What bothered Principal Walter Thompson most about his first days on the job at Wyandotte High School was the lack of unity among the staff."There were good teachers here, but they were teaching in isolation, and they weren't collectively responsible for the school and for all the students," said Thompson, who was hired in 1996 by Kansas City Kansas Public Schools with hopes he would help improve its troubled high school.

As a result, he said, "students had developed a nice system of getting around the system." With Wyandotte being a large urban school and students having classes at all ends of the building, rambling in the hallways with the excuse of "going to the counselor's office" or sneaking out of the building were easy maneuvers. "People were going every which way," Thompson recalled.

Today, Wyandotte's teachers work collaboratively in teams to teach the same group of students every day within "smaller learning communities." Each of the eight communities pairs a team of 10 teachers with a group of 150-200 students, who remain together throughout their high school experience. The 1,200-student school has become eight small schools inside one large school?with a better accountability system.

Lowering teacher-to-student ratios and providing continuity of care were the top two features of a framework that the Kansas City, Kansas, district adopted in 1997 to turn around its schools. The "First Things First" framework, developed by Jim Connell, president of the Philadelphia-based Institute for Research and Reform in Education, concluded from a study of successful sites that "building closer, more respectful and more productive relationships" between students and adults "is the foundation." The study revealed that having longer instructional periods with the same group of students and teachers over a continuum of time?say, for all four high school years?allows these relationships to flourish.

"Three counselors can't address all the issues," said Wyandotte's school improvement facilitator, Mary Stewart. "But [with the smaller learning communities] we began building those strong relationships with the kids. We began finding out about the tough world that the kids were dealing with. We began finding out what was getting in the way of their learning."

Stewart said the framework gave Wyandotte's staff the flexibility to design a school that they thought would be "best for their own children." Reform measures were built on seven characteristics that First Things First outlined with students and staff in mind. The goals were to (1) lower student/adult ratios, (2) provide continuity of care, (3) set high academic and conduct standards, (4) provide enriched learning opportunities, (5) equip and expect staff to improve instruction, (6) allow for flexible allocation of resources among staff and (7) assure the staff's collective responsibility.

Since the smaller learning communities were put into place in 1998, graduation rates have increased by 25 percent; last year, 70 percent of seniors graduated compared to barely half five years ago. Attendance also is up by 10 percent. Suspensions are down 35 percent. Dropout rates have been cut in half from 15 percent to 7 percent. "We're holding onto kids longer, and kids are holding onto us longer," said Thompson, whose leadership is credited for helping to save Wyandotte.