, he said, acknowledged that what he called "the no excuses mindset" was "a necessary prerequisite to achieving" the schools' impressive results.

We shall see if the educators doing the hard work, and the rest of us arguing about them, will eventually accept that choice and make No Excuses Schools a staple of the great American education debate.