Working Together

Now those children are learning: 81 percent met reading proficiency standards this year, up from 47 percent in 2003.

Broad Acres did this without Rhee's reform tactics: no young recruits from Teach for America, no cash for students who come to class, no linkage of teacher pay to test scores.

Rather, the faculty gathers every Wednesday for hours of mentoring and brainstorming, creating plans for each child who is falling behind. In classrooms, bilingual or special education teachers slide in alongside the regular teacher, taking two or three children onto the floor to focus on computation or reading aloud.

The formula includes after-school activities, arts and music, and a mental health team that swoops in to examine the family crisis that may lie behind a classroom outburst. But teachers say it's not extra budget lines that make the difference; it's the conviction that nothing will stand in the way of achievement.

When a kindergartner keeps falling asleep in class, a teacher goes to see the parent. Problem identified: The family has one twin mattress for four children. Solution: The school gets the child a bed.

A boy arrived from North Africa last year and began acting out in kindergarten. "We couldn't keep him in a seat, couldn't talk to him," the principal says. "We had him evaluated and put him in Kim's class." That's Kim Burnim, the national Teacher of the Year in 2006.

In many schools, the boy would be labeled "special ed" and shunted to a separate track. But Burnim set up behavior markers and put peer pressure to work. "To stay here, where he wanted to be, he had to get in line with all the other ducks," she says. "We involve the other children; they take him under their wing and let him know we don't do disruptive things here."

When I saw the boy, he moved easily from one activity to another, competing to finish his work and move on to the next bit of math fun.

Too often, schools desperate to boost test scores become grim factories in which children are force-fed rote skills. But at Broad Acres, teachers coach each other to keep kids engaged in rich material for its own sake.

In Andrea Sutton's fifth-grade class, 16 kids sit on the floor, jumping up to explain to one another the roots of the American colonists' grievances with the British. The teacher's voice never rises above a stage whisper as she plies the class with questions that would fit nicely in a high school course.

"With all the pressure from No Child Left Behind, it's so easy to cut out history and science," Bayewitz says. "But these kids are going to need those complex skills in high school and college. And these kids are going to college."

Can D.C. schools do this? Can Rhee's confrontational style produce cooperative learning? I looked for a D.C. school that matches Broad Acre's population. The results, coming Sunday.

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