For over a year, stories of economic devastation, food and housing insecurity, and the challenges of remote learning have dominated headlines as the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in dramatic changes for education, businesses, and communities. In the Columbus, Ohio region, the pandemic widened existing inequalities, as it did across the rest of the…

In this article, we perform cost-effectiveness analysis on interventions that improve the rate of high school completion. Using the What Works Clearinghouse to select effective interventions, we calculate cost-effectiveness ratios for five youth interventions. We document wide variation in cost-effectiveness ratios between programs and between…

Considerable research has focused on how best to satisfy modern societies' needs for skilled labour in the field of science. The present study evaluated an intervention programme designed to increase secondary school students' motivation to pursue a science career. Students from 3 schools of the highest educational track participated for up to 2…

The University of North Texas's Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science began admitting students to its 2-year early college entrance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program in the fall of 1988. This program provided accelerated entry for top students in Texas in the areas of mathematics and science. Approximately 200…

The Talent Development program at Johns Hopkins, City Year, and Communities in Schools have created a new middle school and high school model that reduces dropout risk. Diplomas Now integrates strategies that are designed to raise student achievement, promotion, and graduation rates in the nation's most challenged high-poverty secondary schools. A…

In 1982, the UC Berkeley Gifted Program took in its first cohort. The initial group consisted of 282 middle and high school students. As was the case with many programs for gifted youths, admission to the program was based on students' SAT scores, and urban students were underrepresented. In this article, the author discusses how the program has…

Back in the early 1990s, three Manitoba School districts launched the "Lost Prizes" project to reclaim talented, at-risk high-school dropouts. Despite their unique gifts, these relationship-resistant youth were disenchanted, disillusioned, and disconnected. Many had major substance abuse problems and were engaged in serious criminal…

Unless we sharply increase the training of homegrown math and science talents, we may suffer negative economic and technological consequences. One means of addressing this challenge has been through specialty schools devoted to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) training. In 1980, the North Carolina School of Science and…

InnerSpark is a residential summer arts training program for high school students established by the California State Legislature (California Education Code sections 8950-8957) in order to make it possible for "artistically gifted and talented students, broadly representative of the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of the state, to receive…

The Rutgers Astrophysics Institute is a program in which gifted high school students learn about contemporary science and its methods, and conduct independent authentic research using real-time data. The students use the processes of science to acquire knowledge, and serve as cognitive apprentices to an expert astrophysicist. A variety of…