This report provided the U.S. District Court hearing the Liddell case in 1996 with a detailed review of research on promising programs, reform designs, and school components that have been found to support or enhance achievement among historically disadvantaged young Americans. Data on various programs that have been implemented as part of the ongoing St. Louis, Missouri, desegregation case are examined, as are the reasons why several of these no-doubt well-intended efforts may not have produced the desired results. Specific steps are proposed for improving the academic achievements and other educational outcomes of St. Louis's African American students. INTRODUCTION Several studies have demonstrated that, with proper schooling, impoverished African American and other minority students are capable of achieving at levels that demonstrate proficiency and that are consonant with achievement levels of nonpoor White students. Other analyses are equally clear that in most high-poverty, predominantly minority contexts, including St. Louis, Missouri, most African American students do not achieve at these levels. These seemingly conflicting findings represent clear evidence of the need for-and potential of-targeted school improvement in schools serving large numbers of racial and ethnic minorities and other groups of students placed at risk. Race as an At-Risk Factor National data on schools and students shows that minority students in the United States are especially likely to be low achievers in school (Puma, Jones, Rock, & Fernandez, 1993; Puma et al., 1997). Black and Hispanic children are twice as likely as White children to be low achievers and three times as likely to attend high-poverty schools. The reading, writing, and mathematics skills of Black and Hispanic children are below those of White children (Natriello, McDill, & Pallas, 1990). Further, Black and Hispanic students are more likely than White students to drop out of high school, with extremely conservative dropout rate estimates of 17%,18%, and 12.2% for each group, respectively (Natriello et al., 1990). Because of the close relationship between race and socioeconomic status (SES), U.S. minorities are especially likely to be educationally disadvantaged. Forty-six percent of Black and 40% of Hispanic children live below the poverty line compared to 12% of White children. Poor children are twice as likely to be retained, or to drop out of school. Students living in poor communities score lower on achievement tests (Borman & D'Agostino 1996; Puma et al., 1997). SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS IN HIGH-POVERTY RACIAL/ETHNIC MINORITY CONTEXTS: FOUR EXAMPLES The following section describes and presents an overview of research on four schools that have successfully replicated school improvement models in high-poverty racial/ ethnic minority community settings. In each case, these schools were able to produce academic achievements on par with or above national averages. The Barclay School Barclay is an inner-city school in Baltimore, Maryland, located less than four blocks away from one of the city's drug-trafficking hot spots. The kindergarten through eighthgrade population served by this school is 94% minority and almost exclusively African American. Most are from working-class or unemployed-single-parent families. Nearly 82% of Barclay students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a traditional measure of poverty. Since the mid-1980s, the school has experienced many of the typical problems noted in inner-city American public schools. Achievement test scores and attendance rates had fallen to very low levels, and student discipline was becoming unsatisfactory. In the early 1980s, the principal became interested in the academic activities at the Calvert School, a competitive private school located nearby. The highly structured Calvert curriculum, which is far from revolutionary, reflects decades of high and academically traditional demands from its upper-middle-class clientele. …