How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

Young people are graduating from high schools and not ready for college level work. Liz Willen describes different initiatives around the United States that have provided solutions for improving secondary education. She addresses the importance of STEM, role models for students, and project-based learning.

In an attempt to close a gap in graduation rates for Black students, campuses in the California State University system, including San Diego State University and Sacramento State University, have shifted hiring practices to improve diversity among faculty and staff, opened resource centers, and implemented new career development programs for Black students. Between 2016 and 2022, Sacramento State's Black graduation rate improved from 21st out of 22 campuses in the system to ninth in the system, though Black students there still graduate at lower rates than average.

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.

Small rural schools in New Hampshire achieved some of the state's highest reading scores by leveraging their size to create multi-grade classrooms, provide individualized support to all students, and build long-term student-teacher relationships. In result, these lower-income districts have outperformed expectations by the widest margins in the state.

A specialized software called AttendanceK12 helps school secretaries, attendance counselors, and administrators more easily track student absences so they can intervene with families sooner, even offering options to automatically send parents an email when students reach a certain threshold of missed school hours. School leaders consider the technology an important element of a strategy that has helped reduce chronic absenteeism rates.

A state takeover of a failing Massachusetts school district was defined by listening, collaboration, and a new merit-based teacher compensation system. Six years later, dropout rates are down and graduation rates are up. What can Providence's schools learn from the Lawrence model?

Community colleges are increasingly leveraging technology to engage students and keep them on track to graduation. Personalized messages about deadlines, information about class performance from professors, and texts about homework resources all contribute to a "fuller picture" of students and empower administrators with the information to intervene when necessary.

In India, an intense gender disparity has continued to develop in the sphere of educational attainment. This article discusses new innovations, both public and private, seeking to bridge this attainment gap and increase female enrollment in schools.

Deer Isle, Maine, struggled to keep students in school; many students felt that a diploma was unnecessary, since they could drop out and join the lobster fishing industry. But the local high school found a creative solution to keep students engaged and ensure more opportunities in what can be a volatile industry. They redesigned courses to suit the interests of students, moving to project-based learning that explores traditional academic topics through fishing and marine themes, such as studying geometry through boat building. The approach has helped increase graduation rates by more than 30 percent.

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.