"But over the last ten years the parents and grandparents in the auditorium had seen reform plans come and go: no-fail policies, parent contracts, pay-for-performance incentives, critical friends' groups, inquiry-based learning programs, something called Advancement Via Individual Determination, and the Gates small-school model.(51)"

Diminished Community Involvement:

"I'd like to get to a place where it's not the superintendent saying, 'You need a better school than this'; it's the community expecting and asking for that," he said. "But, until good schools are demand-driven, you need a proxy for the demand. Voting rights weren't demanded for a long time, either, and I don't think the analogy to the civil-rights movement is far-fetched at all."  (51)

Bennet's Plan:

guidance counselors, mentors, career counselors?

Why did this approach fail? What was needed?

A Tentative Solution for This Community:

"We've been trying to erect reforms over this weak political, economic, and cultural scaffolding," Bennet said after one long day of visits. "It's not impossible, but, God, it's really, really hard."

Instead, grass roots coordination between local business and schools was needed to enable kids to work while attending school at the same time. To reach them,  administrators engaged in "a systematic pursuit of the sort of student who lowered aggregate test scores and teacher morale."  Eventually, "A safety net was being strung under a school system's hardest cases--one involving parents, mentors, fast-food restaurant managers, United Airlines executives and city-council members who knocked on doors, an engrossed media, nonprofit organizations, and student leaders like Julissa Torrez." (57)