Twins Sarah and Sylvia Price, two monsters in disguise at Lovecraft Middle School, are campaigning for student council with a secret plan to abduct the entire seventh grade, and Robert Arthur and his strange friends must stop their evil plot.

Sarah is afraid to start at a new school, but both she and the reader are in for a surprise when she gets to her class.

Havoc ensues as Mildred, hoping to find a cure for her klutziness, starts her third year at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, where she soon has a curling-iron catastrophe and gets on the bad side of a new teacher.

Class 507 is terrible, and one day, after a particularly disastrous science experiment, Ms. Bryce quits and walks out in the middle of class, and the school office never finds out--at first all the fifth graders enjoy goofing off, but after a few days that starts getting boring, and the students begin to realize that school without a teacher is not easy, cooperating is difficult, and keeping a secret is harder than they thought.

Throughout their fifth-grade year, a group of rambunctious students learns fable-like lessons from extraordinary activities, singing guinea pigs, and eccentric teachers, led by the inimitable Mr. Jupiter.

The Rotten School kids try to get rid of Mr. Skruloose, an extremely strict teacher.

"Cocoa's convinced someone is sabotaging her dance class. She demands Malcolm and Dandy find out who it is - or else! After getting kicked out of rehearsal, the boys meet the ghost of an old teacher who hates the new music and moves, and especially the noisy boys. Can the Ghost Detectors zap her before the dance recital is canceled?"--Publisher.

Ten-year-old Fred (short for Frederika) narrates the story of school and village life among the Athapascans in Alaska during 1948 when Miss Agnes arrived as the new teacher.

On his first day at his new school Jake Jones meets the new teacher, Mr. Hyde (very nice, but turns into a naughty imp when upset), Mrs. Blount, the principal (a nasty tyrant whose punishments involve hard labor), and his wild classmates in 5B--and since it is almost impossible not to break at least one of the 142 school rules (or all of them) he soon finds his school life descending into chaos.

"Being a new student at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children is crummy enough, but when Toby Wilcox is stuck in the fourth grade homeroom of Mrs. Ravenbach, a vainglorious tyrant who worships "the order and the discipline," he faces a much bigger challenge - fight back or be ground to goo in the gears of academic efficiency." -- Book jacket.