Lead'*er*ship' (noun): it's the ingredient Rob Stein thinks is crucial to turning around troubled urban schools.

• Author: Vitaska, Sara
• Position: Manual High School

As you watch Rob Stein work the halls at Denver's Manual High School, you know right away he's not the sort of principal who holes up in his office. With shirt sleeves rolled up and purpose in his step, he stops a freshman in the hallway for a chat. A few minutes later he's in an intense conversation with one of his teachers.

His enthusiasm, hands-on style and commitment to strong leadership are what's needed if Manual is ever again going to be one of the top high schools in this city. Manual shares the troubles of urban high schools in scores of American communities. It has struggled with freshmen who enter far below grade level in reading and math, dismal test scores, staggering dropout rates, and endemic gang violence and poverty.

Manual's challenges mirror statistics outlined in a recent report released by America's Promise Alliance, an educational advocacy group founded by retired general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The study found that only half (52 percent) of public school students in the 50 largest U.S. cities--Denver is 25th--graduate in four years. This sobering figure is well below the national average of 70 percent. Dropout rates are substantially higher for racial and ethnic minorities and males. The report acknowledges "a movement is afoot" to better equip educators, legislators and the public with information to assess the severity of the graduation crisis, and points to some innovative efforts at the state and district levels to turn around low-performing schools.

Although Denver may seem an unlikely testing ground for how to turn around troubled urban high schools, larger cities with similar problems might be well-advised to see what kind of difference someone like Stein can make. His success or failure could determine whether this approach will be followed across the country.

REINVENTING MANUAL

Stein, who holds graduate degrees from Stanford and Harvard and is a 1978 graduate of Manual, does not just want to improve the school. He's trying to reinvent it--again. Manual was closed completely in 2006 because of low test scores and high dropout rates.

Stein believes an effective principal, one who can bring about and lead change, is a key ingredient in turning around low-performing schools and raising student achievement. His primary responsibility is student learning, he says, and he's committed to making it happen through finding and allocating resources, steering programs, nudging, coaching and nagging.

"Whatever it takes," he says, and that includes offering students cash incentives for taking the required state assessments.

"I have mixed feelings about incentives, but they work," he says.

They certainly do. The entire student body showed up in March to take the Colorado Student Assessment Program test.

A GRADUAL DECLINE

Manual, Denver's oldest high school, was once a model of success, offering programs that produced Ivy League-bound students like Stein and graduates such as former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and Chicano activist Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, it was an esteemed school where students scored well on tests and excelled in athletics. It boasted a mix of middle-class white students, most of whom were bused in, and low-income minorities. When a federal court order ended busing in Denver in 1995, a new student population emerged that was predominately Hispanic immigrants. Test scores dropped, athletic success suffered and dropouts soared.

For the past decade, Manual has been a testing ground for school reform that's been watched around the nation. In 2001, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation poured nearly $1 million into a program that divided Manual into three specialized schools, each with its own principal. The small-schools initiative--intended to foster an intimate, small-school environment with high teacher-student engagement--was a failure, and...