As state seeks literacy answers, small rural schools offer clues to student success

To enhance learning, Smart Primary School has integrated peer-mentoring in its curriculum through the Buddy program. Each student in the first grade is paired with a fifth grader who tutors and guides the younger one with lessons and activities for the next four years. The program has not just helped them improve their language, communication, and mathematics skills, but also helped enhance the school atmosphere through the trust and bonding students build in the process.

The rate of students dropping out of college or failing to complete their degree in the allotted time has soared in the United States, and experts are discovering that one of the causes is simply that students feel isolated, discouraged, and overwhelmed. A study by Ideas42 across a number of universities revealed that fairly simple behavioral "nudging" - or the process of providing tiny but regular interventions and encouragement through systems like text messages - can have a drastic impact on a student's likelihood of success.

With arts funding on the cutting board across the country, students can lack motivation to go to school and the creative resources for critical thinking skills. In Brooklyn, Ascend Learning is an inner-city network of public charter schools that offer a rich arts environment to teach Common Core and the student academic performance has surpassed other schools in the neighborhood.

Individualized advice and counseling, boosted by software tools, is helping hundreds more students earn degrees and certificates each year at Walla Walla Community College in Washington.

As school poverty rates goes up, learning and test scores fall. At Gildo Ray elementary school in Washington state uses a teaching method called director or explicit instruction, in which children learn from a structured approach to teaching with teacher-guided practice. Gildo Ray’s test scores in math and reading are among the highest in the state.

A Ukrainian community transformed a rural high school biology classroom into a fully-equipped research lab with field stations and youth training programs, enabling students to conduct real scientific experiments and inspiring career choices in environmental fields. The broader community's relationship with nature has also shifted from resource extraction to ecosystem stewardship.

Teachers at John Street School in Franklin Square, New York, are using artificial intelligence-powered tools to craft lesson plans that are tailored to the needs of each student, which they might not have the time to do otherwise. They can quickly adjust a lesson for different reading levels or write worksheets in multiple languages, for example.

High-dosage or high-impact tutoring is done in 45-minute group sessions throughout the school day at Tennessee elementary schools to help students fill gaps left in their learning during the pandemic.

Schools in Mesa, Arizona, are using the team teaching model to boost teacher morale and fill gaps in staff. The model allows teachers to work together to teach a large group of students in one big classroom rotating between one-on-one instruction, small groups, and large-group lectures.

Teacher home visits have been hailed as a strategy to improve student performance; however, in areas where students regularly move across district lines, a regional home-visit approach may be necessary. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has emerged as one model.