A Simple Way to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges

Gus the Bus, Magic Bus, El Busesito, and other traveling classrooms are working to fill the persistent preschool gap in Colorado's childcare deserts. Most days the mobile preschools park near apartment complexes or mobile home parks and offer instruction to neighborhood children. In the coming years, providers hope to be able to use the same quality ratings as stationary schools and expand from rural areas into Denver and other urban centers throughout the state.

Magnet schools in Alabama were created by the Board of Education as a way to combat white flight in the 1970's. Today, especially in Montgomery, magnet schools boast the smallest achievement gap between white and black students. Their success is attributed to a number of things, including a standardized admissions lottery that ensures diversity and a high degree of interest and participation from parents.

Despite comprising a third of the population, poor and minority students are drastically underrepresented in gifted education programs across the nation, even if their academic performance is on-par with their white peers. Federal Way Public Academy in Washington has re-examined its methods for finding academically talented kids and is changing the numbers.

Part 1 of the "Equity or Bust: Are Ontario's Public Schools a Model for Pennsylvania" Series: Ontario has become widely lauded for its education system, celebrated for both high performance and relatively smaller achievement gaps between wealthy and poor students, thanks to the concept of "equity." This manifests, in essence, as more funding per-pupil to the school boards that serve students who face the greatest obstacles. The model contrasts starkly to the school system in Pennsylvania, regarded as "the most inequitable in the nation.”

Educators in the Seattle area are making a move to desegregate schools by removing track-based course structures. Inspired by the work and research of one school in New York, Washington is seeing results in closing the achievement gap by blending general-education students with those in advanced courses, creating a stimulating environment for all and better opportunities for minority students.

To mitigate the pernicious effects of poverty on student success, nonprofit 'Blocks of Hope' in Colorado aims to provide both educational and social services to students and their families, with the goal of leveling the playing field.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.

Community colleges were originally designed to be affordable and accessible, yet the myriad pressures on students means that the best intentions often don’t lead to positive results. But the University of Central Florida and its partners are proving a new model called DirectConnect—heavy on individual attention and clear academic goals—that paves a surer path.

After implementing the International Baccalaureate curriculum, graduation rates at Seattle's historically underperforming Rainier Beach High School increased 25 percentage points from 2011 to 2015. In a city whose public schools are known for racial tracking in advanced classes, Rainier's programs are uniquely focused on serving its predominantly minority student body. With funding in jeopardy, in the coming years, Rainer will have to prove the worth of the programming.

Only 19 percent of Latino youth have completed an associate’s degree or higher, with 29 percent of African-American young people having done the same. The Making Waves Academy provides children of minority groups with specific counseling for personal problems as well as improved education to help them have a higher college graduation rate.