Newark Public Schools’ chronic absenteeism rate dropped to 8.5%. A lighter tutoring model helped young readers without blowing up the school day. A dual-enrollment study found that even students who failed a college-level course were still more likely to enroll in college than comparable students who never tried one. After-school STEM has become common for children who can get into programs. Burlington, Vermont, opened a new high school after years in a converted department store.
None of these stories is magic.
None of these stories is magic. That is the useful part.
For people working with kids, the throughline is not inspiration. It is design. Read together, the stories suggest a design lesson: adults can change conditions around attendance, instruction, access, and space rather than simply exhorting students.
Newark treated attendance like daily work
Chalkbeat reported that Newark Public Schools’ chronic absenteeism rate fell to 8.5% for the 2025-26 school year, which district leaders described as a historic low. Chalkbeat also reported that the district’s rate dropped from 27% in 2018-19 to 10% in 2024-25, according to state data.
The number needs one caution attached. Chalkbeat reported that New Jersey changed how it calculates chronic absenteeism, and Superintendent Roger León told board members the change helped boost rates. Under the new rule, Chalkbeat reported, the state counts students only after they have been enrolled for 90 of the school year’s 180 days, rather than after 45 days.
Still, the district did more than benefit from a formula. Chalkbeat reported that since León was appointed in 2018, Newark brought back its attendance department, made student-specific plans for at-risk students, formed a truancy task force, and sent attendance updates across the district. The district also uses a “Give Me Five” campaign requiring employees to call families of five students to urge first-day attendance, and it tracks attendance through dashboards by school, class, grade, and individual student, Chalkbeat reported.
If your program is fighting absenteeism, the lesson is not to copy Newark’s exact campaign. Ask whether attendance has an owner, a routine, a student-level plan, and a way for leaders to see the pattern before it hardens.
The hard part is still visible. Chalkbeat reported that 25% of homeless students in Newark were chronically absent in 2024-25, more than double the district’s 2025-26 overall rate.
Short tutoring still helped when it was structured
High-dosage tutoring has a strong research base, but districts often struggle to run it well. Education Week reported on a National Student Support Accelerator study of Chapter One, a tutoring intervention in which part-time tutors delivered 5- to 10-minute lessons during the school day while students stayed in regular classrooms.
The study followed students for four years, from kindergarten through 3rd grade, Education Week reported. The program’s annual cost was about $416 for each student, which Education Week described as below half the cost of other intensive tutoring models used elsewhere at the same time.
The gains were smaller than those in some high-dosage tutoring studies. Education Week reported that Chapter One produced test-score gains of 0.12 to 0.17 standard deviations; a 2024 meta-analysis of high-dosage tutoring interventions found 0.29 standard deviations. But students randomly assigned to the tutoring group scored higher than peers on state standardized tests in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, and by the end of four years they were less likely to have an individualized education program or be retained, Education Week reported.
This is a useful middle lane. If a school cannot staff 30-minute tutoring blocks three or more times a week, the choice does not have to be between the ideal model and nothing.
Access to harder courses should come with scaffolding
Dual enrollment carries risk, and a new study does not pretend otherwise. Education Week reported that WestEd researchers found 17.1% of California students who took at least one dual-enrollment course in the study window failed at least one course.
The study drew on California Department of Education data for students who entered 9th grade in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19, a sample of about 1.74 million students, Education Week reported. Education Week also reported that low-income students faced higher failure rates in dual-enrollment courses even when prior achievement was taken into account.
The surprise is what happened next. Education Week reported that students who attempted dual-enrollment courses and failed were still more likely to enroll in college than comparable students who never enrolled in dual-enrollment courses.
That finding should make adults careful about using failure risk as a gate. If students are prepared enough to try, the better response is not to narrow the doorway. It is to build the supports around the doorway.
Education Week reported that the WestEd paper pointed to barriers including information about eligibility, course scheduling, financial resources, and help from institutions, including transportation for courses on college campuses. Ask those questions before deciding a student is not ready.
After-school STEM has grown, but access still decides who benefits
Education Week reported that 92% of parents with a child in an after-school program said their provider offers opportunities to explore and learn science, technology, engineering, or math. The finding came from a nationally representative Afterschool Alliance survey of 30,000 parents and guardians administered between January and April, Education Week reported.
But the access gap is enormous. Education Week reported that regular STEM opportunities reach about 6.4 million of the 7 million children in after-school programs, while 22.6 million children whose parents want after-school programs cannot access them because of barriers such as cost and capacity.
If your community already has after-school seats, STEM can be more than enrichment. If your community does not, the first STEM intervention may be capacity.
A building can either fight the work or serve it
The 74 reported that Burlington High School’s new building is ready to welcome students after a nearly six-year saga that began when elevated PCB levels were found on the former campus. The school moved into a renovated former Macy’s in downtown Burlington in early 2021, The 74 reported.
Students described what they are leaving behind. The 74 reported that the Macy’s site had science rooms without water, poor sound separation between classrooms, and gym class at the YMCA. The new building includes natural light, windows overlooking athletic fields and neighboring woods, and accessibility features including wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, showers, and a balcony looking onto the gymnasium, The 74 reported.
The Burlington story is an unusually large-scale example. In Burlington, students described noticing whether the building gave them space, light, and places to gather.