Unfortunately, there is little or no evidence that the application of sanctions or corrective actions will guarantee dramatic gains in student achievement in reading and math. However, it would seem that if applied wisely, sanctions could help by at least getting people's attention, increasing motivation to consider significant reforms, and abandoning or razing an impenetrable culture of failure in a school or district.

Schools and districts will need to rely on the research and craft knowledge related to the dozens, if not hundreds, of schools and districts that have beat the odds. That is, although they enroll high percentages of minority students who live in poverty, the academic performance of these schools and districts is comparable to low-minority, low-poverty schools and districts.

to promote a dramatic turn-around in his district, burkett established a powerful,practical guideline that contributed greatly to everyone's success. It was that "you should be able to draw a line between virtually all dialogue, all decisions, all policies, all expenditures - and student achievement in reading and math." Anyone who could not make such a connection to student learning was not engaged in"mission-critical work."

Joe Johnson has identified the key characteristics - a "no excuses" attitude and a sense that everyone in the school community owns the problems and successes are among the features identified.

Doug Reeves has identified that a laser-like focus on academic achievement and informative writing to a rubric with opportunitieis to re-do the work until it is acceptable are among the characteristics in successful schools.

Kati Haycock from the Education Trust in Washington, D.C. has demonstrated the nothing-less-than-miraculous effect on achievement of students in Boston and Dallas assigned three years in a row to highly effective teachers.

Likewise, Linda Darling-hammond of Stanford University is reporting studies of techer effects on student achievement to be as much as double the influence of factors such as poverty and ethnicity.

There are now so many "Jaime Escalante" kinds of examples today that it is difficult for educators to pass off remarkable reform as the rogue exception. When there are clear academic targets, when "better' and "best" instructional practices are guided by frequent analysis of assessment data, and when people agree to work together relentlessly to ensure that every child by name is successful, research has shown all children do learn.