There's a paradox right at the heart of schoolwide reform, and it's this: Serving all students well really means serving each student better. In broadening the scope of reform to include all children, schools must in fact narrow their focus to the individual child. Only when every student succeeds do all students succeed.

That's what one school in Vancouver, Washington, discovered on its way to becoming a Distinguished Title I School. With a ballooning population of Russian kids, a sizable group of Hispanic children, and a broad sprinkling of other nationalities and languages, Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary School was struggling. And diversity was only one issue. The other was poverty, affecting 80 percent of Roosevelt's students. Kids facing conflict, crisis, or chaos at home were acting out their troubles at school. Language problems, cultural problems, behavioral problems—it was, in the words of Principal Marianne Thompson, "the whole ball of wax."

With so much need, it only made sense to abandon targeted assistance and embrace a schoolwide approach. The guiding question for Roosevelt's staff as they began planning a schoolwide program was, "How do we bring this really diverse group of kids together holistically?" Thompson reports.

The staff spent the next year scrutinizing every last detail of their school-from learning opportunities to behavior management to facilities issues. They pored over research findings. They did a formal needs assessment. They met in small groups that periodically reported back to the whole staff. The plan that emerged centered on three central goals: (1) improving instruction in reading, writing, and math, with a focus on better alignment of support staff with instructional goals; (2) fully integrating technology into the curriculum; (3) developing a schoolwide management system that helps students make better choices. Nothing went untouched. Even the lunchroom was redesigned to boost behavior and encourage conversation among diverse groups of kids.

"It was a real mix of educational kinds of goals with really concrete operational kinds of goals," Thompson says.

Miraculously, in this rainbow of 700 poor and immigrant children, every kid now counts. Any child struggling with schoolwork or school rules eventually winds up on a list for assistance from the school's "screening team"—a committee of key school personnel who discuss the child's school and family history and devise a plan to help. That help might include referral to a human services agency, match-up with a middle school mentor, one-to-one tutoring with a staff assistant, in-class translation of lessons into a native language, or some other strategy tailored to the child's unique needs. (For more on Roosevelt Elementary's schoolwide program, see Small Planet: A student body from all over the world is viewed as an asset at this cutting-edge Vancouver school.)

Therein lies the big challenge for Roosevelt—and for other schools seeking comprehensive change. It's what Thompson calls the "fulcrum of balance" between the individual student and the school as a whole.

"The thing that we have continued to grapple with," she says, "is making sure we're accommodating the learner, but also having continuity in approach and educational goals across grade levels and programs."

In an impassioned speech to educators in 1994, Mary Jean LeTendre of the U.S. Department of Education addressed this dilemma. "Some of you have expressed concern, both privately and publicly, that the schoolwide program approach, in serving all children, takes away from the individual child," said LeTendre, who oversees educational programs for disadvantaged kids. "You have said that with a schoolwide program, you can't focus on individual needs."

Her answer? "Yes, you can, and yes, you should."

She explains the change mechanism this way: "The schoolwide focus expands the resource base for each child, reaching the most educationally disadvantaged children by immersing them in more advanced curriculum and providing them with better instruction and with more support."

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