Let’s consider schools.

The opinions are mixed. While the Boston Public Schools receive accolades from national groups that measure urban public schools, Bostonians are skeptical. Even in neighborhoods that have public schools—the North End, for example, Chinatown and Charlestown—a good portion of downtown Boston parents opt for private education for their kids.

That practice may continue, especially as the Back Bay and Beacon Hill lost their public elementary schools long ago and have not seen them replaced.

Nevertheless, there are positive signs in the city’s schools. Last week a few hundred Bostonians gathered at UMass Boston to celebrate 14 schools that had either transformed their poorly performing students into top scorers on MCAS tests or were on their way to such a transformation. Despite populations of disadvantaged kids, these schools also had low drop-out rates, good attendance, and a commitment to rigor on the part of both students and teachers.

The heads of the schools spoke. All were impressive. Some were charismatic. Both charter schools and district schools were represented. The room was filled with parents, school department executives, state officials, foundation heads, titans of industry and finance, representatives of organizations that were interested in or allied with the schools, and many of Boston’s wealthiest philanthropists. Some of their name tags displayed the same names that adorn buildings at our region’s universities.

The program was billed as celebrating innovation. But it seemed that the steps the successful schools took to create good students didn’t require innovation. All followed a few basic common-sense principles.

The successful schools had increased the time children were getting instruction either by lengthening the school day, lengthening the year or both. Sometimes the school itself provided the extra instruction. In other cases, an organization such as Citizen Schools conducted the program.

All the schools had determined that enrichment was as important as the basic skills the MCAS tests. So the extra time was partly used to publish newspapers, take boat rides to the harbor islands, learn to play an instrument or develop one’s artistic talents.

The kids outperformed their peers in other settings because their instructors determined where they were deficient and focused on eliminating the deficiencies. The kids grew proud of overcoming their problems.

All the schools believed that excellent teaching produced excellent students. So the teachers as well as the kids were expected to improve. They collaborated; they helped one another; they got coaching; they got feedback from principals and fellow teachers.

Mostly unspoken in the celebration was the intention by virtually everyone in the room—most of them loyal Democrats—to undercut the teachers’ union, nipping at the edges through federal and state laws and mustering every tool they could find to put the children’s needs before the adults’. Maybe that was where the real innovation was.

In this celebration, charter and district schools stood side by side, bolstered by recent agreements to cooperate more fully.

One solution—vouchers—got no play in this crowd. Instead, they were interested in offering excellent instruction to all kids and much choice to families as the way to create excellence everywhere.

Except for extending the time kids spend in school, the strategies the schools applied cost little. The principal of one charter middle school, Excel Academy, said they were educating one of the highest-scoring group of students in the state on the same amount of money allotted to all kids in the Boston Public School system and paying their teachers competitively. Some of the after-school and other special programs had been funded by the men and women in the audience.

As good as all this sounded, the challenges are still massive. The buses, including those that roam around the city barely occupied, cost more than $70 million a year—money and children’s time that would be better spent on more productive pursuits.

Because each bus makes several runs a day some kids have to start school at 7:30 a.m. so they’re out at 1:30 p.m. No wonder parents clamor for after-school programs.

According to parents I spoke to, too many schools are still mediocre and uninspired, with a school day too short. It must be as unhappy for teachers as it is for kids in such schools.

The mayor came by in the middle of the celebration. He challenged the gathering to extend their efforts. “The next thing is birth to first grade,” he said, “Early childhood education is the most effective.”

He lamented that it was harder to get people behind such a plan since it takes a long time to see the results.

Then he urged the attendees, many of whom were heads of companies, to provide summer jobs. “We want to put 10,000 kids to work this summer,” he said.

The jobs may or may not appear, but the titans of industry and finance who were sitting in the room know that Boston has to have better schools. Otherwise their future employees will have to come from elsewhere.