Using Great Teaching to Overcome Poverty

John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco is like countless other schools in cities across the United States. The student body comprises mostly lower income, African American and Latino students who--despite being just as intelligent as their white and Asian counterparts--traditionally underachieve on many academic measures. Talented, hard-working educators tried their best to improve the standardized test scores at Muir, but for the past five years those scores remained largely flat. During the years spanning from 2005-2010, roughly 75 percent of the students in second through fifth grades scored below proficient on the California Standards Test. Despite San Francisco Unified School District's best efforts to provide additional support and funding during that time, as well as help from several community members and other well-meaning organizations, results remained the same and test scores did not significantly improve. The will to improve achievement was clearly there, but the results did not change. In this article, the author describes how he is turning around his low-performing school by focusing on literacy and classroom practice, with the help of his district.