Drawing upon their extensive teaching experience working with ethnically diverse, under prepared, and often poor students, these expert authors present innovative proposals for alleviating some of the urgent and very serious problems facing teachers, students, and administrators. From eliminating short-term and long term teacher shortages to a plan of action to reduce violence in the schools, their models and strategies are predicated on their belief that great teachers are made, not born; that learning is economics-blind and diversity-blind; that if students aren't learning what the teacher is trying to communicate, then something is probably wrong with that teacher's approach to teaching those students; and that high school is the last chance to salvage the oncoming generation. At the center of these proposals is a new compressed teaching model that is synthesized from their individual teaching experiences over the past 20 years and extensive collaborative research. Failure to implement and fund such reforms, they warn will leave many more students behind in schools that provide increasingly unequal education.