Literature textbooks line the shelves of Bill Moore's classroom at North Junior High School, and his seventh graders grasp their pencils, their journals lying open on their desks. A poster outlining "How to Write a Paper" shares wall space with the vocabulary of literary devices: metaphor, simile, alliteration.

The morning's journal topic is "Where do you use math?" Moore displays a bar graph showing enrollment in different college courses and asks his class what the numbers mean. Is this an English class or a math class? The answer is, well, yes. The blending of English and math is the way of the world at North Junior High as it strives to lift achievement in both-all to satisfy new federal mandates under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Bush's signature education law.