Success for All started in its first school in 1987, but its history really begins much earlier. It grew out of a program of research and development going back to the mid-1970s, starting with basic research on cooperative learning strategies. By 1980, our group at Johns Hopkins University had learned how to harness the power of kids working with kids by structuring methods in which groups could succeed only if all of their members had mastered the academic material they were studying.