A little-known program has lifted 9th grade performance in virtually every type of school

Middle-class children don’t regress as readers during the summer, because they go to the library, do educational activities, take classes - poor children, however, lose between one and two months in reading achievement. Springboard trains teachers for a summer enrichment program, and has now started to help them coach parents to help their children during the school year.

Students in a small town in Michigan are outperforming their peers statewide. Over half of the students are American Indian and many come from low-income families. Because the town's reservation can't be taxed, the school receives additional federal funding. And teachers have put it to good use - by hiring more staff, decreasing class sizes, and frequently evaluating students' progress. One fourth grader offered her own theory: "Well, everyone's accepted here for who they are, no matter if they're Irish, Native, African American or just French."

Georgia State University's predictive analytics system has helped students graduate by flagging at-risk students using a variety of factors, including college and high school grades, financial aid statuses, and more. While other universities attempt to scale the program to increase retention at their universities as well, serious concerns about privacy and surveillance persist, as do hesitations regarding the cost of expanding advisory services as Georgia State has done.

In a Ohio high school social studies class, U.S. Political Thought and Radicalism, the teacher invites representatives from the country's most extreme political groups, including the National Socialist Movement and the Weather Underground, to teach students how to hold a respectful discussion with others who hold differing perspectives. "Our teachers generally are like, 'You know what? Let's redirect to a different topic, because that one sounds like it's loaded with land mines. The idea of [the class] is let's explore all those land mines and talk about them."

In several small rural towns in Texas, mental health professionals from Texas Tech are offering telemedicine counseling to make up for a lack of counselors available in local middle and high schools. The Governor's office has now asked the successful school districts to develop a training program for teachers in other Texas districts in order to scale the model.

At one Boston public school, teachers are updating curricula to provide students with history lessons that contextualize current national debates about immigration policy.

At Capital City Public Charter School, students are graded based not only on academic skills but also social and emotional skills. The Washington D.C. school has a high graduation rate and college enrollment rate.

The Romani Education Fund in Slovakia is helping children from the Roma community, which has a history of social and economic disadvantages as well as being subject to ethnic discrimination, overcome challenges to finish high school and pursue higher education. The REF works by providing qualifying students with a stipend to pay for educational supplies, as well as providing school guidance and personal mentorship to help both students and parents overcome the social hurdles that impede the student's desire or ability to fulfill their potential.

At one Texas high school, members of Students Organizing for Anti-Racism (SOAR) facilitate and participate in talking circles to address conflict, provide mental health support, rebuild relationships, and redevelop social skills they lost during the pandemic. The circles draw on Indigenous traditions to offer a safe, structured space for expression that focuses on addressing harm rather than administering punishment.

Securecycle is a nonprofit working to reduce the number of young students not attending school in Ogun State, Nigeria. The organization collects old jeans to turn into bags and finds students who are, or will likely, drop out of school to teach them bag production and give them a scholarship to finish primary school.