Every week or so, Greg Johnston makes his rounds, toting a touch-screen laptop, on which he can summon all the necessary information on employees and customers.

But he's not looking for sales figures or profits. His currency is test scores.

Johnston is the principal at Oakland Intermediate School in Northwest Roanoke. His employees are teachers, his customers students. The laptop was bought with grant money.

On the other side of town, Principal Cindy Delp leaves the computer in the office when she strolls through Fallon Park Elementary. She sits in on classes, jots notes and makes small talk with teachers and students.

And where Johnston and his staff crunch the numbers and keep track of every shred of student data, Delp prefers to give teachers a little more leeway.

Somehow, both approaches seem to have worked.

After repeatedly flunking on state and federally mandated requirements, both schools have pulled themselves up in the past three years.

Both met federal and state requirements and competed with some of the best schools in the city last year. They've also made strides in reducing the achievement gap between students of different demographic groups, something that raised eyebrows in the school system's central administration building.

But almost more remarkable than the schools' individual success is the fact that, in many ways, Oakland and Fallon Park -- both high-poverty schools with large numbers of non-native English speakers -- have taken slightly different approaches, suggesting that success in education does not come wrapped up in a convenient formula to be universally implemented.

Every good school, it would appear, is good in its own way.

But whether those accomplishments can be replicated remains to be seen. This is a critical year for the school system as five elementary schools that have never met state accreditation are on the hook to improve this year or face state-imposed sanctions.

Two means, same end

Last year, Johnston became an advocate of a new instructional method known as the "eight-step process."

It's a system that relies heavily on numbers, tracking students' scores the way baseball scouts track batting averages. Those scores are turned into spreadsheets, which break down the data to let educators know exactly how each student is faring.

Top administrators imposed the new method on city schools hoping it would boost test scores. In part, it's a reflection of the new focus on standards and accountability that swept into schools with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It's also a reflection of Superintendent Marvin Thompson's faith in data-driven educational methods.

And while on paper every city school has adopted the eight-step process, few principals have been so enthusiastic about it as Johnston, a man who likes to repeat: "What gets measured gets done."

"We bought into everything" about it, Johnston said. "Some of us had to let go of things we've always done."

For Delp and her staff at Fallon Park, however, data collection, while important, is less front and center than making sure students get the help they need.

"When you become so regimented that you lose sight of what you're supposed to be doing," Delp said, "then I think teaching the whole child is put on the back burner."

At 35 and 36 respectively, Johnston and Delp are among the city's youngest principals. Both grew up in the Roanoke Valley and spent time in other school districts before taking their jobs in city elementary schools.

To an adult, Johnston can sometimes come off as something of a bureaucrat, with his reliance on numbers and his full sentences. But to his students, he falls somewhere between the older brother and the beloved uncle who shows up on holidays with educational toys.

Delp's approach appears a little more laid-back. Her staff wears green or tie-dyed T-shirts, and she sometimes worries that her office is too messy.

Don't be fooled. When she arrived in 2004, she assumed what she calls a "no excuses approach to education." It's an approach that demanded that not only should the teachers be held accountable, but also the students and their parents. Suspensions spiked her first year.

At Oakland, where Johnston has been principal since 2003, students of different abilities get placed together in a single class. The students who don't perform well on regular "snapshot" tests get extra remediation, while those who do well get enrichment classes, a staple of the eight-step process.

At Fallon Park, students who need the most help are placed together in smaller classes and get smothered with special services, usually from the best teachers in the school.

But both principals insisted from the start that there is no reason their students can't succeed, something that came as a shock to some within the schools.

"Fallon has a long, proud history of not doing very well for many reasons," said Richard Moss, a veteran fifth-grade teacher at the school. "It wasn't really expected years ago that all kids would achieve."

Over at Oakland, Johnston will meet with all of his school's 165 students twice this year for a pep talk.

Those high expectations are key to success, said Ross Wiener, a researcher with the Washington, D.C.-based group Education Trust.

For years, teachers and administrators simply assumed that poor schools would fail, said Wiener, who has studied high-performing schools in impoverished neighborhoods. "And when they weren't doing very well it didn't cause people to change what they were doing."

Turnaround's not easy

But success hasn't come without a price. One casualty has been recess. Oakland students get 10 to 15 minutes a day, while at Fallon Park students make do with 15 to 20. What's more, students face more rigorous tests on a regular basis.

The principals concede that the tests have raised the intensity, and possibly the stress levels, at their schools.

Parents have noticed the change in school culture and mostly have been supportive.

"I don't think you can test them too much," said James LeBrun, whose son was a fifth-grader at Oakland last year. "I wish I had that kind of testing when I went to school."

"My oldest one, he strives for straight A's. He's only in second grade," said Misty Spradlin, the mother of three Fallon Park students. "They work one on one with him. If anything comes up, they automatically call and let us know."

School turnaround, however, isn't easy.

Between 70 percent and 80 percent of Oakland and Fallon Park's students qualify for free and reduced lunches, a school's standard measure of poverty. Both schools also have a sizable population of students who aren't native English speakers. At Fallon Park, which serves the Roanoke Rescue Mission, the children of refugees sometimes show up midway through the year.

As a result, it's not uncommon for staffers' responsibilities to go above and beyond education. They have been known to take children to get their shots or to find coats and shoes for students who get off the bus without them.

Getting teachers motivated was another challenge.

Almost all of Fallon Park's teachers have been there more than five years, and many have 20 or more years of tenure. At Oakland, however, about 80 percent of the teaching staff changed the summer Johnston arrived three years ago, although many had years of teaching experience.

One of those new teachers, Sharon Hartman, struggled when she was transferred into Oakland from Lincoln Terrace Elementary three weeks into the school year. But she stuck it out.

"This past year was my best year ever in teaching, and I've been teaching 25 years," she said.

Teachers at both schools also praised the new focus on cooperation among teachers and the streamlined curriculum, which helped their students succeed, they said.

Results matter

Ultimately, the differences between schools such as Oakland and Fallon Park are less important than their results, administrators say.

So why hasn't the eight-step method worked across the system?

"It has to do with how well it's been implemented, how well it's been internalized and used by the people who are using it, teachers, principals and staff," said Richard Layman, the school system's chief academic officer.

Meanwhile, it's impossible to know whether the success at Oakland and Fallon Park will hold up. Educational success is notoriously fickle and experts generally wait several years before pronouncing themselves on a new program's merits. At the same time, schools have to contend with federal standards that get more stringent every year.

But their principals seem undaunted.

"We're on the hot seat. There's no way of getting around that, but that allows you to think differently because you're forced to," said Johnston.

His school's success has also turned it into the poster child for the administration's new eight-step process, bringing with it an unusual level of scrutiny.

A few weeks ago, as Johnston was escorting a visitor out of the building, he noticed a car pull up and two men in suits get out: Thompson, the Roanoke superintendent, and Billy Cannaday, Virginia's superintendent of public instruction.

Cannaday was visiting from Richmond to look at "the best things that work."

"Some people still don't believe that you can raise the bar for every youngster," he said. "You have to show examples, and this is an example."

Johnston greeted the superintendents and turned back toward the school to lead another tour.