English learners: Struggling CT schools ignore a proven path

For-profit companies are making good private schools available even to Africa’s poor. They can do it – and can do it on an enormous scale – by hiring neighborhood residents to teach, and scripting out every word of every lesson on an e-reader.

Due to recent brain development research, educators are working to add more math education into pre-school and kindergarten classes. Studies show that children of this age are actually extremely receptive to numbers and learning geometry.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.

Preschoolers in the U.S. who misbehave are increasingly being expelled. In Connecticut, trained counselors educated teachers about how to deal with emotionally traumatized kids which reduced expulsions.

Can we improve the methods we use to teach math in schools — so that everyone develops proficiency? A grade-school math program is changing how children learn based on the assumption that all children can achieve a high level of understanding.

In Oakland, black males are almost as likely to be killed as they are to graduate high school. One school is giving them special classes with black mentors to better address their emotional needs and keep them in school.

Young black males in Oakland are suspended more frequently and graduate high school at a much lower rate than their peers. A charter school specifically designed for African American boys focuses on providing them with role models to create a supportive environment, combat the effects of trauma, and push them to succeed.

Preparing the young for elementary education is a priority to nurture reading and social skills. For 16 years, Tulsa Oklahoma has instituted a state funded preschool, staffed with teachers trained in early education. Tulsa’s Pre-K initiative has shown that their children are more prepared for literacy skills and math; however, maintaining the positive results is a long-term challenge.

Boston professors visit countries and homes of foreign students to better understand their culture and gain insights about how to better teach them. The goal is to reach across cultural divides to help a big part of the student population — emigres from faraway lands — that is plagued with low standardized test scores and high dropout rates. Accompanying photojournalism: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2015/09/12/seeking-cultural-connections/L3mIQAQM3v9YT9A2K4JliL/story.html

PowerMyLearning, a program that any student, parent, or teacher can use for free, helps students take ownership of their own learning. When most attention is being placed on teacher effectiveness, this program redirects those efforts toward students.