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When Beverly L. Hall came to this city in 1999, student achievement was sliding downward, teacher morale was dismal, and enrollment was falling as parents pulled their children out of the school system.

Consider the district鈥檚 numerical profile:

鈥� Ms. Hall was its fifth superintendent in a decade.

鈥� Students in 4th grade lagged behind their peers statewide in reading and mathematics by nearly 20 percentage points.

鈥� More than 60 percent of the city鈥檚 high school students missed at least two weeks of school per year.

鈥� The district had 700 teaching vacancies to fill the first fall Ms. Hall opened the schools.

鈥� Ninety percent of kindergarten teachers said they didn鈥檛 believe most of their students would finish high school.

Under Superintendent Hall鈥檚 steady hand, those numbers tell a very different story nine years later:

鈥� Fourth graders鈥� reading and math scores are nearly on a par with their Georgia peers鈥�.

鈥� Chronic absences have plummeted.

鈥� All of the district鈥檚 elementary schools made adequate yearly progress in 2006-07.

鈥� Ms. Hall had only 18 teaching vacancies when school opened in August.

Atlanta鈥檚 49,000-student school system鈥攁n overwhelming majority of whose students are African-American and poor鈥攏ow stands as one of the nation鈥檚 most promising examples of urban school reform.

Under the superintendent鈥檚 driving focus on the nuts and bolts of schooling鈥攊mproving the way teachers teach; replacing most principals; adopting whole-school-reform models and using standardized curricula; setting high academic goals and rewarding those who reach them鈥擜tlanta鈥檚 students have posted achievement gains every single year since Ms. Hall became schools chief.

As she approaches her 10th year at the helm, Ms. Hall has become one of the longest-serving superintendents of an urban school district. (She has a contract through 2011.) Before coming to Atlanta, the Jamaica native, who is 59, served as the superintendent in Newark, N.J., and as an English teacher, junior high school principal, and top administrator in the New York City public schools.

But the Atlanta district鈥檚 achievements have not captured the national spotlight that other city school systems and their high-profile chiefs have attracted in this era of hard-nosed accountability. Ms. Hall鈥檚 quiet leadership style and homegrown strategies for school improvement, say those who follow her work, are overlooked by education reformers charmed by nontraditional education leaders.

While the Atlanta schools have won financial support from national philanthropies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, such backing has arrived mostly after the superintendent and her team had already put their ideas into practice.

鈥淚 think that Atlanta has been badly overlooked by a lot of people,鈥� said Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based advocacy organization that represents 66 of the nation鈥檚 largest districts. 鈥淪he, as a superintendent, her staff, the board, and the Atlanta district in general have not been given their due.鈥� (In 2006, Ms. Hall won the council鈥檚 Richard R. Green award for urban education leadership.)

Said Robert S. Peterkin, the director of the Urban Superintendents Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education: 鈥淎tlanta is one of two unsung urban districts in the nation for what they鈥檝e done on reform. Atlanta came from nowhere. They are like that small college team every year in the NCAA [basketball tournament] that comes out of nowhere to make it to the Final Four.鈥� (Mr. Peterkin considers Austin, Texas, to be the other 鈥渦nsung鈥� district.)

Ms. Hall, characteristically, is more circumspect.

鈥淟ook, I鈥檓 always the first to say that we鈥檝e made great progress here in Atlanta,鈥� she said in a recent interview, 鈥渂ut we鈥檝e still got a long way to go.鈥�

One of Ms. Hall鈥檚 first major acts was to upend a decades-old culture of school board meddling in the selection of principals鈥攎ost of whom were building managers, not instructional leaders. Within a few months of her arrival in Atlanta, Ms. Hall received an anonymous letter explaining that the city鈥檚 principals had always been chosen on the basis of personal connections and social affiliations.

鈥淭his person said no superintendent had ever been able to penetrate that, and that I wouldn鈥檛 either,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淭hat threw down the gauntlet.鈥�

Ms. Hall has replaced 89 percent of the principals since she took over. To find and groom new talent, the district created its own training program for aspiring school leaders. Ms. Hall and her team also began to use performance evaluations for principals, a policy that for the first time tied 25 percent of a school leader鈥檚 job rating to student achievement鈥攁 move that encouraged many principals to retire, she said.

鈥淚 knew that no matter what I mandated on curriculum or reform models, or how many resources we put into the schools, if I didn鈥檛 have a person on the ground who really knew instruction and would be accountable for results, we weren鈥檛 going to get anywhere,鈥� she said.

But for the superintendent to claim discretion over principal selection, she needed broad backing to ensure that the school board would not interfere in personnel and other managerial decisions. Atlanta鈥檚 corporate and business community, eager for the district to improve academically and for a superintendent who would stay beyond two years, was willing to help.

Ms. Hall鈥檚 alliance with business leaders鈥攚hich grew out of regular but informal meetings she held with chief executives from corporations such as Home Depot, Delta Airlines, and Georgia Pacific鈥攍ed to the revision of the district鈥檚 governing charter in state law.

That revision clearly delineated the duties of the school board, separate from those of the superintendent, and required that any board vote to overturn a personnel decision by Ms. Hall would require a supermajority. The rewritten charter also included an ethics provision that allows any resident to file complaints against board members seen as overstepping their authority.

鈥淭his has just been key,鈥� Ms. Hall said. 鈥淚 absolutely benefited from the fact that both the business and broader community were fed up with the way the old boards had functioned.鈥�

Her relationship with corporate executives has paid other dividends as well鈥攊n particular, the formation last year of the Atlanta Education Fund, which works with the district to raise outside funding from corporations and philanthropic organizations for reform initiatives.

鈥淲e wanted to take advantage of a time when we had a school leader with proven results from reform and great personal credibility,鈥� said John G. Rice, the vice chairman and chief executive officer of GE Technology Infrastructure of the General Electric Co., and the chairman of the education fund. 鈥淲e want to make sure that Beverly鈥檚 reforms are totally institutionalized and that there鈥檚 no way we can go backwards.鈥�

Ms. Hall said cultivating ties in the broader community has been just as important. To that end, she has enlisted organizations such as 100 Black Men of Atlanta and the Concerned Black Clergy for their input and collaboration on a number of district initiatives. Every year, she holds a series of 鈥渇ireside chats鈥� with parents and community members in their neighborhoods to hear their concerns. Still, she has faced some criticism for her alliances with the business community.

鈥淲hile people tend to agree that the business community has done a great deal to support our schools in recent years, there is a general concern that the chamber of commerce has more say on what goes on in the district than teachers or parents do,鈥� said Verdaillia Turner, the president of the 2,300-member Atlanta Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.

To get achievement moving, Hall decided in her second year to target the lowest-performing campuses in the city in what has become the signature improvement effort under her leadership. Thirty-three campuses鈥攅lementary, middle, and high schools that serve a total of 13,000 students鈥攚ere mandated to adopt Project GRAD, a whole-school-reform approach with a focus on literacy and math skills, as well as the delivery of nonacademic services for disadvantaged children and their families.

The district tapped Atlanta鈥檚 chapter of Communities in Schools, a national nonprofit organization that supports public schools, to provide counseling, tutoring, health-care referrals, and other types of support for students. More than 90 percent of students in the Project GRAD schools qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

鈥淭o ratchet up performance in these schools, we had to turn them upside down, and we knew that this model would provide the extra supports that most of these kids in the schools would need,鈥� said Kathy Augustine, the district鈥檚 deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a holistic approach, and we thought the best way we could create all the right conditions for them to be high-performing schools.鈥�

Project GRAD provides a strong incentive for students to perform well and persevere through high school graduation: $4,000 or more in scholarships to put toward college expenses if they meet several requirements, including graduating with at least a C average. Along the way, students receive hours of college counseling, help in filling out admissions and financial-aid applications, summer enrichment programs, and trips to college campuses nearby and far away. Once students are enrolled in college, Project GRAD counselors work to help retain them with annual follow-up visits to the students on campus.

The numbers suggest that Project grad is yielding promising results. Last spring, all Project GRAD elementary and middle schools in Atlanta met testing benchmarks to make adequate yearly progress, a key measure of improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Graduation rates at the three Project GRAD high schools have ticked up: At Booker T. Washington High School, for example, the four-year graduation rate went from 62 percent in 2003 to 86.8 percent in 2007. Other, less quantifiable measures have also emerged.

鈥淧arents鈥� expectations of their children are much higher now,鈥� said Kweku Forstall, who until recently served as the executive director of Project GRAD Atlanta. 鈥淎nd the program has also helped get higher education institutions to look at the Atlanta public schools as a source for high school graduates who will be successful in their programs.鈥�

The rest of the city鈥檚 schools were required by Superintendent Hall to choose from several other reform models. Across the district, she mandated that schools teach Georgia鈥檚 state standards, something that had been happening only in isolated pockets, Ms. Augustine said.

Another of Ms. Hall鈥檚 early mandates鈥攅ven before the passage of the NCLB law nearly seven years ago鈥攚as requiring every school to set achievement targets. A year later, she rewarded the faculty and staff members at 18 schools for meeting their targets with cash.

More recently, Atlanta has been tackling initiatives at the secondary level, including the breakup of all the district鈥檚 comprehensive high schools into smaller, more personalized units with no more than 400 students. The four high schools that now constitute The New Schools at Carver鈥攚hich had been Carver High, a large, long-failing campus in a poor neighborhood south of downtown Atlanta鈥攁re on target to graduate 80 percent of their first class of seniors next spring, said Randy Bynum, the associate superintendent for high schools. That contrasts with the 23 percent graduation rate at Carver High in 2005, just before the school was broken up into smaller units with new principals and, in many cases, new teachers.

The Gates Foundation awarded the district $10.5 million in 2007 to help pay the costs of high school transformation. (The foundation also provides support for Diplomas Count, 澳门跑狗论坛鈥檚 annual report on graduation-related issues.)

Middle schools are also being overhauled, most notably with the closure of one large campus that reopened as two new schools: one for boys, the other for girls. The Coretta Scott King Young Women鈥檚 Leadership Academy, now in its second year, saw 6th grade scores improve dramatically in its first year, especially in English language arts and science, said Melody Morgan, the school鈥檚 principal.

The district is also working on a major, multipronged math and science initiative with the help of a $22 million grant from the GE Foundation, the philanthropic arm of General Electric.

As test scores rose steadily year after year, Ms. Hall wanted to ensure that Atlanta鈥檚 progress would not be dismissed by criticism that Georgia鈥檚 performance standards and assessment, before recent changes to both, weren鈥檛 as rigorous as many other states鈥�. The superintendent decided the city鈥檚 students would take a more rigorous national exam and publicly report the scores as part of the Trial Urban District Assessment, or TUDA, a specially collected set of test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Despite early pushback鈥攎any on Ms. Hall鈥檚 team worried the district鈥檚 performance on NAEP would subject it to particularly harsh criticism鈥擜tlanta has emerged as one of the top performers among the 11 urban districts that participate in TUDA, said Mr. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools.

鈥淎tlanta still has a ways to go, but the gains really have been eye-popping,鈥� Mr. Casserly said. 鈥淚 think what Atlanta has done on the NAEP has been instrumental in convincing a lot of people that the progress there is real.鈥�