In the past three years, DeForest (Wis.) Area School District students have consistently outperformed the state average on the ACT, though it still struggles with achievement gaps among students in several demographics. To address areas needing improvement, DeForest schools have implemented multiple intervention strategies, including the Fastbridge monitoring tool to identify needs and tailor interventions, a schedule for those interventions, professional development and new curriculum.

Summer school participation modestly increased math achievement but had no impact on reading, according to an NWEA analysis of data from 10 large school districts for 2022 and 2023. The math gains were equivalent to two to three weeks of learning during the school year, and NWEA recommends extending summer programs to at least five weeks with a minimum of 90 minutes of math and 120 minutes of reading daily to boost effectiveness.

Educator Ryan Burns emphasizes the importance of effective professional learning for teachers, recounting experiences with ineffective professional development sessions that are often lecture-heavy and compliance-driven. Burns highlights the need for professional learning that is engaging, relevant and respectful of teachers' time and expertise, citing positive experiences with Edcamp and the Rhode Island Writing Project as examples of impactful professional learning.

Educators are divided on the effectiveness of homework, with some citing its benefits for academic achievement, while others argue that it can be excessive and ineffective, according to informal Education Week polls. Research from the Center for Public Education indicates that homework can boost achievement, but it should take no more than one hour a night for students in middle school and between 1.5 and 2.5 hours for high-schoolers.

AI projects are being developed to automate the process of detecting errors in students' math assignments, a task that traditionally requires teachers to manually review students' work. Companies such as Eedi Labs are leading efforts to train AI algorithms to predict and identify student misconceptions in math, potentially enabling real-time correction by teachers.

Educators who want to avoid "AI instructional slop" -- the overreliance on AI that yields superficial lessons -- must ensure that AI is integrated into existing systems and workflows, writes Tammy Kwan of the Princeton AI Lab and Teaching Strategies. That interconnectivity can allow teachers the time to enhance lesson plans using their own experience or provide personalized support that's humanized, while AI can be tasked, for example, with combining two days of lessons into one after a snow day, she says.