Does class size matter? Research reveals surprises

The Cherry Creek School district is using apprenticeships to create a more racially diverse pipeline of K-12 educators in Colorado. High school juniors and seniors are paid to participate in the apprenticeship, and are able to earn college credit as well. This is one of the ways the district is working on having its workforce reflect its student bodies more accurately. Currently 85% of teachers are white, and half of its student body is kids of color. Now in its second year, the program has grown from an initial cohort of 12 youth apprentices to 26,

Chicago-area high school teachers are approaching the mental-toll of election cycles on their students by rethinking curricula. Some teachers are approaching election anxiety by hosting empathetic dialogues by addressing students' anxieties and exploring their individual powers. Students also completed lessons that required them to have conversations with the adults in their lives regarding general voting information. Other educators are placing emphasis on exploring media literacy and understanding online propaganda with students.

To fill a teacher professional development gap in India, several outside organizations have stepped up to offer instructors training in classroom management and pedagogy.

For a decade, Massachusetts has led the nation in student performance, ranking high internationally, too. What are they doing that we aren’t? Funding their schools, for one thing. But it’s also about how you spend the money.

The Summit Learning Program is an online program that offers personalized lessons in science, social studies, math, and English language arts for students in grades four through 12. “Nearly 400 schools use it across 40 states.” The Hechinger Report spent a year exploring the platform in schools, while there are some drawbacks there’s also evidence it works. In some schools, student test scores jumped after using Summit.

In the past few years, Durham's public schools have made significant strides, backed by a new superintendent intent on getting teachers and the whole community to buy into his plan. Frequent teacher evaluations, new hires, and marked efforts to change outside views of the school are at the heart of the plan.

Once classified as "needing improvement," Idaho's K-12 schools in Murtaugh successfully turned around their lagging math scores with the help of a state-sponsored professional development program. As part of the program, Idaho's four-year universities connect teachers with training and extra resources and provide spaces for collaborative lesson planning.

For the past four years, several rural Colorado school districts have experimented with alternative forms of evaluation that don't rely solely on the results of educational testing. Now, a proposed bill, with wide support, would provide financial and logistical support to these pilots.

Head Start, the biggest preschool program in the country (with roots in President Johnson's 1965 War on Poverty), is improving -- in the past decade, continued bipartisan support, new evaluation measures and periodic audits, and an increasingly educated teacher force have led to rising test scores.

The University of North Florida combines an emphasis on predictive analytics with a very human case management system to identify students who are at risk of dropping out and intervene appropriately. In the coming years, will other universities follow suit?