{ THE EDUC A TION REVIEW }

Previous page: Marie shiels Djouadi became principal of Wakefield high school in 1987 and, 23 years later, is still spreading her method of school salvation. Above: at Randolph elementary school in arlington, educators including Djouadi, center, brainstorm improvements.

Two decades later, Wakefield has be-

come one of the nation’s most celebrat- ed success stories. Under Djouadi, who retired in 2002 and is now 68, and her hand-picked successor, Doris Jackson, the school has raised state achievement test results significantly for its largely low-income students. It has tripled participation in Advanced Placement tests, while also raising its passing rate on the difficult three-hour exams. Its record, in a school where more than 70 percent of the students are Hispanic or black and at least 50 percent are low-

income, led President Obama to make it the site of a major education address last September. With those glitzy statistics, it is

tempting to turn Djouadi’s career into a movie treatment — tough-as-nails, smart-as-Socrates former nun cracks down on sloth and vandalism in a bad school and saves the community. But Djouadi’s success was hard-won. Administrators, teachers and students loved her predecessor, who was easygo- ing and avuncular, and weren’t ready for an impatient woman getting in

their faces. “I had had seven years as an elemen-

tary school principal with many disad- vantaged students, and thought I knew the secrets to turning around a school on a much larger scale,” Djouadi said. “But I had to learn to go slow.” Successful school revivals, the Djou-

adi story suggests, are often pure luck, propelled by the serendipitous presence of smart and resourceful people above and below the principal at the right mo- ment. If the fall of Saigon had not led Arlington to hire Djouadi to manage

Djouadi: “I … thought I knew the secrets to turning around a school on a much larger scale. But I had to learn to go slow.”

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