Season 1: The Way We Are
Winning by Attrition
As its name suggests, University Academy was created to prepare students for college. By most measures, the charter school in Kansas City is a tremendous success. In 2016, University Academy received a 100 percent score on the state’s Annual Performance Report. All the graduating seniors received offers to attend a four-year college. The results look…
Read MoreRethinking ‘Troublemakers’
Turn the Page KC, the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department and the mayor’s office convened school district leaders and community stakeholders in September to review city-wide suspension data. This data from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA showed in a 2015 study that Missouri suspended black elementary students,…
Read MoreAmerican Graduate Day
American Graduate Day 2017 is a four-hour, live broadcast and outreach event dedicated to engaging our country around the dropout crisis with special celebrity guests, relevant spokespeople and compelling stories from the students themselves. Earlier this year, KCPT and Take Note collected community nominations of local champions of education and profiled two individuals, Ken Heitland…
Read MoreLooking to Bear Fruit
In the orchards of Lafayette County, which is located just to the north and east of Kansas City, the peaches are giving way to apples. While locals and immigrant laborers work the land, the county’s educators have joined together to take on another type of harvest — young minds. Educators throughout Lafayette County came together…
Read MoreSwitching The Script
Nearly two decades ago, Atlanta aimed to revitalize its crime-plagued “Little Vietnam” neighborhood, and an innovative charter known as the Drew School was a key part of the project. Today, Drew is ranked as one of Scholastic’s 25 Coolest Schools in America. And Little Vietnam is held up as an example of a successful…
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