[N orfolk, VA.--It's hard to tell exactly when the Norfolk Public Schools hit rock bottom, but 1998 was particularly dismal across the board: Just 38 percent of third graders passed the state's Standards of Learning, or SOL, test in English; 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient in mathematics; and a mere 18 percent of high schoolers passed Virginia and U.S. history. For John Simpson, who took over as superintendent that same year with a mandate to boost achievement for all of the district's 37,000 students, the only solution was to completely shake things up.] When I arrived, people were unhappy, but many of them had the attitude that given a fairly poor and high-minority population, that might be all that they could do, ... There was no room for excuses anymore.
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