New York City's Public School on an Island

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.

Blue Engine, which places recent college grads as full-time teaching assistants in New York City public schools, is helping poor students thrive in college. They focus on small teacher-student ratios, frequent feedback for teachers, and a concentration on 'gateway' courses associated with success in college.

Half of U.S. farm workers are Hispanic, but few make it to leadership positions. A historically white non-profit, FFA, is creating equal education programs in California to increase leadership opportunities for minorities in agriculture.

Adolescent smoking remains a challenging health problem because of the allure of cigarette branding. Australia is piloting the transformation of cigarette packaging with a generic look that reduces the appeal of smoking. In Florida, the Truth campaign has exposed that cigarette companies targeted teenage consumers and, in response, created a set of new advertisements that presented the cigarette industry with transparency.

To decrease the chance of formerly incarcerated individuals relapsing and ending up back in the prison system, the J.F. Ingram State Technical College in Alabama offers correctional education and vocational programs. This training has aided those incarcerated with life skills for after their release, decreasing the likelihood that they will relapse and increasing the likelihood that they will better adjust to their community.

Huge numbers of students were getting suspension as punishment - until there was a nationwide push to rollback zero-tolerance policies instituted after the deadly Columbine High School shootings that emphasize harsh discipline for even minor misbehavior in favor of support-focused alternatives. The idea: Cultivate communication between teachers and students by gathering in weekly circles to discuss concerns and form one-on-one “harm circles” between students, parents and counselors when conflicts arise.

Fewer than one in four high-school graduates in the Sedro-Woolley and Meridian school districts, for example, go to four-year colleges. Just a little over half of all graduates in surrounding districts go to college at all. Now, the schools have begun to send college students into middle schools and high schools to mentor them and excite them to go to college.

African American boys were being treated less-than-equally by the Oakland Unified School District – a change of culture was implemented and the playing field leveled. Now, Minnesota is looking to adopt the same system that was started in Oakland by creating schools that are exclusively for African American males in hopes to help them reach higher standards of achievement.

When adults want to return to school, they face many challenges including the experience of long waitlists for classes, and poor relevance to the job skills they need for future employment. The Washington state community college system has started a program known as Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) that instead teaches in two parts: academic content and basic soft skills.

Well-trained teachers cannot be replaced solely by technology, as has been increasingly apparent at Carpe Diem schools, where students learn largely via computers enabled with educational software.