Effective Leaders
Countries with less natural resources may be more likely to develop their human resources:

Or as my Indian-American friend K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, likes to say, “When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.”

Effective Teachers
Have you ever had to sit under a desk with a student to help her learn?

Rigorous, relevant curriculum
If you have parents and community members that still need to be persuaded that high school is not enough education, check out the second version of the Improving the Odds report, produced for the state of Washington,

Southern New Hampshire University—yes, I hadn’t heard of it before reading this article, either—has 2,250 students on campus and 10,600 online.  It is extending the ideas of Big Picture high schools into postsecondary education, too:

College Unbound, which started last fall, connects just a dozen first-generation students, drawn largely from the Big Picture network of charter schools, to design their own learning plans around internships, spending as much time in the world as in class and earning their bachelor’s degree in just three years. “Unlike a traditional classroom, where the teacher gives you the textbooks and the assignments, we have to frame our own essential questions and get all the information we need on our own,” says 18-year-old Ebony Byas, who is exploring child psychology while interning at an Easter Seals day-care center.

Check out this thoughtful perspective on the Common Core Standards’ reading elements.