For years now, we’ve been jealous of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “Jealousy List” — the outlet’s regular tribute to the best news, profiles and scoops published by competitors. (Be sure to .) And for a second straight year, we’re paying the ultimate compliment in stealing the concept outright, applying it this time to the universe of education journalism. There were so many important, inspiring and incisive features published last year, features and scoops that changed the way we look at education policy and practice.

Below (in no particular order) are 19 important articles we wish we had published in 2019. Hope you’ll help us revive them this morning and share them to readers who would appreciate:

The New York Times — : In November, The New York Times’s Erica Green documented the unfathomable level of unmet need among the 30,000 Flint, Michigan, schoolchildren exposed to lead in their drinking and bathing water. The subsequent increase in the number of children diagnosed with neurological or behavioral problems is threatening to overwhelm the city’s education system, deep in crisis from a student exodus that has reduced enrollment from 50,000 to 4,500 since the 1960s. With teacher starting pay hovering around $35,000 a year, a special education identification rate of 28 percent and no cavalry on the horizon, Green tells us, suspensions, expulsions and dropouts are on the rise. .

Newsday — : Following an eye-opening three-year investigation, a team at Newsday uncovered how�� across Long Island, one of America’s most racially segregated suburbs. In Part 11 of the must-read package, reporter Olivia Winslow investigates how real estate agents “sell schools as much as houses,” recommending to house hunters which school districts they should buy into — and which they should avoid. The story is a prime example of how housing policy is de facto education policy, and how discussions of school quality can become a proxy for race. , as well as the .

Los Angeles Times —��: Avoiding gangs, gunfire and aggressive dogs while navigating catcalls, bus schedules and former crime scenes are all part of a day in the life of these Los Angeles high school students. Sonali Kohli of the Los Angeles Times documents three students’ daily commutes to school, showing how violence pervades their childhoods. While much of the national attention has been focused on school shootings, which are quite rare, Kohli offers a close-up of how everyday violence and trauma affects students, who frequently hear gunshots and pass memorials to fallen friends on the way to school.��.

USA Today —��: “African-American girls are often unfairly viewed as hypersexualized, more dangerous than their peers and in need of more control. Educators penalize them for subjective infractions such as ‘being distracting’ or ‘having an attitude.’ They are twice as likely as black boys to be disciplined for ‘disobedience.’” USA Today’s Monica Rhor compiles the research on the disparities confronting black girls who, in addition to the aforementioned biases, are at a young age and of dropping out of school or being held back. The data is damning — but not so heart-rending as learning how the institutionalized racism affected C’alra Bradley, a young Texas woman with a tragic backstory. .

The Chicago Tribune — : There’s no ingenious, groundbreaking premise behind this piece. It’s just an intimate, closely reported, unshakable profile of a black male teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, where fewer than 700 out of 21,000 instructors are black men. Tribune reporter Ted Gregory followed Jonathan White, a mid-career former graphic designer, through his first few months teaching sixth grade in a racially mixed classroom. The story touches on themes that will be familiar to education observers — the scarcity of teachers of color and the mounting research pointing to their value to black students — but it succeeds most as a multi-generational portrait of black men striving to lift up their families, their communities and other people’s kids. .

The Boston Globe —��: The idea was genius, and so was the execution. A Boston Globe team spearheaded by Malcolm Gay, Eric Moskowitz and Meghan E. Irons contacted almost all of the city’s from a three-year span to find out whether the reality of their futures was as shiny as the promise. What they found was sobering. Upon graduating from high school, two dozen said they wanted to become doctors, . More than a decade later, 40 percent earn less than $50,000, four have and one prison. Using an interactive layout interspersed with intimate videos, the Globe’s stories paint a vivid picture of the depth of the inequities between Boston’s students and their suburban neighbors, as well as the seemingly insurmountable obstacles those multiple disparities create. .

THE CITY & Chalkbeat —��: Amid this reporting on the vast special education landscape, THE CITY and Chalkbeat produced a standout piece in September that homed in on the plight of a subset of students: learners with dyslexia. Writers Alex Zimmerman and Yoav Gonen used the recent opening of a school for dyslexic students on Staten Island — the only public school of its kind in the state, spearheaded by desperate parents — to exemplify the district’s failure to cater to these students’ needs in traditional public school settings. It also tied in the broader “reading wars,” and how inconsistencies in how schools teach children to read has only exacerbated the situation. .

The Philadelphia Inquirer — : Reporter Lisa Gartner investigates a troubling pattern of abuse at the Glen Mills Schools, a prestigious reform school for boys in suburban Philadelphia. Serious violence at the school has been an open secret for decades, with school staff using egregious tactics — including threats — to keep abuse under wraps. After the newspaper investigation was published, the state’s Department of Human Services revoked the school’s license to operate for “gross incompetence, negligence and misconduct.” .

U.S. News & World Report — : The higher education apocalypse is coming, U.S. News’s Lauren Camera warns. The sudden closure of dubious for-profit colleges gets the most ink, but an increasing number of small, nonprofit liberal arts colleges are closing, and even legacy research institutions are contemplating a future with fewer students. Half of all colleges in the country could close or go bankrupt in the next decade, researchers say. The culprit? A lower birth rate spurred by the Great Recession means fewer future students. Camera centers the story in New England, ground zero for this coming apocalypse, with its glut of colleges and nationally low birth rates. .

ProPublica — : If, like some, you followed the 2018 college admissions scandal with a mix of sickness and schadenfreude, you might be familiar with some of the players involved: Rick Singer, the private “admissions consultant” who concocted a scheme to bribe college coaches and SAT proctors to get rich kids into Yale, Stanford and Wake Forest; Lori Laughlin, the former Full House star who allegedly paid half a million dollars to win her daughters a place at USC; and Morrie Tobin, the fraudster-turned-informant whose squealing got everyone caught. But you probably haven’t met Adam Langevin. He’s a former high school tennis star who watched a less-gifted classmate get recruited to Georgetown through Singer’s scam. In telling his story, ProPublica’s Doris Burke and Daniel Golden masterfully bring the public corruption of Varsity Blues to the human level. .

The Atlantic — “”: This lengthy essay by The Atlantic’s George Packer was probably the most disputed work of education commentary last year. Exquisitely and tendentiously crafted, it tells the story of Packer’s discomfort with the progressivism on offer at his son’s sought-after Brooklyn elementary school, where gender-neutral bathrooms were instituted with little community input and educators seemed to encourage parents to opt their children out of state testing. For Packer, the heated PTA meetings became a microcosm for a dangerous new orthodoxy emerging in the late-Obama era, nourished by identity politics and petty power struggles. Critics took aim at the piece for caricaturing the goals of New York schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, and it’s fair to point out that the school in question is wildly atypical of the rest of the district. But it’s indisputably, and predictably, a fantastic piece of writing. .

The Washington Post —��: “The story of Shaker Heights shows how moving kids of different races into the same building isn’t the same as producing equal outcomes,” Laura Meckler writes. Decades of integration efforts in this utopian town haven’t meant equal results for black and white students, and small dust-ups over race linger. Meckler, a Shaker Heights native, also weaves in her own experience growing up in the town. .

The New York Times —��: An obituary might seem like an odd choice for a jealousy list, but it’s a beautifully written tribute to a woman who made an incredible difference to the education of American women and girls. Katharine Seelye’s piece details Sandler’s work to get Title IX passed, from opportunities she was barred from as a child and university professor, to her work with congressional leaders to pass the legislation, to her efforts to apply it more broadly. “Title IX turned out to be the legislative equivalent of a Swiss Army knife,” a friend said. “It opened up opportunities in so many areas we didn’t foresee, and [Sandler] laid the essential groundwork for it all.” .

THE CITY —��: New York City’s massive special education system has long been besieged by criticism for failing to evaluate and provide timely, individualized supports to tens of thousands of students. But local outlet THE CITY further exposed the “crisis” in May, with reporter Yoav Gonen conducting an external review and analysis of a state-commissioned report to reveal that special education complaints have skyrocketed in recent years — jumping 51 percent between the 2014-15 and 2017-18 school years alone. This article also appears to be the tip-off of a diligent and damning reporting collaboration between THE CITY and Chalkbeat’s New York bureau this year, which has unveiled�� to help students with disabilities and a severely��, among other findings.��

The Marshall Project —��: In June, high school senior Spencer Cliche and the staff at The Graphic, the student newspaper of Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts, published an investigation revealing that their school used prison labor to reupholster school theater seats on the cheap. Eli Hager’s feature in The Marshall Project both celebrates the student journalists who uncovered the practice and examines the ethics of using inmates, who are sometimes paid less than a dollar an hour, to cover gaps in education funding. Within a day of the story’s publication, the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District superintendent wrote to parents to say the district would not use prison labor in the future. As Hager noted, the students’ reporting has the “real-world impact that many adult journalists only dream of.”

The Boston Globe — : They go to a high-performing school in the suburbs, get good grades, are readily accepted to top colleges and seem destined for greatness. But then the challenges sparked by socioeconomic status undercut their dreams. and Sarah Carr dive into the suburban school conundrum, where hugely successful districts are nevertheless ill-equipped to address wide-ranging inequalities. The Boston Globe illuminates stark data with a robust analysis and the voices of those directly affected; reading this story, we walked away even more committed to check in on students from schools where disparities are less expected. .

ProPublica & Chicago Tribune —��: A devastating report by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune about the use of school seclusion rooms across Illinois: “In the nearly 50,000 pages of reports reporters reviewed about Illinois students in seclusion, school workers often keep watch over children who are clearly in distress. They dutifully document kids urinating and spitting in fear or anger and then being ordered to wipe the walls clean and mop the floors.” In addition to examining public records, a team of reporters interviewed more than 120 parents, students and school officials about seclusion, which was often used — in violation of state law — to punish students for minor infractions. The investigation had an almost����, sparking an emergency ban on isolated timeouts and leading officials to promise reforms to seclusion and restraint practices in schools.��.

The Washington Post — : As school districts discuss whether to arm teachers in the wake of mass school shootings, reporter Kyle Swenson explores how the decision weighs on educators who sign up. Set in politically conservative Vincent, Ohio, the story features one district’s efforts to implement the nerve-racking decision to place guns in the hands of teachers. Though arming teachers has become a political flashpoint nationally, the story offers a compelling inside look at how one school district implemented the controversial policy. .

The New York Times —��: New York City’s homeless student population is enough to fill Yankee Stadium twice over — but reporting on this group of 114,000 at-risk students, or 1 in 10 of the district’s 1.1 million kids, can often be simplified to data points and annual reports. Eliza Shapiro from The New York Times took a more humanistic approach, narrating a day in the life of a homeless boy and girl with the help of photographer Brittainy Newman in November. The resulting photo essay, which follows the two students from the moment they wake up until the sun sets, puts a face to the instability and emotional trauma — but also the resilience and hope — of homeless students districtwide.��.

Every week here at ����Ӱ��, we spotlight a new “74 Interview” — a memorable conversation with an educator, expert, advocate or innovator that deepens our understanding of the challenges facing — and being overcome — by schools across the country. Throughout 2019, we published more than 30 longform interviews with key people in the field; here are 15 of the top standouts, in terms of popularity, response and depth of knowledge. (Get every 2020 interview delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter)

Researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings on Culturally Relevant Teaching, the Role of Teachers in Trump’s America & Lessons From Her Two Decades in Education Research

Gloria Ladson-Billings remembers the first time she learned that an African American could graduate from Harvard University: She was in Ethel Benn’s fifth-grade class in Philadelphia. That realization — and Benn’s excellent teaching — set her on a path to find out what makes a great teacher. Since the 1990s, Ladson-Billings has been studying and writing about culturally relevant teaching and what it takes to successfully educate all students, especially the children of color so often left behind. At the core of her educational philosophy are three components of culturally responsive education: academic success, cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness. Teachers must accept responsibility for bringing all three into their classrooms, she says. Ladson-Billings spoke to ����Ӱ�� about how teachers can talk to students about current events, the difference between integration and desegregation, and the hallmarks of being a culturally relevant teacher. (Read the full interview)

Teacher of the Year Finalists on Setting Priorities, Changing Policy and Taking On a More Political Role

The National Teacher of the Year has become an increasingly prominent — and political — position, with the 2016 honoree now a member of Congress and the 2018 winner challenging the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Carolyn Phenicie sat down with this year’s finalists — Donna Gradel, a science teacher from Oklahoma; Kelly Harper, a third-grade teacher from Washington, D.C.; Danielle Riha, a middle-grades teacher from Alaska; and Rodney Robinson, a teacher at a Virginia juvenile justice center — to talk about how they see the role, their planned platforms and more. (Read the full interview)

Authors Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine on What the Best HS Classrooms Have in Common — Mastery, Identity & Creativity

After visiting dozens of high schools for a project that started out as an attempt to find schools that were imparting 21st century learning, authors Sarah Fine and Jal Mehta had to retool their research. They had found deeper learning — students intrinsically motivated to master a skill or subject — but most often in isolated pockets where a skillful teacher had, for reasons of his or her own, purposefully found ways to empower students. The product of their research, a book titled In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School, takes readers inside the schools where Fine, who teaches at the storied High Tech High’s new graduate teacher training program, and Mehta, who is on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, sought clues. In a 74 Interview with Beth Hawkins, they talk about the three elements present in classrooms where the deepest teaching was taking place — and how to get more of it. (Read the full interview)

WATCH — A Brown v. Board Oral History: Cheryl Brown Henderson on Why Her Father Did Not Willingly Join the Historic Lawsuit and ‘Mom Was the Tipping Point’

Cheryl Brown Henderson is one of the three children of the late Rev. Oliver L. Brown, namesake of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (KS). In this interview, Brown Henderson recounts her personal experience with segregated schools and the story of how Brown v. Board of Education came to be. Brown Henderson is founding president of The Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, established in 1988, and owner of Brown & Associates, an educational consulting firm that she established in 1984. Learn more about the Browns and the five cases that were ultimately merged into Brown v. Board and see more testimonials from the families who changed America’s schools at our site: The74Million.org/Brown65. (Watch the full interview)

Wisconsin Governor and Former State Schools Chief Tony Evers on Equitable School Funding, His GOP Foes & Hitting Pause on Private School Choice

Tony Evers, the former Wisconsin schools superintendent and head of a key education advocacy group during ESSA negotiations, was well known in the education world even before he was elected governor this fall. Evers, who narrowly bested longtime Republican governor Scott Walker, released his first budget proposal, which includes an additional $1.4 billion in education spending over two years, primarily targeted toward low-income students and special education services. “It’s a pretty simple theory of action: If a student is in need of an extra lift, and if that extra lift costs more money, we need to pay for it,” he said. The Democrat is also fighting with state Republicans over his desire to “take a breath” on private school choice. Read his conversation with Carolyn Phenicie. (Read the full interview)

Priscilla Chan on Supporting Whole-Child Education, Nurturing Diverse Scientists and Measuring Success Beyond Math and Reading

Priscilla Chan may lead one of the country’s most influential education philanthropies now, but she can still vividly recall what it felt like to be the child of poor, immigrant parents, who never felt like she fit in and whose first job at age 6 was family translator. Amid those struggles, Chan recognized that she was still lucky to attend good public schools, to see a doctor when she was sick and to have teachers “who really cared about me and showed me how I could succeed.” Chan spoke at the ASU GSV summit in April, and between that appearance and announcing a $6.9 million grant to help underrepresented students pursue STEM in college, she sat down with 74 contributor Richard Whitmire. The pediatrician and former teacher talked about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s support of whole-child education and how it can lead, she said, not just to success in school, but to “living a fulfilled, purposeful life.” (Read the full interview)

Howard Fuller on Schooling Elizabeth Warren About Charters, African-American Families, School Choice & Her Education Plan

With opposition to public charter schools surging among Democratic presidential candidates, a network of black and brown parents raised money and chartered buses to take their school choice advocacy to Atlanta, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren followed the most recent debate with an event honoring black women’s historic role in civil rights protests. And protest the members of the Powerful Parent Network in the audience did. With them was longtime school choice advocate Howard Fuller, who is determined to make sure Democratic hopefuls know there’s a racial divide in public opinion about charter schools. Fuller participated in the backstage conversation Warren had with organizer and grandmother Sarah Carpenter and other Powerful Parent Network members. In this 74 Interview, he tells Beth Hawkins he doesn’t think Warren — who after the conversation with Carpenter was forced to clarify that one of her children attended private school — saw the disconnect between her celebration of black women’s legacy of protest and her stance on what they see as their right to self-determination. (Read the full interview)

University of California President and Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on DACA, Title IX and the Value of College

In the United States, roughly 43 million people have outstanding student loan debt, totaling nearly $1.6 trillion. Such a startling burden raises a big question: Is the high price of college worth it? For University of California President Janet Napolitano, who previously served as secretary of homeland security, the answer is a resounding yes. For her, it comes down to simple economics: College graduates tend to earn more money over the course of their working lives. Ahead of her appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, where she discussed the value of college, among other topics, Mark Keierleber caught up with Napolitano to discuss a range of hot-button issues, from the college admissions scandal to campus sexual misconduct. On the value of college, she pointed to its crucial role in social mobility. “The one tried-and-true tactic that has worked over American history,” she said, “is access to a quality public higher education.” (Read the full interview)

Do Standards and Project-Based Learning Go Hand in Hand? Prof. Nell Duke Says Yes, & Looks at the Best & Worst of PBL

Professor Nell K. Duke has seen her fair share of terrible project-based learning: take-home work, little student collaboration, assignments that have nothing to do with academic standards. But she’s also seen some great examples, where months-long projects allow students in high-poverty schools to create real changes in their communities and make significant academic gains while doing so. The research on project-based learning is still new, but schools across the country have been eager to adopt this model in an effort to teach 21st century skills and better engage their students. Here’s what we know about good project-based learning — and what researchers are still looking to learn. (Read the full interview)

Pulling All the Levers — Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson on Getting More Students to and Through College

A sex abuse scandal, a budgetary cliff the size of Dover, a big-shouldered political environment — Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson has challenges. But she’s also got a wave of good news regarding graduation and college attainment to ride. Jackson answers to a mayor who was elected, in part, on campaign promises to reverse course in the nation’s third-largest school district. But as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that Jackson will remain in the job, at least for now, the homegrown CEO has successful strategies to build on. Graduation rates, college attainment and persistence rates, high school success levels, career credential completion — a host of indicators suggest her grads’ postsecondary options are up. In a 74 Interview, Jackson talked about her own path to college as a CPS grad and how her time teaching in the district informs the strategies she hopes to build on. (Read the full interview)

Testing Anxiety, Boredom & Guesses: What Expert Steven Wise Has Learned About Exams and ‘Rapid-Guessing Behavior’ — and What That Tells Him About Your Child’s Score

Did you pick answer B or C on all the multiple-choice questions? Did you answer in mere seconds? Were you consistent in your wild inconsistency? Chances are the folks who designed the adaptive computer assessment that your school uses to diagnose missing student skills also reveals whether the kids are disengaged — and maybe even why. Steven Wise, a senior research fellow at the nonprofit NWEA, whose computer-based MAP is the granddaddy of adaptive assessments, is an expert on “rapid-guessing behavior,” its causes and what educators might be able to do to promote student engagement — the precursor to getting valid test results. Wise talked to Beth Hawkins about his unusual specialty. (Read the full interview)

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Freedom Scholarships, Why Parents Deserve More School Options & the ‘Noisy Status-Quo-Protecting Cabal’ Fighting Her Agenda

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos frequently seems uncomfortable with the bully pulpit (Exhibit A: grizzly bears) and hasn’t always shined in appearances before the media (See Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes). So it should come as no surprise that she seldom grants interviews. But in a sitdown with ����Ӱ��, DeVos showed a different side. She evangelized on the gospel of what she called “education freedom” and pushed back against its critics — including some House Democrats, the national leadership of the NAACP and even the media. She said they are “yelling louder than they have for a long time” and lambasted those “keeping kids from having a better chance and a better future.”

DeVos described her mission as secretary simply: “I have continued to advocate for over three decades for parents who have not been able to make choices for their kids’ education — decisions that wealthy and connected parents have been able to make for decades. That’s one of the main reasons I’m in this job.” In a wide-ranging conversation with reporter Esmeralda Fabian Romero and Executive Editor Laura Greanias, she also discussed education for immigrants and Latino families, and she attempted to explain one of her recent school choice proposals, Education Freedom Scholarships, in language parents can understand. (Read the full interview)

Author and Harvard Scholar David Perkins on What Traditional Classroom Teachers Can Learn From Science Fairs, Backyard Sports & ‘Whole Game’ Learning

Harvard Graduate School of Education emeritus scholar David Perkins drew his inspiration for his “playing the whole game” approach to education from afterschool activities, including project-based undertakings such as drama, debate and sports. A co-founder of Harvard’s Project Zero, he began exploring the idea while teaching graduate students, looking for “a fresh perspective on how we might imagine learning and what vision of learning might empower students to do something besides tackle the test or essay at the end of the unit.” The approach, he says, suggests that students learn best with real work that resembles what they will likely encounter outside of school. (Read the full interview)

Professor Rucker Johnson on How School Integration Helped Black Students — and How Much More Is Possible When It’s Paired With Early Education & Spending Reforms

There’s a persistent — and inaccurate —belief that after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Americans tried hard to integrate schools and it just didn’t work. In his�� book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, University of California, Berkeley, professor Rucker Johnson instead documents the improved academic and adult life outcomes of black students who experienced integrated schools as compared with their peers who didn’t. The positive effects of integration are multiplied by school funding reforms and high-quality preschool, he argues. Read his whole interview with Carolyn Phenicie. (Read the full interview)

Law Professor Jack Coons on Rethinking School Funding, Restoring Authority to Low-Income Families Through Education and His Role in the Historic Serrano v. Priest Cases

A law professor by training, Jack Coons was a fixture on the education landscape in California for decades and — unbeknownst to most — an influential figure in public education nationally. He litigated the three landmark Serrano v. Priest cases, which challenged California’s school funding structure on the grounds that its reliance on local property taxes created gross financial inequities between wealthy and poor districts. Andy Rotherham and ����Ӱ��’s Emmeline Zhao traveled to Coons’s Berkeley, California, home to talk about the landscape of public education, past, present and future. Read the top takeaways here — and then watch key interview excerpts below:

Go Deeper: Get the latest education news and analysis – and every single 2020 longform interview – delivered straight to your inbox; sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Nationally, the news of 2019 was dominated by the seemingly endless presidential campaign and the highly partisan debate over whether to impeach President Trump. Education often struggled to find a voice. But outside the Beltway, school news dominated the headlines. Chicago reckoned with a school sexual misconduct scandal that spanned more than a decade. The Palm Beach, Florida, school district fired a principal who denied the reality of the Holocaust. And all over the U.S., from a state takeover of schools in Providence, Rhode Island, to a district secession battle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, schools wrestled with the legacy of generations of inequity.

These historic moments (and, yes, a gaffe or two) are captured regularly in QuotED, a roundup of the most notable quotes behind America’s top education headlines — all taken from our regular EduClips series, which regularly spotlights important headlines you may have missed from America’s 15 largest school districts.

Here are a few of our favorite education quotes from 2019:

“Lunch should be lunch, which should not be somewhere between breakfast and lunch.” —New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, on a Daily News analysis showing that many city schools offer “lunch” long before 11 a.m. ()

“Rich kids go to therapy, poor kids go to jail.” —Melivia Mujica, a student activist in San Antonio. (Read at The74Million.org)

“Let’s just say my phone has rung a lot.” —American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, on interest from the field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls in courting the union vote. ()

“[The superintendent] came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends. … He said, ‘You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.’” —Evan Jones, former headmaster of the New York Military Academy, on attempts to conceal the high school academic records of President Donald Trump. ()

“Well, you know, I’m going to die in here and I’m a virgin and I will have never met Bruce Springsteen.” —Heather Martin, recalling what she told a friend over 20 years ago as two gunmen terrorized Columbine High School. Today, she teaches high school English in nearby Aurora, Colorado. (Read at The74Million.org)

“Adult misconduct is surely not acceptable, but, holy crap, we have a lot of work to do in terms of student behavior against other students.” —Chicago teachers union president Jesse Sharkey, on 900 sexual misconduct cases being logged in the district over the course of four months, mostly students reporting on other students. ()

“When it was us, the district didn’t feel like they needed to have any immediacy. We don’t have the resources that SLA has, and their parents jumped on it right away. Where there’s money and influence, there’s more privilege.” —Keith Pretlow, a culinary-arts teacher at Ben Franklin High School in Philadelphia. When Science Leadership Academy, a magnet school, relocated to share the site with Ben Franklin, a long-delayed asbestos cleanup moved into high gear. ()

“Even though you might be scared, you never turn down a story, and it taught me you never know what’s going to happen.” —Amelia Poor, 13, one of 45 students who form the Scholastic News Kids Press Corps that writes for Scholastic’s classroom magazine. Despite her fear of canines, she successfully covered a recent Westminster Dog Show. (Read at The74Million.org)

“We’re taught to live in the present. Right now, my children are healthy.” —Melissa (last name withheld), who said her Buddhist views prevented her from vaccinating her children unless they became very sick, and one of several parents who successfully sued Rockland County, New York, to overturn a measure that barred unvaccinated children from attending schools. ()

“I work 55 hours a week, have 12 years’ experience and make $43K. I worry and stress daily about my classroom prep work and kids. I am a fool to do this job.” —A teacher in an online focus group, quoted in this year’s PDK survey of American teachers. More than half said they had seriously considered quitting in recent years. (Read at The74Million.org)

“Education reform isn’t a cure-all. As a supporter of education reform, I agree that fixing educational inequality requires doing more to address the broader, systemic sources of economic inequality.” —Former President Barack Obama. ()

“Education clearly has not been at the top of his list of priorities to address directly. But he has been very supportive of all the work that we have done.” —Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, on President Trump’s policy priorities. ()

“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” —Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. ()

“It just becomes like a ghost town.” —Jack Thompson, superintendent of the Perry, Ohio, school district, on what would happen if a nuclear plant there closes. Experts warn that half of the nation’s 59 nuclear plants could close by 2030. (Read at The74Million.org)

“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event.” —William Latson, former principal of Spanish River High School in Florida. This year’s revelation of his 2018 comments in a local newspaper sparked international outrage and ultimately led the Palm Beach County Schools to fire him. ()

“Anyone who does what we do knows it’s happened not by chance but by deliberate choice by those who embrace and embark on this work.” —Alberto Carvalho, Miami-Dade superintendent, on the district getting an A grade from the state education department two years in a row. ()

“Schools in north Baton Rouge for 100 years have been getting less. I firmly believe the St. George movement is rooted in racism. Look at the boundaries. You go down Florida Boulevard and it’s like the Mason-Dixon line. South of Florida, it’s white; north, it’s black.” —Tramelle Howard, a new member of the school board in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, which is facing a secession attempt from a mostly white and affluent enclave. (Read at The74Million.org)

“Since when did real estate agents become experts on schools?” —Fred Freiberg, executive director of the Fair Housing Justice Center, who served as a consultant on Newsday’s three-year investigation that uncovered widespread evidence of unequal treatment by real estate agents on Long Island. ()

“For the past two days, I have felt like I have been kicked in the sternum by Godzilla wearing steel-toed boots.” —Providence Teachers Union President Maribeth Calabro, on a scathing report from Johns Hopkins University that lambasted the district for poor academic performance, unsafe schools and lackluster morale. (Read at The74Million.org)

From Minneapolis to Memphis to Puerto Rico, from sexual assault investigations to civics education breakthroughs to academic profiles, it was an eclectic year here at ����Ӱ��, featuring a wide array of both breaking news coverage and big-picture profiles. And that doesn’t even touch on our exclusive Brown v. Board microsite that looked to restore the unsung heroes to the story behind the landmark desegregation verdict.

As we always do in December, we thought we’d take a beat before diving into yet another presidential election to put a final stamp on the year that was. Below, we’ve assembled the 19 most popular and most widely discussed articles from 2019 (you can also check out our top 18 articles from 2018).

Teaching Democracy: How One School Network Has Baked Civics & Activism Into Its DNA — and Produced Graduates Who Are More Likely to Vote

Civics Education: American democracy is in trouble — just ask a poll worker. We vote less often than other developed nations, our rates of volunteering have plummeted, and less than half of us could pass a citizenship test. Perhaps that’s why political scientists cheered when a recent study found that alumni of Democracy Prep Public Schools vote at much higher rates than their peers. Students at the schools study social change and debate current events; even more strikingly, they complete an impressive array of civics-centered requirements to graduate — from writing policy briefs to petitioning lawmakers. The network’s founder, Seth Andrew, says Democracy Prep is doing work that should be replicated across the country. “I think every school should have a civic purpose. Ours is just more explicit about it than most.” This past spring, ����Ӱ�� published a four-part series and a documentary on the school network, orchestrated by writer Kevin Mahnken and editor Andrew Brownstein. The effort launched with this profile of the network and its founder, taking a closer look at the role education plays in curbing our civic ignorance and polarized politics. (Read the full longread from reporter Kevin Mahnken)

Also, be sure to check out these other chapters in our Democracy Prep series:

●��How Democracy Prep Is Drawing Upon Civics to Challenge Its Students to ‘Change the World’ — Before They Graduate (Read more)

●��Democracy Prep’s Expansion Woes Raise Questions About Whether Civics Education Can Be Brought to Scale (Read more)

●��Can Civics Education Allow Schools to Rediscover Their Democratic Purpose — and Help Rescue America From Decline? (Read more)

●��WATCH: Inside the Civics-Driven Democracy Prep, Students Are Embracing Their Assignments to ‘Change the World’ (Watch the full video)

250,000 Kids. $277 Million in Fines. It’s Been 3 Years Since Feds Ordered a Special Ed Reboot in Texas — Why Are Students Still Being Denied?

Special Education: Sophia Salehi is blind, until recently unable to navigate the hallways at school, let alone her neighborhood. Her parents tried for 11 years to get her Houston-area schools to provide the special education services she was entitled to. But not even a series of court victories convinced officials to budge. She now goes to school in Massachusetts. Jaivyn Mauldin reads in the 99th percentile, but his severe dysgraphia means he can’t write. His Austin-area schools said he was too smart for special education and assigned him handwriting drills as discipline. His family moved to Oregon to get him help. Angela Smith was a special education evaluator in Dallas — who couldn’t get her own son evaluated. When the U.S. Education Department confirmed a 2016 bombshell report by the Houston Chronicle, disability advocates and parents learned, to their shock, that Texas had secretly placed an illegal cap 12 years before on the number of children with disabilities who could get special education services in schools. An estimated 250,000 students were languishing, unable to get the help they were entitled to. Orders from Washington notwithstanding, today — three years after the nation’s second-largest state pledged to reverse course — advocates say precious little has changed. And if Texas can get away with defying federal law, what’s to stop other states from following suit? (Read the full feature from national correspondent Beth Hawkins)

Exclusive: Sixty-five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in America’s public schools was unconstitutional. This past May, we launched a new website and oral history commemorating the anniversary: The Untold Stories of Brown v. Board, a multimedia deep dive into the lesser-known students, parents and plaintiffs who joined forces six decades ago to wage the legal battle against “separate but equal.”

A brief overview of the project, which can now be found in full at : In the American judicial system, the two small words “et al.,” meaning “and others,” erase the names, faces and histories of everyday individuals seeking remedies for wrongs done to them. Used as a reference in class-action litigation in place of the names of each individual plaintiff, those four letters relegate men, women and children to what can be characterized as a “legal wasteland,” rendering them and their stories unknown. In the instance of Oliver Brown, et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, those four letters diminished the stories of families who participated in five essential class-action lawsuits across the nation. Those five suits — Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart and Bolling v. Sharpe — were later consolidated by the United States Supreme Court.

Although the name Oliver Brown is universally known, the names and stories of these other revolutionaries have remained largely unknown and untold, buried under the weight of four little letters. But now, for the first time, a wide swath of Brown v. Board plaintiffs and their relatives assembled by Cheryl Brown Henderson, founding president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research and daughter of Oliver Brown, is working on changing that — by detailing their stories of oppression, their battle for justice and their triumph. She has assembled a new book, Recovering Untold Stories: An Enduring Legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision, and we have been thrilled to be the digital launch partner in sharing their narrative. Read all the excerpts, watch the video testimonials, learn more about the legal history and download the book. Visit our special microsite: .

Exclusive: New Documents Show the Trump Administration Has Confronted Dozens of School Districts Across the Country for Mishandling Sexual Assault Cases

Investigation: On Sept. 23, 2015, a 5-year-old boy with disabilities in Detroit arrived home from school bruised and very likely sexually assaulted. The school bus driver, who told the boy’s mother about probable sexual misconduct by other students, didn’t report it to the district. And though she informed school officials about the incident the following day, administrators didn’t investigate, or speak with the boy’s family, for months. A federal probe that concluded last year determined that this case may be just one sign of larger problems with how Detroit Public Schools deals with sexual misconduct — and the district is not alone.

While most of the debate around Title IX, which requires schools to address sexual violence, has focused on whether colleges provide due process for accused students, the Trump administration has quietly discovered that many K-12 school districts had no plan to deal with these cases — a violation of federal law. In cities including Detroit, Kalamazoo and Washington, D.C., officials found that districts had little to no Title IX training — and some had policies explicitly barring investigations of sexual assault reports from taking place. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, ����Ӱ�� has exclusively obtained records that provide the first look at how the Trump administration has enforced Title IX in investigations of schools, revealing that at least 70 districts and colleges had to overhaul their policies to address problems uncovered by the government in the past two years. (Examine the original documents and read Tyler Kingkade’s full report here)

Mastery-Based Learning: As more schools consider adopting innovative models like project-based or experiential learning, educators are realizing that the broad set of skills students are learning don’t translate easily into letter grades or GPAs. That becomes a problem when it comes time to submit transcripts for college admissions. So D. Scott Looney, head of Cleveland’s private Hawken School, decided to launch a group to design a different kind of high school transcript. After two years of development, the Mastery Transcript Consortium now has 250 member schools, and a few of them will be submitting this new transcript to colleges for the first time in the 2019-20 academic year. The transcript is still being tested and discussed among member schools, but it’s drawn attention and headlines for its nontraditional approach of visually describing student learning. The group, which includes a large proportion of private schools, has also been at the center of debates around equity in college admissions. Does eliminating grades in favor of more holistic descriptors improve or exacerbate inequality? ()

How a Houston Experiment in College Counseling Is Succeeding in Sending Low-Income, First-Generation Students to the Country’s Top Universities

College Success: Not that long ago, many Houston Independent School District high schools lacked what’s known as a school profile — essential information to college admissions officers wanting to know a school’s demographics, AP offerings and SAT/ACT scores. “That’s the basic document colleges use to gauge a student in relation to other students. Many of our campuses refused to do it. They just didn’t see a need, because for years they had never had a kid apply to a non-local option,” said former fifth-grade teacher Rick Cruz. That mindset began to change after Cruz and some Houston ISD colleagues in 2010 formed EMERGE, a program meant to mirror what private college consultants do for the wealthy but tailored to the specific needs of Houston ISD’s first-generation, low-income students. The goal was to match those students with colleges that offered full-ride scholarships to high-achieving, high-poverty students, make sure they run the necessary application gauntlet and then track them once they enroll. Thanks to district and philanthropic support, EMERGE is now in every Houston ISD high school and the results are strong: 95 percent of EMERGE students have either earned college degrees or are on track to, more than 80 percent have a 3.0 GPA or better, and 87 percent are expected to earn a bachelor’s in four years. (Read Richard Whitmire’s article)

●��Other Excerpts from ‘The B.A. Breakthrough’: Houston’s college counseling experiment was just one in a series of special features tied to the new book we published in 2019 — Richard Whitmire’s The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America. See notable excerpts and profiles, and download the complete book, .

Personalized Learning: When children go to the doctor, they receive an individualized plan to support their health. Why isn’t this the case in education? A new report from Harvard’s Education Redesign Lab asks this question and seeks to upend the “factory model” style of education that provides all students with very similar academic career tracks. Instead, the report says, every student should have an individualized success plan that recommends key services to support his or her specific needs, whether it’s math tutoring, mental health counseling or speech therapy. This requires a big lift in organization and resources — but this effort should not be limited to schools, the report says. Here’s why the whole community needs to be involved in supporting the whole child — and 10 guidelines for crafting success plans that support children from birth through college. ()

One of the Nation’s Oldest Desegregation Cases Is on the Brink of Settling in New Orleans. After 54 Years in the Federal Courts, What Has It Accomplished?

Desegregation: In the years after Brown v. Board of Education, the United States entered a contract with its black citizens: Their children would no longer be consigned to separate, inferior schools, and if districts attempted to keep them out, they would have their day in court. Hundreds of cases were filed, petitioning judges to break down barriers between black and white students in school assignments, facilities, learning materials and budgets. One was triggered in 1965 in southeastern Louisiana’s little-known Tangipahoa Parish, where a local truck driver and father of 15 sued the local school board for providing black students with a substandard education. The children of Tangipahoa not only got their day in court — since the day the case was filed, they’ve received the equivalent of roughly 20,000 days. We may now be nearing the last, as both sides in Moore v. Tangipahoa Parish School Board have asked a federal judge to approve an extensive settlement in one of the longest-running desegregation cases in the country. Kevin Mahnken reports on the history of the case, and what awaits. (Read more about the history of the case, and what awaits, from Kevin Mahnken)

Researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings on Culturally Relevant Teaching, the Role of Teachers in Trump’s America & Lessons From Her Two Decades in Education Research

74 Interview: Gloria Ladson-Billings remembers the first time she learned that an African American could graduate from Harvard University: She was in Ethel Benn’s fifth-grade class in Philadelphia. That realization — and Benn’s excellent teaching — set her on a path to find out what makes a great teacher. Since the 1990s, Ladson-Billings has been studying and writing about culturally relevant teaching and what it takes to successfully educate all students, especially the children of color so often left behind. At the core of her educational philosophy are three components of culturally responsive education: academic success, cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness. Teachers must accept responsibility for bringing all three into their classrooms, she says. Ladson-Billings spoke to ����Ӱ�� about how teachers can talk to students about current events, the difference between integration and desegregation, and the hallmarks of being a culturally relevant teacher. (Read the full interview from Laura Fay)

Social-Emotional Learning: It took two years of collaboration among 200 teachers, students, parents, scientists and policymakers, but a new report on bolstering social-emotional learning in America’s schools has been published. In From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope, these SEL experts, convened by the Aspen Institute, share six ways that teaching skills like collaborating with peers, managing emotions and feeling empathy can help children be better students and citizens of the world. Research has shown how teaching these skills can improve academics, graduation rates and earnings — and the report provides a concrete path toward integrating social-emotional learning in schools. From improving teacher prep programs to lifting up student voice and choice, here are the big ideas coming out of the group’s collaborative work. ()

How One Minnesota School, Beloved by Refugee Families, Has Turned Itself Around While Keeping Hold of Its Teachers, Students and Culture

Profile: What do you do about a school that’s adored by its families but failing academically? Do you start fresh and risk upending the community that made the school beloved in the first place? At Dugsi Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the answer was a resounding no. A haven for Somali immigrant families, the charter school was required by its authorizer to turn itself around or shut down — and today, nearly two years into what school turnaround veteran Mary Stafford calls “Extreme Makeover: The School Edition,” her plan for keeping the elements Dugsi’s families valued while changing what wasn’t working is showing signs of promise. (Read more about Beth Hawkins’s memorable visit to the school)

Puerto Rico: Days after Julia Keleher announced her resignation as Puerto Rico’s education secretary, she stepped up to a microphone at a Yale University conference and spoke of her defiant and sometimes bitter crusade to change the island’s entrenched culture of corruption. That effort, she said, created “armies of people that literally would have been happy to take my head off.” But even then, her work was being scrutinized by another set of observers with the power to turn that narrative on its head: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In July, Keleher and five others were indicted in an alleged conspiracy to direct more than $15 million in federal funds to organizations with personal and political connections. All pleaded not guilty. But Keleher’s indictment surfaces a deeper irony. Years before becoming education secretary, she worked on a U.S. Department of Education team tasked with fixing waste, fraud and mismanagement of federal funds in Puerto Rico’s school system — issues that had led to the conviction of an education secretary nearly two decades earlier. This alleged role reversal is one of many lingering riddles to have emerged since her arrest. Friends and colleagues describe Keleher as a tireless advocate known for 2 a.m. emails and sometimes little sympathy for those lacking her single-minded work ethic. But they also recall her as someone too smart to cut corners and too tough to get ensnared in someone else’s scheme. In this special 74 investigation, we take an expansive look at Keleher’s decades-long career as a hard-nosed change agent intent on ending corruption in Puerto Rico — and an indictment that is calling that narrative into question. ()

4.5 Million Young People Nationwide Are Not Working or in School. How Cities Are Working to Get Them Back on Track — & Avoid the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Opportunity Youth: For Dionna Camino, it was caring for her terminally ill father. For Shelby Morales, it was an unexpected pregnancy at age 14. For both, it was too much responsibility too soon that knocked them off the tightrope of getting through high school and college to land a good-paying job. Now, they are among the estimated 4.5 million so-called opportunity youth nationwide — 16- to 24-year-olds who are neither in school nor working — struggling to put their lives back together. Disengaged from both education and the labor force, these young people are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, too often finding themselves in the school-to-prison pipeline. Some are homeless or have young children. Maybe they dropped out of high school, have criminal records or are on probation. But some have high school diplomas and even some college coursework. For most opportunity youth, it isn’t a defined set of missteps; rather, it’s a churning sea of relentless waves and undertows pushing them under and dragging them in all directions. They can look up and see the school-to-success high wire — options and resources available to teens that will guide them toward becoming financially, emotionally, socially secure adults. They just don’t know how to climb back on. Bekah McNeel reports on the steps cities around the country are taking to help. (Read the full story)

A Manhattan High School Reframes How Slavery Is Taught Using The New York Times’s 1619 Project

Curriculum: Over years of classes, 11th-grader Jeremias Mata had viewed slavery with a certain simplicity and hopelessness — that many black people had once been slaves and that was that. This year, learning about slavery has been different for students at Manhattan’s Facing History School, partly because teachers are incorporating The New York Times’s 1619 Project — a compilation of essays and poetry that re-examines slavery’s legacy in the U.S. 400 years after the first enslaved people arrived here from West Africa. The project is helping schools nationwide reframe how slavery is taught in a way that captures its brutality, complexity and influence in shaping America, while also affirming the experience as integral to black Americans’ identity and their contributions to the country. This reframing is “extremely important, especially with the student body that we teach here,” says history teacher Eric Albino. New York City is a predominantly black and Hispanic district that struggles with inequity and segregation. Teaching curriculum that is relevant to the experiences and perspectives of students of color has been a major — if not universally embraced — policy push of New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, though the practice isn’t mandated across the country’s largest school system. (Read more about Taylor Swaak’s visit to see the 1619 Project in action)

Profile: One semester into the inaugural year at Memphis’s Crosstown High School, a project-based-learning charter school and recipient of a grant from the folks who run the XQ high school redesign contest, leaders are learning some important lessons. Not all projects catch students’ attention. Freshmen coming from years in a traditional school setting aren’t quite ready to totally guide their own learning. It’s hard to teach and test math in nontraditional ways. And given access to the unique mall setting that houses the school, teens will be teens. This past February, we reported on the school’s unique curriculum and setting, and its leaders’ goal of attracting a diverse student body. ()

Sex Education: Students, advocates and lawmakers across the country are re-examining the role of sex education through the lens of the #MeToo movement. A new study shows that learning refusal skills can protect students from later sexual assaults, which researchers say indicates that improving sex ed should be the next step for the #MeToo movement — a way to both protect students from being victimized and prevent them from perpetrating assaults. A historian who studies sex ed called the results “hugely significant,” and the researchers themselves said the study could change how adults think about teen sex and sex education. The study found that most students who had learned refusal skills had also received comprehensive sex education in school. As the #MeToo movement takes hold, some state lawmakers have taken steps to add consent and healthy relationships to their schools’ sex education classes and generally make the programs more comprehensive. Advocates applaud the changes, but some parent groups and critics have pushed back against lessons they say are not age-appropriate and policies that minimize local control. ()

From Farmworkers to Physicians: Twin Mexican Immigrant Boys Grew Up to Become HS Valedictorians — and Just Graduated From Medical School

Inspiring: It would have been a long-shot bet that twin brothers who spent their childhoods struggling with a rare speech impediment and toiling in the fields as immigrant farmworkers would one day become international academic stars. But Octavio and Omar Viramontes, who recently graduated one day apart from top medical schools, had a secret weapon: the perseverance of their parents, who brought the family from Mexico in search of a better life. From them, the twins learned the importance of hard work and gained a firm belief in the power of education. And now, having been high school valedictorians and racked up scholarships and academic honors, Dr. Octavio and Dr. Omar are preparing to give back to their community. (Read more about this inspiring story from Debra West)

After School, Students Are ‘Playing the Whole Game’ in Activities From Drama to Sports to Debate. Backers of Project-Based Learning Ask: Why Can’t All of Education Look Like This?

Deeper Learning: Since 2017, humanities students at High Tech High Chula Vista, a San Diego-area charter school, have been holding human lives in their hands: Each year, they assist attorneys at the California Innocence Project who are considering which pleas to review from prisoners who maintain they’re innocent. The idea for the project comes from an approach to education called “playing the whole game,” which suggests that students learn best through real work that resembles what they will likely encounter outside of school. It’s the brainchild of Harvard Graduate School of Education professor emeritus David Perkins, who conceived it after thinking about the most meaningful experiences he had in high school: drama, music, science fairs and the like. These and other large-scale endeavors, he said, “seemed more meaningful” than the rest of the curriculum. But whether this approach helps students see the bigger picture or simply flounder by “sharing their ignorance” of complex topics remains an open question. (Read the full story from Greg Toppo)

Future of Work: With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, 22-year-old Rachel Van Dyks expected to easily land a good job. Instead, the 2017 graduate works 46 hours per week at a local ice cream parlor and a high-end steakhouse — while earning an associate’s degree at a for-profit technical school. She’s not alone; while a majority of college graduates require additional education to qualify for a good-paying job, many don’t find that out until after commencement exercises are over. The traditional path is to pursue a master’s degree, but 14 percent of college graduates, like Van Dyks, are abandoning the academic track and enrolling at a community college or a for-profit technical school and getting an associate’s degree or industry certification, specifically to qualify for a job. ()

2018 Flashback — San Antonio, 78207: In America’s Most Segregated City, a Radical School Integration Experiment Designed Around Poverty, Trauma and Parental Choice Is Working

Integration: Over several months this past spring, national correspondent Beth Hawkins tracked the groundbreaking integration efforts of the 78207, the zip code located on the west side of San Antonio, Texas. It is the poorest neighborhood in America’s most economically segregated city: 91 percent of students in the San Antonio Independent School District are Latino, 6 percent are black, and 93 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. As Beth reports, into this divided landscape three years ago came a new schools chief, Pedro Martinez, with a mandate to break down the centuries-old economic isolation that has its heart in the 78207. In response, Martinez launched one of America’s most innovative and data-informed school integration experiments.

He started with a novel approach that yielded eye-popping information: Using family income data, he created a map showing the depth of poverty on each city block and in every school in the district — a color-coded street guide comprising granular details unheard of in education. And then he started integrating schools, not by race but by income, factoring in a spectrum of additional elements, such as parents’ education levels and homelessness. To achieve the kind of integration he was looking for, he would first have to better understand the gradations of poverty in every one of his schools and what kinds of supports those student populations require, and then find a way to woo affluent families from other parts of the city to disrupt these concentrations of unmet need. Martinez’s strategy: Open new “schools of choice” with sought-after curricular models, like Montessori and dual language, and set aside a share of seats for students from more prosperous neighboring school districts, who would then sit next to a mix of students from San Antonio ISD. Read Beth’s immersive profile of the San Antonio experiment.

Go Deeper: See all of ����Ӱ��’s top 2019 highlights right here. Get the latest features, essays, analyses and videos delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter.

Updated December 12

When it comes to research, a picture tells a thousand words.

Whether you’re measuring student test results, demographic figures or one of the thousand other items of statistical effluvia that float through the education landscape, it helps to have a visual aid. Take it from an education reporter: Untethered to a simple bar graph, critical findings on the success or failure of a major school reform can be reduced to so many figures in an appendix.

That’s why this year, as in��2017��and��2018, we’re presenting the most striking images from education research over the past 12 months. They help illustrate important studies into school funding disparities, college dropout rates and shifting public opinion. And with a minimum of verbiage, they let the reader know what matters in education research.

Here are 14 discoveries that changed the way we think about education in 2019:

Integration: Exam Schools May Hurt Disadvantaged Students More Than They Help

Seats at urban “exam schools” — public institutions like Boston Latin and the Bronx High School of Science, which accept exclusively high-performing students on the basis of competitive admissions criteria — are some of the hottest tickets in K-12 education. They’ve also become an object of contention in recent years, as many have noted the schools’ lack of racial diversity. Many observers, pointing to����accepted to New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School this spring, have called for city and state authorities to eliminate entrance examinations and press for more low-income and minority students to receive admission.

But new research on selective high schools in Chicago may give activists pause. Gathering academic and college admissions data, two studies suggest that disadvantaged students admitted to the city’s 11 exam schools actually end up worse off than demographically similar peers.

Neither paper found that the students, offered seats through a form of socioeconomic affirmative action, struggled to keep up with academic work at the high schools; but they realized no learning gains in math or English, and they were somewhat less likely to enroll in competitive colleges than similar pupils who weren’t accepted, perhaps because their GPA and class ranks were lower than they would have been otherwise.

“So much media attention and political energy goes into discussions of who gets to go to exam schools,” said co-author Joshua Angrist, an economics professor at MIT. “We’re basically saying, ‘You’re arguing over something that may not be worth much. Your view of this is potentially being distorted by a misreading of the facts.’”��(Read more��from our��September coverage of the study.)

Equity: School District Borders Segregate Millions of Kids Based on Race and Revenue

The lines between school districts are some of the most intractable impediments to nationwide education reform, but also some of the most underappreciated. While advocates debate furiously over issues like curriculum, standardized testing and school accountability, those lines divide and define educational communities: white and nonwhite, affluent and poor, professional and working-class. With so much of school funding dependent on local tax bases, the central question in school quality is often which side of a district border your family lives on.

Any homeowner who has scraped and saved to live in an area with desirable schools is somewhat aware of this phenomenon. But����by the nonprofit EdBuild made it impossible to ignore. Studying thousands of school districts throughout the United States, the group found evidence of striking inequalities in funding between bordering school districts. No fewer than 9 million students live in districts that spend $4,200 less per pupil than neighboring districts. And in nearly 1,000 cases, the funding gaps between neighboring districts is greater than 10 percent.

The interactive publication was just one of a host of stark warnings issued by the group about the deep disparities in resources that pervade public education. It was also one of the last: This year, EdBuild also announced that��.��(Read more of our coverage from July��on this study of school district borders.)

Curriculum: Oakland Sees Decline in Black Male Dropouts

Black male students are among the most underserved in the public school system, whether measured in test scores, disciplinary results or college enrollment. As a population, they have largely been failed by school reform efforts in recent decades. But a study based in Oakland offers some exciting evidence of a method that could improve at least one critical academic outcome. A program meant to break down stereotypes and build solidarity among black boys succeeded in cutting dropout rates for that group��, the authors found.

Operated with the support of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the program enrolls black male students in special classes taught by teachers who look like them, and emphasizes black history and culture. Students also receive personal advice on higher education and career choices.

While questions linger as to whether the curriculum can be replicated outside Oakland, the district has����a similar, leadership-focused program for black girls.

Safety: Failing Schools Incubate Crime

Shutting down underperforming schools is a heart-wrenching process. Families rely on them as local institutions, even if they don’t deliver top academic results, and when they go away, a piece of the community goes with them. That’s part of the reason the waves of school closures that have taken place in cities like��and have led to bitter protests.

But a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has found that closing poor-performing schools produces an unexpected benefit: greater public safety. By examining the targeted wind-down of 29 Philadelphia schools between 2011 and 2013 — a major shakeup of roughly 10 percent of the city’s school buildings — the authors found that crime rates dropped significantly following the closures. Violent crime, ranging from robberies to murder, fell by 30 percent, the analysis found.

The improvements were measured in census blocks around the closed schools during times when students normally would have been present, and the areas with the greatest numbers of displaced students saw the largest declines in criminality. Best of all, however, researchers found no evidence that, following the school closures, misconduct simply migrated elsewhere; no resultant spike in violent or property crime was measured in nearby areas.��(Read��more of our coverage of this study of Philadelphia school closures.)

Cory Booker’s Legacy: Did the Newark Reforms … Work?

With the possible exception of New Orleans, Newark may be the American city most associated with the hallmarks of education reform.

The district underwent a state takeover more than 20 years ago, but its most ambitious period of change began under the supervision of then-Mayor Cory Booker, who took office in 2007. After his election, the city proceeded to shutter schools, replace principals, open new charters and take in millions of dollars in philanthropic funding from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, all in the name of improving student achievement in one of the lowest-performing school districts in the country.

And according to a report released by researcher Jesse Margolis, the policy shift had big, beneficial effects. The study, funded by the nonprofit New Jersey Children’s Foundation, found that between 2006 and 2018, student test scores made substantial progress in both math and reading. Among low-income districts across the state, Newark’s performance improved from the 18th percentile to the 47th percentile over that period.

That means there’s still plenty of work left to be done. Now-Senator Booker has,��until recently, been slow to defend charter schools as disenchantment around them has spread throughout the Democratic Party. But so far, at least, there’s good news for Newark families.��(Read more of our June coverage on this study of Newark’s school reforms.)

Higher Education: The Numbers Behind the Dropouts

Recent years have seen higher and higher percentages of high school graduates enrolling in colleges and trade schools, a happy development that will put millions more young people on the road to success in adulthood.

But that’s of no consolation to the 4 million college dropouts across the country, who cumulatively hold billions of dollars in debt from their aborted forays into higher education. An October data release from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center illustrated some of the grim realities behind America’s college completion crisis.

Among its findings: While majorities of graduates from all types of American high schools are enrolling in college, they are much less likely to graduate — even six years later. Just 1 out of 5 graduates from low-income schools, and less than 1 in 3 graduates from schools enrolling large populations of minority students, finish college within that period, the report found.��(Read more of our coverage of this study of America’s college completion crisis.)

Standards: Common Core May Have Led to Learning Losses

If you weren’t living under a rock during the Obama presidency, you were at least dimly aware of the dispute around the Common Core State Standards. Initially a nonpartisan push for states to adopt rigorous academic expectations for students, the initiative devolved into a political crusade when the Obama administration incentivized the development of college-ready standards through its Race to the Top program. Seemingly overnight, conspiracy theorists linked Common Core to����and��.

After the dust settled, however, most states had established some version of the standards,��. Now researchers are beginning to measure the academic impact of Common Core, and their findings aren’t encouraging: According to����released this spring, states that adopted Common Core didn’t see better student achievement than those that declined; in fact, authors found, students in Common Core states saw slight declines in both math and English scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

While modest, the ill effects seemed to grow over multiple rounds of NAEP, offering a distinctly cautionary note around the reform. Although the research is some of the earliest to examine the effects of a sweeping change in educational practice, more is on the way.

Discipline: Early Returns on Restorative Justice Are Mixed

Concern has grown in recent years over the effects of harsh school discipline practices, which fall disproportionately on black, Hispanic and male students. When schools suspend or expel their charges, some argue, they are separated from classrooms and put on a path to poverty and jail — a “school-to-prison pipeline” that denies educational opportunities to millions of pupils.

One trendy solution to school discipline problems has been restorative justice, a set of disciplinary practices that encourage dialogue and community healing over more punitive actions. The approach has��, but little in the way of robust research has pointed to concrete benefits or harms — until this year, when the RAND Corporation released two studies of the effects of restorative justice in classrooms. Neither provided blockbuster findings.

In one study, which randomly assigned schools in Pittsburgh to implement restorative justice, suspensions decreased, but not significantly more than in other schools at the same time (other��nationwide declines in suspensions in the past few years, as more attention has been directed at the issue). In another experiment, restorative justice schools in Maine saw no improvement in measures of school climate, such as bullying, in the wake of the changes.

The findings suggest that implementation of the new techniques remains a challenge: Restorative justice is voluntary, and children experiencing conflict with their classmates can’t be compelled to take part. What’s more, teachers need significant training to properly enact the necessary sequence of conversation and reconciliation.

Politics: Democratic Support for Charter Schools Is Split on Racial Lines

Charter schools came about a generation ago, the brainchild of a technocratic movement to offer families more educational options and test-drive innovative educational practices. Since then, the American charter movement has relied on an ideologically diverse coalition of supporters — including both free-market conservatives and urban liberals — to foster its rapid growth.

After years of strain, that alliance has begun to split. As school choice is increasingly associated with the conservative policies of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, some Democrats have accused charters of a multitude of sins, from draining funds from school districts to funneling them toward corporate interests. Teachers unions, long critical of the nation’s creeping charter expansion, have also��. No surprise, then, that several leading candidates for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination have����on charters.

As��a 2019 poll��from the pro-reform group Democrats for Education Reform shows, the ideological evolution reflects a racial split within the Democratic Party. While black and Hispanic Democrats look fairly favorably on public schools of choice, a whopping 62 percent of white party members view them critically. Opposition among whites has grown in recent years.��(Read more of our coverage of this poll about Democratic views on charter schools.)

Learning Needs: Black Students May Be Under-Identified for Special Education Services

According to the��, 7 million American students received special education services in the 2017-18 school year, or roughly 14 percent of the nation’s K-12 population. Those students deal with a range of physical, behavioral, speech and developmental disabilities — from blindness to asthma to Down syndrome — that present challenges to learning, and federal law requires that they receive accommodations in the classroom.

For decades, education observers have worried that students of color are over-identified for special education designations. Teachers and administrators, the theory has held, are too eager to refer black students particularly to special education, resulting in many such students being needlessly removed from mainstream classrooms. To address those concerns, the federal IDEA law has been amended to require states to fix disproportionate identification of minority students.

But����indicates that those fears may be misplaced. According to a study authored by academics at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Irvine, black students may actually be��under-identified��for necessary special education services.

In an analysis of 11 southern states, the researchers found that black students were 45 percent less likely than white students to be identified as having special learning needs — even when controlling for family income and academic achievement. Even among academically similar students at the very same school, the authors found, a white student is more likely to receive a diagnosis of disability than a black classmate.

College Admissions: White Applicants Get a Leg Up From Athletic, Legacy Preferences

Elite colleges have been under fire for two years as scandals have erupted around their admissions practices.

First����showed the absurd, and often criminal, lengths wealthy parents went to in order to ensure acceptance for their children at fêted schools like UCLA and USC. Then a highly publicized lawsuit alleged that Harvard discriminated against Asian applicants; the case����for the Supreme Court, and whatever its outcome, it has already uncovered����showing how the school’s admissions office favors the children of affluent donors.

But a study circulated late in the year held even more damning revelations. Some 43 percent of white students accepted at Harvard were recruited athletes, legacies or the children of donors or faculty,��, and roughly three-quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been held to the same standards as white students who didn’t hold special status. If preferences for wealthy and athletically inclined applicants were removed, the authors concluded, the racial complexion of America’s loftiest university would be significantly altered.

School Choice: Boston Charters Achieve Huge Learning Gains for English Language Learners & Special Needs Students

Charter schools in Boston are perhaps the best evidence that public school choice can work,����more than any other charter sector in the country. Not only do their results compare favorably with charters elsewhere, they have dramatically expanded their enrollment over the past decade��without any decline in performance.

The latest data pointing in their favor arrived this year, and it is perhaps the most impressive of all. According to a working paper by Tufts University economist Elizabeth Setren, Boston charters show substantial learning gains for special needs students and non-native English speakers, two of the populations facing the most severe learning challenges in all of K-12 education.

A year of charter school attendance in Boston significantly reduces achievement gaps for English language learners and special education students in both reading and math; even more notable, students of both classifications were more likely to be included in mainstream classrooms than their peers at district schools.

A combination of individual tutoring, increased instructional time and data-driven instruction is responsible for the positive results, Setren found, and the good news extends past test scores: Special needs students in Boston charter schools are four times as likely to graduate from a two-year college, and English language learners are roughly twice as likely to enroll in a four-year college.��(Read more of our September coverage of this study on the impact of Boston’s charter schools)

Annals of Research: Value-Added May Be a Flawed Metric

The concept of teacher value-added is something like a golden key to education research — a single metric to capture the impact of an instructor on his or her students’ performance. With the wide array of data on academic achievement and postsecondary outcomes, both researchers and policy makers have become more ambitious about identifying teacher effectiveness.

But the idea has also long had its detractors. Within the research community, some have called to��, arguing that it doesn’t measure in full the contributions of any instructor on the children under her care. And teachers themselves are largely opposed to the growing practice of linking decisions around compensation and hiring to statistical measures of teacher effectiveness.

Now new doubts have arisen about the very premise.��In a working paper released this fall, a group of academics found that, in the absence of research best practices, what looks like value-added effects could simply reflect statistical noise unrelated to actual teacher performance. Using data from New York City Schools, they find that the value-added impact of teachers on student height — which, obviously, they cannot impact — is roughly as large as on student performance on standardized tests. After scaling the models to account for sampling error, the team found that the “effect” on height disappeared; still the findings raise serious questions about the implementation of value-added models in research and policy contexts.

Testing: NAEP Offers ‘Disturbing’ Assessment

The National Assessment of Educational Progress — often referred to as “the nation’s report card” — has been the bearer of bad news for over a decade now. Since the end of the Bush administration, the biannual release of nationwide math and English scores for fourth- and eighth-graders has shown little or no progress for most students. Even worse, results have begun to diverge in recent rounds of testing, as scores for the lowest-performing students have declined faster than for other groups.

Scores in 2019 only gave more cause for concern, as scores dropped in reading and held steady in math. The number of fourth-graders testing proficient in reading fell by 2 percent since 2017, and performance sank for eighth-grade reading in an incredible 31 states. Alarmingly, students ranking in the lowest percentiles saw the worst drop-offs in the subject.

Only in two jurisdictions, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., did students see growth in at least three out of four subject-grade combinations. The continued lack of progress has experts sounding a downbeat note.

“We’re seeing our system challenged here in terms of realizing our children’s potential,” said Stanford University professor Thomas Dee.��(Read more of our recent coverage of 2019’s NAEP results.)

Go Deeper:��Get the latest��‘Big Picture’ installments, along with all our breaking coverage of education news and research, delivered straight to your inbox — sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

We’re thrilled to report on inspiring classroom stories each and every week (get the latest dose of good news delivered straight to your inbox��by signing up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter). And with schools set to close this week as the country gives thanks, we thought we’d also set aside a day to pay tribute to the teachers who had us cheering this year. Here are 19 educators we’re so thankful to have met in 2019:

Ohio’s Barb Fisher, and a Lifesaving Class Lesson:��Barb Fisher has been teaching elementary school for 12 years, so she knows a good lesson when she sees one. Still, until this year, she had never delivered a lesson that literally saved a child’s life.

First-grader Zhiouli Wilson, 6, became trapped in a basement during a fire in her family’s Akron home in May. If not for Fisher, the little girl might never have made it out. (Read more about the incredible true story)

Virginia’s Rodney Robinson, and His Fight For Criminal Justice Reform:��The National Teacher of the Year for 2019 is Rodney Robinson, a history teacher in a juvenile detention center in Richmond. Robinson planned to use his new platform to highlight issues like equitable school funding and increasing the number of teachers of color. He also wanted to include the sorts of young offenders he teaches in ongoing bipartisan work around criminal justice reform. “They’re just kids. They’ve made mistakes, and America is a country of second chances. We just want to make sure they have a quality education to take full advantage of their second chance,” he said. (Read more about Robinson and his mission)

Kentucky’s Mary Byard and the Faculty of Shelby County West Middle School, for Their Inspiring Food Delivery:��In Shelby County, virtually every student in kindergarten through seventh grade gets free breakfast and lunch at school. So when back-to-back snow days kept the children at Shelby County West Middle School home, their teachers realized that the students ran a real risk of going hungry. So they loaded up their cars and delivered food to more than 40 children and their families at home. (Read more about the Shelby County teachers’ missions of mercy)

Virginia’s Vohn Lewis, and an Unforgettable Graduation Gift:��Fifth-grade graduation was just about to start at Richmond’s George Mason Elementary School when substitute teacher Vohn Lewis heard a commotion. A soon-to-be graduate had broken his shoe just before he was to walk across the stage. Guidance counselor Natalie Battle and the art teacher were scrambling to figure out how to fix it, but Lewis asked what size the child wore. When he learned that he and the boy wore the same size, he gave the student the shoes off his own feet so he could walk across the stage proudly and get his diploma. (Read more about Lewis and his timely rescue)

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Colorado’s��Lindsay Agbalokwu, and Her Special Delivery:��When Denver reading teacher Lindsay Agbalokwu felt minor cramps one morning before school, she brushed them off and headed to work. After all, the baby wasn’t due for a couple more weeks, and her students needed her. But there’s such a thing as being too conscientious. After giving out “core value” awards during morning assembly, she went to her homeroom, where the contractions started again. She asked co-teacher Marissa Kast to notify the principal and dean, who helped Agbalokwu outside while Kast ran to get her car. But there was no slowing down the 8-pound, 6-ounce baby girl who was rushing her way into the world. Making it to the hospital was out of the question, so Kast threw a sleeping bag on the sidewalk. Soon, with the aid of Principal Natalie Lewis, Dean Chris Earls and some firefighters who showed up at the last moment, baby Zara was born. (Read more about Agbalokwu and her unforgettable special delivery)

New York’s��Elisa Espinal and��Ambar Quinones, and Their Year-Long Partnership: Elisa Espinal had wanted to work with young children since she was a kid. But the school in Brooklyn where she was teaching wasn’t preparing her to be the best she could be. So she transferred to Concourse Village Elementary School in the South Bronx, and as a kindergarten teacher new to this rigorous, high-needs school, Espinal was assigned a mentor, fifth-grade teacher Ambar Quinones. Mentoring programs are among the most common methods of support for new teachers in the U.S., but they vary widely in terms of quality; teachers with the least experience are often placed with the students who need the most help, which, in the long run, can be a disservice to both the teacher and the children. The program Espinal and Quinones are participants in, New Teacher Center, is among the largest and most researched in the country, having impacted 250,000 new teachers, mentors and coaches over the past 20 years. To understand what a rigorous, in-depth mentoring program looks like, and the effect it can have on teachers — and student learning — Kate Stringer spent a full academic year shadowing Espinal and Quinones at their school, watching their professional relationship grow as they devised strategies for dealing with an ever-changing set of challenges. (Read more about Espinal, Quinones and the value of mentorships)

Texas’s��Shannon Grimm, and a Stylish Act of Kindness:��Five-year-old Prisilla Perez had suddenly gotten quiet in kindergarten class. She didn’t want to come to school or take her hat off when she got there. Her teacher, Shannon Grimm, realized something was wrong and soon learned that Prisilla was being bullied and called a boy by the other students because of her short hair. So Grimm — whose own hair flowed down to her waist — picked up scissors and got herself a pixie cut to support Prisilla. (Read more about Grimm’s compassionate cut)

Colorado’s��Heather Martin, Michelle Porter and Paula Reed, on How Columbine Changed Everything:��The first time teacher Heather Martin experienced a lockdown drill, the traumatic memories from her past resurfaced. As a student close to 20 years ago, she was in the choir room at Columbine High School when two students began one of America’s deadliest mass shootings at a K-12 school, killing 13 people before taking their own lives. In the ensuing years, Martin failed out of college, developed an eating disorder and struggled with paralyzing grief. But somehow, she found herself back at school — this time, at the front of the classroom, and today, she teaches high school English in nearby Aurora, Colorado. Martin is one of three educators who survived the Columbine shooting who spoke to ����Ӱ�� ahead of the 20th anniversary of the massacre. Two were high school seniors at the time who later became teachers, while a third recently retired from Columbine after more than three decades on the job. Each of their lives was deeply disrupted by the experience, yet they emerged from trauma and grief committed to educating students. (Read more about Martin, Porter and Reed, and how mass school shootings have upended the perception of safety in America’s public schools)

New York’s��Melissa Salguero, and the Power of Music Education: Bronx music teacher Melissa Salguero was the only American among 10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize, selected from more than 10,000 teachers in 39 countries. Salguero started a band program that has improved student attendance and increased student confidence at a school where a majority of students live in poverty. She has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for instruments to keep the program going. “I will never say no to a kid, I don’t care if the concert’s tomorrow,” she said in her video entry for the contest. “I will have that kid participate in some way.” (Read more about Salguero and her music program)

Florida’s��Kelly Cameron, and a Most Unique Wedding Registry:��“I call my class ‘my family,’” says Kelly Cameron, a first-grade teacher at Tampa’s Roland Park K-8 Magnet School. “Being a teacher, I know that a lot of kids come with nothing to school.” So, after she and her future husband, Matt Cameron, got engaged in 2018, the couple saw an opportunity to take their good fortune and pay it forward. Instead of listing linens and lingerie on their wedding registry, they filled it with requests for school supplies. Each wedding invitation listed the age and gender of the child for whom the guests would be shopping. (Read more about Cameron and her wedding gift wish list)

Colorado’s��Finn Lanning, and a Life-Changing Homecoming:��Would you take in a foster child? What if the child had a chronic illness that kept you mostly homebound, required an expensive special diet and required you to skip two days of work each week for doctor appointments? An Aurora math teacher didn’t let those details stop him. When Finn Lanning met 13-year-old Damien at the start of the last school year, he recognized the seventh-grader was someone special. Damien, who has been in foster care for most of his life, needed a kidney transplant and a permanent place to live — every time caring for him became too much for his foster parents and he lost his home, he would be taken off the transplant list. But then, Lanning stepped in, and not only did Damien get back on the list, it seems he has found a forever home. (Read more about Lanning and his compassionate act)

California’s��Nicole Tavera, and Her Deep Passion for Science: Nicole Tavera grew up knowing that education was a priority in her family, but she struggled in school, especially with testing. Tavera, now a fifth-grade science teacher at California’s KIPP L.A. Prep, always had to work really hard in school. But it paid off. “I am the first generation to graduate from college [in my family], and I am proud to say not the last. I have younger siblings as well who are on that road. … Education has just been very, very highly important in our family, and so that’s why I chose to become a teacher.” Tavera talks about the importance of making science more fun for her students, her push to rein in the stress of testing that can build upon other stresses in her students’ lives, and her realization that before she teaches her kids physics or chemistry, she must first focus on reading and comprehension skills; many of her incoming students are years behind the curve. “We read, we read, we read. Reading is so important because not only does it help our English language arts teacher, but it also helps me in science.” (Read more about Tavera and her inspiring story)

Washington, D.C.’s Aaron Cuny and Will Stoetzer, and a Breakthrough in Personalized Learning: When Aaron Cuny and Will Stoetzer were deciding to open their own charter school in 2012, they knew two things: They would locate it in the disadvantaged Washington, D.C., neighborhood most in need of high-quality schools, and they would maximize individual teaching time. “For both of us, it came down to teaching in a small group setting, where you could think about how to reach kids individually rather than spending the majority of time and mental energy thinking about classroom management,” Stoetzer said. To do that, Ingenuity Prep is designed around computer-based learning and a heavy use of co-teaching, which then allows educators to break up their classes and maximize the amount of individual attention students receive. Six years later, Ingenuity Prep is delivering stronger results for some of the District’s most at-risk students but now faces a hurdle in its quest to expand. (Read more about Cuny, Stoetzer and Ingenuity Prep)

Florida’s Joanne Miller, and an Anti-Bullying Campaign Driven By Kindness: Want to know the best thing about being kind? It’s contagious. And Joanne Miller, a fourth-grade teacher in Deltona, is out to spread the kindness virus. Every Friday, about 20 students from Miller’s Kindness Squad line up to spread good cheer and welcome the students at Pride Elementary School. But the good works don’t stop at the front door. The squad spreads happiness before school, after school, during lunch and at recess. “We want to start small here in our classroom, and then to the school and then to the community,” Miller says. “One of my biggest goals is to teach kindness in the classroom, and then we will spread it.” It’s also a way to prevent bullying before it starts. (Read more about Miller and her Kindness Squad)

New York’s��Eric Albino, and a New Campaign to Rethink the Way We Teach Slavery: Over years of classes, 11th-grader Jeremias Mata had viewed slavery with a certain simplicity and hopelessness — that many black people had once been slaves and that was that. This year, learning about slavery has been different for students at Manhattan’s Facing History School, partly because teachers are incorporating The New York Times’s 1619 Project — a compilation of essays and poetry that re-examines slavery’s legacy 400 years after the first enslaved people arrived in the U.S. from West Africa. The project is helping schools nationwide reframe how slavery is taught in a way that captures its brutality, complexity and influence in shaping America, while also affirming the experience as integral to black Americans’ identity and their contributions to the country. This reframing is “extremely important, especially with the student body that we teach here,” says history teacher Eric Albino. New York City is a predominantly black and Hispanic district that struggles with inequity and segregation. (Read more about Albino and the 1619 Project)

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