A wave of Massachusetts students embrace unschooling, self-directed learning

Mat-Su Central is a hybrid homeschool that provides a flexible, personalized learning environment for both students and their families. Each student receives an individual learning plan that takes the student’s strengths and weaknesses into account, while still ensuring they’re meeting course requirements for graduation. As a result of the pandemic and increased rates of bullying and anxiety among students, enrollment in this hybrid homeschool option has quadrupled over the past 20 years.

Despite a deplorably small budget and an ominous lack of support from the government, the Union Public Schools district of Tulsa, Ok is achieving the incredible. Though many of the students are minorities and hail from low-income families, Union boasts exceptional graduation rates and a remarkable STEM-focused curriculum. Their success stems from a comprehensive focus on each individual child within the classroom and beyond, creating a hub for the greater community that includes resources like child care for teen mothers and a student-run garden.

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.

The Communities in Schools program (CIS) places trained navigators in low-income schools to provide wraparound social support, helping students and families access public benefits, cover emergency expenses, provide behavioral counseling and address barriers that prevent students from succeeding academically. The non-profit has been helping students for 50 years, serving 2 million children across 26 states, and has seen significant academic and economic outcomes, including increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates.

To help address low school attendance and retention among girls, Kano’s state government launched a transportation initiative with buses that bring students to and from school for N50 per trip, a much lower cost than arriving by commercial rickshaw. Both students and teachers report that the program has made it easier and less costly to arrive at school on time.

Free school meal programs help improve students’ health, support better academic performance and combat hunger and food insecurity. Several states have passed legislation to keep free meal plans active after federal waivers ran out in 2022. In Michigan alone in October 2023, the 3,459 school meal sites across the state served 10,064,686 free breakfasts and 17,659,809 free lunches.

A Bessemer Elementary School, a telemedicine program launched in 2021 is combatting high rates of absenteeism by providing health care in school. Students can log into a computer at school and receive care, then head back to class rather than having to miss school for doctor visits or sick days. Since the program launched, absenteeism at the school fell from 49% during the 2021-2022 school year to 37% last year.

The KNOSK secondary school is working to reduce the number of out-of-school youth in Nigeria by providing students with a quality education for a daily fee much lower than other school options. The school offers various payment plan options and gives the students uniforms, lunch, and sanitary products.

Back in 1988, Bina Sheth Lashkar, started noticing that students who lived in Slums were dropping out at high rates because they had to work to support their families. So, Bina and her colleague created Door Step School.“If children can’t go to the school, let the school come to them.” What began as a class of 25 students has now evolved to 200 centers in Mumbai and Pune, and a schools-on-wheels project.

In most "gifted" programs across the U.S., students are predominantly middle income and white, regardless of the variation in demographics between districts. Since the 1990s, Miami public schools have made it their quest to defy this trend and identify overlooked students who may be still learning English as a second language or whose potential may not be identified by traditional tests designed to find "gifted" students. In Miami, low-income and ESOL students take a different test than peers designed to account for certain stressors not present in other students' lives. Can Washington learn from this model?