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Outside Marshall High, the day is cool but sunny. The school has been power-washed from a dingy red to a bright maroon. In place of the old broken concrete, weeds and rusted poles—remnants of a basketball court—is a newly sodded football field and a newly planted arboretum full of skinny young trees.

Inside Marshall, the smell of fresh paint hovers in the air. It is the first day of school, September 7, 2010.

These renovations have been dreamed about for decades at Marshall, located in the impoverished East Garfield Park community. As far back as four years ago,...

Whenever the one-note, mechanical “bing” would sound, Tamoura Hayes’ nerves began to unravel. Around her, the hallway would quickly fill up, turning into Lake Michigan on a stormy day, loud and thrashing.

In the fall of 2007, Tamoura was a quiet 14-year-old freshman at Marshall High. Every time she moved from one class to the next, she did her best to avert her eyes from anyone and just blend in. Often, she had to duck around fights or avoid bullies. She didn’t tell anyone about the dread she felt.

Today, Tamoura is 18 and can laugh about it.

Tamoura and her class—the...

The rules of Marshall’s in-school suspension room are written on the chalkboard at the front of the class: “No laughing. No cell phones. No talking. No putting your head down on the desk.”

If a student finishes his or her work, a table is piled with books to read. There’s also a worksheet they can complete, designed to make them think about their behavior.

At a big neighborhood high school, an in-school suspension room might seem par for the course. But at Marshall, the strategy has been tried before, failed before, and in recent years, didn’t exist.

With the...