Five-and-a-half years ago, against the advice of his wife and his academic colleagues, Samuel C. Stringfield stepped out of his ivory tower. The then-50-year-old education researcher, a nationally known expert on school improvement, became a member of the Baltimore city school board. Until the time came when he left the board and the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk, located at Johns Hopkins University, for the University of Louisville in Kentucky. At Louisville, he is now a distinguished university scholar and the co-director of the school's Nystrand Center of Excellence in Education. This article discusses the roles he played on the Baltimore city school board and the University of Louisville. In this article, the author discusses the lessons that Stringfield learned from his unusual vantage point as a researcher in the nitty-gritty world of urban school board politics.