Can putting the least-experienced teachers in the highest-risk schools ever result in success?

“Grow your own” programs, like Reach University’s, are working to address teacher shortages, particularly in rural areas, by recruiting school employees who don’t have college or education degrees and giving them a chance to earn an undergraduate degree in education at just $75 a month. Participants take courses online and take 15 hours out of their work week to spend time observing and training in classrooms. So far 84% of all parishes across the state have signed up to take Reach trainees, which could put a significant dent in the statewide teacher vacancy issue.

Powered by a workforce made up exclusively of the formerly incarcerated and people experiencing homelessness, Philadelphia start-up company Graffiti Removal Experts gets paid to clean up signs of blight while giving people an employment opportunity they otherwise might lack. Besides cleaning up graffiti, the team removes stickers and fixes broken glass throughout Center City and surrounding neighborhoods. The company’s clients include neighborhood associations, property managers, and individual businesses who pay monthly or one-time fees that turn into $20-per-hour wages for the company’s employees.

A program called Future Male Minority Teachers of California at California State University recruits men of color from local communities in California and provides financial and emotional support to students throughout the process of becoming and practicing as a teacher.

To address Mississippi's teacher shortage, a nonprofit has started to look to the source of the problem--many would-be teachers are repeatedly failing to pass the teacher ceritifcation exam. Coupled with several new state policies, Regional Initiatives for Sustainable Education is offering tutoring and direction to candidates.

More students are moving away from the traditional undergraduate experience towards a step-by-step accumulation of traditional degree-based and nontraditional credentials. Casandra Horii of Caltech calls these "stackable credits" - "a more bite-sized piece of education that stands on its own and has value in the workplace.” Experts say this method will require a new degree of coordination between higher education institutions, credential providers, and employers.

One quarter of undergraduates attending American higher education institutions are parents; however, the number of campuses with childcare facilities has continued to decrease. Individual professors are incorporating new policies into their syllabi that allow kids to sit in on class when other arrangements fall through and mothers to leave class to breastfeed. "Letting kids in class is a welcoming gesture that can set the stage for or accompany the more systemic and substantive supports that student parents need for success," says the Institute of Women's Policy Research's executive director.

Dallas' Paul Quinn College is changing the dated perception of work colleges. At the first urban and historically black work college, students are graded on both academic and workforce performance. In the next few years, Paul Quinn hopes to expand its model into a national network of schools, with the goal of introducing students to corporate connections and offering an alternative to overwhelming student debt.

Too often people use standardized test scores as the only measure of how good a school system is. A new measure looks at the growth and proficiency of the students as a measure of performance and may be more accurate in comparing public schools across the USA.

While minority students in K-12 account for almost 50%, there are significantly fewer minority teachers. Most of the efforts are focused on recruitment but not on retention as teachers spend on average three years at a job. There are a few programs that are helping to increase retention by creating a collaborative community of teachers. However, a more systemic approach is needed.

Just 20 miles from Oklahoma, which has gotten national attention for teacher protests about low pay, Lincoln, Nebraska's schools are raising the bar by paying $10,000 more in annual wages. How are conditions for teachers so different in adjacent towns with such similar profiles?