Rarely does a month go by without Des Moines being placed near the top of some list or another, whether for its affordable cost of living, low crime rate, strong work ethic or the keen intelligence of its residents. Those “best places to live” mentions are nice accolades to receive, but rarely do they tell us anything we don’t already know.

It’s refreshing, then, when national experts pick out something occurring quietly under the radar and hold it up as a best practice from which the rest of the nation can learn. Such is the case with the inclusion of the Downtown School in a revised and updated edition of “The Disney Way,” a book by Bill Capodaglia and Lynn Jackson, who have spent their careers studying Walt Disney and teaching a management theory based on his creative process of “dream, believe, dare, do.”

Downtown business leaders are familiar with the school because they were intimately involved in helping establish it and have long championed the idea of creating a school that is close to where parents work, rather than where they live. It differs from more traditional schools in other ways, too. Learning is integrated across several disciplines. For example, a study of water might include its properties (science), how to measure it (math), its importance in sustaining life (health), and where it’s plentiful and where it’s in short supply (geography). Success is determined not so much by arbitrary measurements like test scores but how well the students are able to present what they learned to their classmates.

The Downtown School was something of a gamble that has paid off and is contributing to a changing paradigm about education. With more households per capita in which both parents hold jobs, Iowa has special needs that the creators of the Downtown School recognized more than a decade ago: Parents want to be involved in their children’s educations and they also want to be good employees; they just need some help in achieving that balance.

The Disney “dare” now should be to see if those applications make sense at the city’s other schools.