What do great middle schools have in common?

Unstuck in the Middle - washingtonpost.com

Jay Matthews picks the best middle schools of the Washington D.C. area.

With few exceptions, the schools are all in well to do neighborhoods with a small percentage of blacks and Hispanics.

Wouldn't it be a more interesting article, if it told us which middle schools in affluent neighborhoods aren't successful.

Of course the school with the highest percentage (99.9%) of blacks was the KIPP DC: Key Academy. They had an awesome 75% algebra completion rate... higher than most of the public affluent schools.