A number of organizations have issued reports on high-performing, high-poverty schools over the past few years. Those reports have provided compelling evidence that public schools can educate poor and minority students to very high levels of achievement.

However, most have highlighted only a handful of schools in scattered locations. Even the most comprehensive report to date, the Education Trust’s Dispelling the Myth 1999, couldn’t provide information on more than a few hundred schools across 21 states.

So far, no organization interested in this topic has been able to answer a fundamental question: How many high-poverty and high-minority schools nationwide have high student performance?

To answer that question, the Education Trust analyzed information from a massive new U.S. Department of Education database developed by the American Institutes for Research. This is the first published analysis of the database. The report also provides a preliminary glimpse of where such “high-flying” schools are and what they look like.

The analysis identified a total of 4,577 schools nationwide in the year 2000 that met the following criteria:

• Students' reading and/or math performance was in the top third among all schools in the state at the same grade level (e.g., elementary);

• Plus, they met either one or both of the following:

o the percentage of low-income students in the school was at least 50% and ranked in the top third of schools at that grade level; and/or

o the percentage of African American and Latino students in the school was at least 50% and ranked in the top third of schools at that grade level.

• 3,592 high-performing, high-poverty schools;

• 2,305 high-performing, high-minority schools; and

• 1,320 high-performing, high-poverty-and-minority schools.

• about 1,280,000 low-income students;

• about 564,000 African American students; and

• about 660,000 Latino students.

Clearly, there are more than a handful of high-poverty and high-minority schools in the U.S. that are also high-performing. We intend to study these “high-flying” schools further to draw lessons about how to close achievement gaps nationwide.

We hope others join us in this endeavor by using a new tool on the Education Trust’s Web site, Dispelling the Myth Online at www.edtrust.org. This site allows users to search for high-performing schools according to users own achievement and demographic criteria.

For more information on schools making the most improvement for low-income and minority students, visit the Education Trust's Dispelling the Myth Revised: Preliminary Findings from a Nationwide Analysis of "High Flying" Schools.