Principal in the Classroom: Can New Orleans make it work?

A school in New Zealand took the rules out of recess. They found that when the kids were mentally engaged during play time activities they were less likely to have problems, such as bullying within the classroom.

Often social programs at schools fail because they are not implemented fully or over a long enough period. One school in Philadelphia attributes their success in decreasing violence to having a long-term principal, a stable teaching force, and formal training in anti-violence programs.

Some colleges think students are overwhelmed by the number of options they have to choose from—countless classes and extracurriculars are available on many campuses. Schools across the United States are experimenting with new approaches, ranging from choosing courseloads for freshmen to assigning counselors to meet regularly with students.

For students who are people of color, the first to attend college in their families, and from low-income families, the likelihood of finishing a four-year college degree is 12 percent. Wallin Education Partners pairs scholars, most of whom fall into at least one of these categories, in Minnesota with families who offer funding and mentoring support throughout students' entire college experience. For the 4500 students who earn scholarships through Wallin, the four-year completion rate is 92 percent.

To improve its consistently high truancy rates, last academic year Española Valley High School implemented a new truancy and dropout prevention program aimed at shaping up poor attendance. The results are yet to be determined — but debate still rages within the school about the best method for battling truancy.

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.

The true prize in education is a recipe that vaults low-income students into the upper echelons of achievement. A blue-collar town in Massachusetts says the key is something as basic as more time.

The number of American teens who excel at advanced math has surged, as new programs cater directly to the uppermost echelon of math students, training them for international competitions.

Many charter and private schools in the U.S. have replaced book-based learning and memorization with a do-it-yourself learning style. This is part of the national maker education movement which aims aims to help children believe in their own capabilities and problem solving skills.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.