All have gotten substantially better during the period shown.
Under the federal law, 700 schools that California believed were getting substantially better were counted last year as failing.
And as Mr. Russianoff pointed out, there are still plenty of ways for the system to get substantially better.
"We have tremendous volume, so at times we get substantially better deals than other shops, especially on previous seasons' stuff," said Drew Munster, who owns the sites.
Now the state has virtually taken over the day-to-day running of its poorest city, and Mr. Gillette, as he finishes his book, wonders how and whether things will ever get substantially better.
One of Mitch White's doctors, Gary Tunell of Texas Neurology, hopes that eventually, White will not have to take so much medicine, but Tunell cannot guarantee that White's symptoms will get substantially better.
But some new models get substantially better mileage that older ones, he said; for example, the 2013 Nissan Altima is rated at 31 miles per gallon, he said, compared with 27 miles per gallon for the 2012 model.
Analysts said they believed that the "beyond-the-box" strategy was sound but that the new markets were developing more slowly than Gateway expected and that the financial outlook could well get substantially worse before it got better.
But without serious security measures it could get substantially worse.
If they get substantially less, then the probability declines".
