The parents are more involved and the students are more focused. By ending social promotion and mandating summer school for children who perform poorly, and then by retaining students who are far behind grade level, we hold students and their parents accountable. So obviously the students and parents are more focused than they've ever been before. What parents want is a neighborhood school that's academically challenging, safe, secure, and attractive. It's not too complicated.
Enrollment is up, attendance is up, test scores are up across the board.
The test scores have been up for two years. ACT scores are at their highest level in a decade. So we've seen improvement. But, in addition to holding students accountable and parents accountable, we're also holding teachers and principals accountable by putting schools on probation and reconstituting non-performing schools. The education plan that we laid out almost two years ago has either been implemented or it's in the process of being implemented, so over the next two years we're going to continue implementing and expanding the initiatives that we started during the past two years.