Mobilizing the Playground Movement

In California, half of school-aged children are the children of immigrants. Among many other initiatives in the city, a community-wide training project in Fresno aims to improve how adults in the city work with students of immigrant families. One of the challenges of the renewed push for a bilingual approach - finding sufficient bilingual teachers after years of the state's English-only education policies.

In Zimbabwe, a diverse group of leaders are tackling the persistent barriers to quality education for girls. By providing menstrual products, distributing bikes for transportation, and changing the perception of female education in the community, a combination of grassroots and big-picture efforts are gradually bringing some of the 63 million girls out of school into the classroom.

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.

How can rural African children learn to read when there are no books in their languages? Save the Children helps kids to create their own books, creating a homemade library for their village.

Since implementing a “science of reading” curriculum, Sharswood school has seen its reading scores jump, with 43 percent of all students scoring proficient or advanced and and more than half of third grade students meeting the mark. Teachers says a big factor in the successful implementation has been the flexibility to tailor resources to each classroom and the support of an onsite literacy coach.

In an effort to better support its youngest learners, Mississippi implemented sweeping education reforms, including introducing a standardized “science of reading” curriculum, providing more teacher training and support with in-school literacy and math coaches, and holding back third-grade students who don’t meet their reading skills benchmarks. Over a decade, the number of students reading at grade level has climbed from 12 percent to 35 percent, and the state now ranks among the top ten nationally for fourth-grade reading scores.

After budget cuts and limited resources put a strain on students’ academics, Lingelbach Elementary focused on building community while also training teachers in the science of reading and providing more one-on-one support for students. The percentage of third graders passing English exams has since risen from 26 percent to 71 percent.

Through community events, direct outreach, and resource sharing, Philadelphia’s reading captains help local kids build early literacy skills while supporting families to make reading part of their daily home life.

To reach students who had stopped attending school, Nigeria set up “non-formal learning centers” in some states where children could attend lessons three days a week in both Hausa and English, giving them the foundational knowledge needed to reenter the public school system. Between 2016 and 2021, more than 31,000 children transitioned from non-formal learning centers to public primary schools.

The Sow a Seed for a Girl Child Development Initiative raises funds to help girls in Jos Local Government Area enroll in school, many of whom have never attended or had to drop out due to financial constraints. In the fall of 2023, the organization was able to offer support to 27 girls, including through targeted lessons to help them prepare over the summer.