P. Diane Frey, Ph.D., Mary Jane Smart, Ph.D., and Sue Walker all have public school experience, both classroom and administrative, and college level teaching experience in rural, suburban, and urban settings. During their respective careers they provided district-level leadership for programs that gained state and national recognition for excellence.

Their career paths crossed when they worked together over a ten-year period during the 1990s in the School District of Lancaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The School District of Lancaster is a small urban district where a staff of 1000 educates 11,000 racially, culturally, and economically diverse students, including a significant ESL population, in twenty school buildings. During most of the ten-year period they worked together, the District was in the design phase of systemic reform driven by a cutting-edge strategic plan that directed the simultaneous restructuring of the district in the areas of curriculum and assessment, professional development, facilities and technological infrastructure, and governance. The driving force in this transformation was the belief that all children can learn.

The authors were part of a cadre of professionals in the School District of Lancaster Curriculum Office who provided leadership for the design phase of the curriculum, assessment, Early Childhood programming, technology infrastructure, and professional development programming. The resulting design organized the district into instructional levels defined by academic standards and assessments. In recognition of the value of data-driven instructional decisions, technological infrastructure and programming were put in place to improve the monitoring of student progress and establish accountability. Over a five year period, simultaneous with the design work, professional development programming was designed and delivered in the areas of belief, standards, assessments, and technology. The programming served pre-school through high school teachers and included parents and community members. A variety of delivery systems was used, including college courses, district workshops with internal and consultant presenters, and week-long professional centers that included mentoring support in the classroom when new strategies were initially tried.

It is the learning from this exciting work and the acknowledgment of the vital role classroom teachers play in implementing reform that informs this publication.