Lessons for Rochester: Failed Bronx school becomes coolest place in town

Several private colleges are considering an alternative to traditional student grants and loans - Income Share Agreements (ISAs) - in which colleges or outside capital sources provide loans to students with the promise that students will pay a percentage of their income with no interest for a set period of time after graduation. Critics argue that the arrangement will simply add to existing student debt and favor students in higher-paying math and science majors, programs in which minorities lack proportionate representation. Can colleges adjust the financing model to take into account these concerns?

Washington state boasts one of the country's most established and successful dual-credit programs, allowing students to earn college credits while still in high school (at no cost). Some participants even graduate high school with an associates degree, significantly cutting potential student loans. Now the nationally recognized program is turning to face its own limitations - how can it increase access for low-income students, who only made up 5 percent of the 2016-2017 cohort?

Teachers for Teachers, is a US program that is educating untrained teachers in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Around 550 refugee primary-school teachers have been trained through the program. Refugees form about 85 percent of the teachers in the camp. They have to deal with little resources, no training, and can teach up to 300 students. “I know how to prepare schemes of work and interact with my students. I can see results. Our students here are now performing well in national exams.”

Group therapy has helped women experiencing depression in poor communities in Kampala. Since 2014, more than 25,110 women have met in small groups with trained peer facilitators, and after completing the program about 86 percent say they are no longer depressed.

Research shows that prolonged feelings of loneliness can have unhealthy outcomes, and the likelihood of experiencing loneliness increases as a person ages. To combat this, many technology companies are trying a host of solutions targeted at senior citizens that includes tools such as interactive robots as well as an app that employs college students to acts as "grandchildren on demand.”

In Wilmington, Delaware, Gaye Harley repurposes her hospital's operating room wraps, the oversize sheets of synthetic material used to package instruments, into portable maps for the homeless. Instead of disposing of the materials, she has urged the hospital to recycle them into nearly 100 mats and counting. They have also used the mats to make tote bags, which they distribute with donated socks, also to the homeless.

An ed-tech researcher continues to investigate the success of a study that looked into the effectiveness of "crowdsourcing homework tips." In the study, the homework tips were pre-written by teachers for students to access during homework time, and the results of the study saw that students who used the tips were 58% likelier to solve the next problem with no help.

Rochester School District previously used hotspots on buses to help students traveling to extracurricular events, but once the pandemic showed how many families were struggling to stay virtually connected, the buses were turned into traveling hotspots for different neighborhoods. The district was able to get all but 20% of its student population connected and is looking for more ways to minimize the digital divide.

The Student View is a program helping youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to learn more about misinformation and navigating the media landscape. The program has been able to expand to 20 cities in the United Kingdom to provide 72 pop-up school newsrooms.

Inside Safe addresses the significant homelessness crisis in the city by traveling to encampments and offering people hotel rooms to stay in where they are connected with permanent housing and other necessary resources, like mental health care. Hotel rooms provide people with a safe space to heal and rest while working with a case worker to find housing. The initiative has so far moved 1,373 people into hotel rooms and 77 of them have moved into permanent housing.