ABSTRACT
The CIERA Beat the Odds Study (Taylor, Pearson, Clark, & Walpole, 2000) gave me an amazing opportunity to see effective schools up close, but Stevenson Elementary is the school that really stood out to me. I was not surprised when the data were in and it was one of the most effective schools in the study. Teachers at Stevenson were helping children to beat the odds in literacy achievement. Rich and overlapping data collected there during the 1997-1998 school year (student assessments, classroom observations, time logs, interviews, and surveys) were augmented by many other informal sources of data the following summer and fall to give me an inspiring picture of one school’s answer to meeting children’s needs. In a time when reading and reading instruction are called rocket science (Moats, 1999) Stevenson’s simple success story is especially important to tell.
