Last month’s report on the progress of Minnesota schools in meeting No Child Left Behind standards was bleak: 729 schools face sanctions, up from 483 last year.

But lost in the flurry of reporting those dismal results was the fact that there are some outstanding schools in the metro area. While many schools were being added to the watch list, others were taken off. The Monitor spoke with the principals of three of those schools to find out how they achieved their excellent results.Jayne Ropella is beginning her seventh year as principal of Eastern Heights Elementary School in east St. Paul. Previously, the school was under scrutiny for possible corrective action in math and reading, but scored well enough on the last round of tests to be removed from that list.

Ropella said it took hard work for the school to improve and that “We came together as a group” to focus on raising math and reading scores.

First was math: “We did staff development; we looked at the curriculum. We mapped it out so we were all on the same page at each grade level, and really learning how to teach math better,” Ropella explained.

Once the direction for the math curriculum was set and the teachers were oriented, reading was next. “We looked at the current research of what was the best way to improve our instruction,” explained Ropella. “We looked at student work; we looked at out assessments; we changed how we were assessing kids for our benchmarks and how we used those assessments to drive our instruction.”

Most important, according to Ropella, was that “It was a 100 percent team effort,” and that, “We all worked together. Our teachers have been in study groups for the last few years here, looking at research, best practices and how to implement them in the classroom and talking to one another.”

Jan Parrish has been the principal of Richard Green Central Park Community School in south Minneapolis for three years. She says that when she arrived to take over that spot, the school was “at the bottom of the watch list. When I came here, this school was one of the original seven in the state that was not making adequate progress, and they were looking at severe consequences,” she said. Three years later, the school has turned the situation around and received outstanding scores.

Parrish said that her strategy was to closely examine the state’s standards. “We began to focus in on teaching the standards as our curriculum, not teaching the textbook as our curriculum,” Parrish said. She insisted that “We did not teach to the [NCLB] test, but rather concentrated on teaching the components of each subject.”

In reading, for example, Parrish said, “We teach the skills of story elements; character, thought, setting, those kind of things. We help the kids identify the story elements and see how, if you change any one element, it would make the story different.”

Math and other subjects were broken down in similar ways, and soon, Parrish said, teachers were becoming excited all over again about teaching as they saw their students becoming excited about learning.

Like Principal Ropella, Parrish also inspired the teaching staff to pull together with a common vision and goal. The results speak for themselves; the students of her school performed well and the school is off the watch list.

Bethune Elementary School in north Minneapolis is another previously low-performing school that has turned itself around. Principal Marianne Norris, is going into her sixth year as principal.

Like her counterparts Ropella and Parrish, Norris uses a team approach to education with the teaching staff. The school is part of the federal Reading First program, and receives what Norris calls “research-based” training in the best ways to teach reading. The teaching staff also pulled together to create a cohesive approach to teaching that stretched across the entire curriculum.

But Norris’ school added a twist by forming partnerships with outside groups and businesses.

Members of Minneapolis’ Stages Theater help the students engage in the arts. “The artists and teachers work together to integrate arts into their literacy program,” Norris explained, “so it will be enjoyable for the kids, they can use their whole bodies to learn vocabulary, or to read, or whatever.”

Bethune’s other partnerships are with the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, which provides before- and after-school programs; Dorsey-Whitney law firm and other businesses, who have provided volunteers to help teachers and put on family events and carnivals for the students; and the University of Minnesota and Metro State University, providing instruction by “non-traditional” teachers.

These exceptional educators have several traits in common: Each of them has: