I never met him, or heard him speak, but Richard DuFour meant the world to me.
He was the superintendent who thought suburban students deserved accountability, too.
On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum is affluent Adlai Stevenson High School—a one-school district in the Chicago area. Students and teachers there worked in the same team-based professional learning communities and benefited from the same honest, tough-minded leadership advocated here. They relied exclusively on in-house expertise as teams met, by course, to share and prepare lessons and units that they continuously improved on the basis of common, team-made assessment results. Over a 10-year period, under the leadership of Richard DuFour, Stevenson broke every achievement record on school, state, and college entrance exams. Advanced placement success increased by 800 percent (Schmoker, 2001b).
Results Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning by Mike Schmoker
Catherine & Katharine 