US public schools can do better. Post-pandemic, Harvard researcher Martin West states, "We've had the greatest decline in student achievement in US history. We have to have strategies to address this." 1980's national school change leader Ted Sizer commented, "School reform is like moving a graveyard."

In Renegade Teacher: Inside School Walls with Standards and the Test, former urban school teacher Dr. Katherine Scheidler shows how schools can better serve all students, at any time.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Scheidler moved from the urban classroom to the epicenter of school change with the dreaded accountability as Assistant Superintendent of teaching and learning in varied Massachusetts school districts. Scheidler illustrates the challenges and victories of standards and testing all students, and she points out how school must still change to better support those classroom heroes who work every day with children.