All of Principal Alisanda Woods’ students — 100 percent — are from families whose incomes are at or below the federal poverty level, she said.

Woods’ challenge is particularly daunting because she has to do two very difficult things in a very short period of time.

Most observers suspect that schools like Bethune face shuttering if things don’t improve. Woods and her staff could be fired. And her students could face yet another disruption to lives that, in many cases, have already been rocked by violence, homelessness and other trials of poverty.

She must take a school full of children who are far behind their peers and get them caught up on material they should have learned years ago. That won’t be easy in a school where tracking tests show that roughly 90 percent of students are two or more grades behind where they should be in reading and math, Woods said.

And, at the same time, she must make sure they gain the skills and knowledge they’re expected to learn this year, in their current grade, even if that means working with fractions before mastering whole numbers or with paragraphs before mastering sentences.

Read the full article on turning schools around by Erin Einhorn at Chalkbeat