This timely volume reveals in great detail how educators closed the "performance gap" for low-income students by linking expectations and results. Drawing heavily on the words and experiences of students, teachers, and parents, this book describes how students who traditionally had not succeeded academically in school began to do so. Effort and Excellence in Urban Classroomsdemonstrates just how this was done by including in-depth descriptions of classrooms and schools where students began succeeding when educators assumed the responsibility for their success, data-based discussion of teachers' views on parental involvement in schools and parents' views of teachers' and schools' actions on behalf of students, identification of the kinds of support that schools and districts must provide if educators are to be successful, and an unrelenting emphasis on how educators enabled students to be motivated and to produce high-quality work.