This article describes the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS). The purpose of the NETDS is to channel high performing teacher education students to disadvantaged schools. This paper is based on the authors' collective, critical self-reflection on designing and implementing NETDS at University of New England over the last three years. The authors use the taxonomy of three different ideological approaches—conservative, liberal and critical—to school reform as a heuristic device for their self-reflection.