As she prepares to enroll at Spelman College in Atlanta, here are five things to know about Shepherd:

How she did it: Shepherd sent her bona fides — which include the publication of a book titled “Thirteen,” seats on the New Orleans mayor’s and superintendent’s youth advisory councils, and extensive community service — to every college or university she could find that waived the application fee. She also submitted her application to , an online portal that offers direct admissions to colleges whose criteria students meet. 

About those scholarships: KIPP New Orleans leaders believe Shepherd has received more scholarship offers, or nearly so, than any graduate, ever. Because of unprecedented delays caused by problems with this year’s FAFSA, her total tally is likely to keep rising as colleges and philanthropies continue processing awards. All told, so far her senior class has earned $26 million in scholarships.  

Where she’s headed: Shepherd is waitlisted at an Ivy she’d prefer not to name, but it wasn’t her first choice. She’s had her eyes on Spelman College for years — even if it wasn’t always clear how she’d get there: “My mom always told me to play my role and everything else would fall into place, and that’s exactly what happened. (They did also give me a full ride .)” Shepherd texted in response to The 74’s questions. “So I’ll be going to my dream school for free!”

After that: Shepherd plans to follow a political science degree with law school, after which the two-time winner of KIPP New Orleans’s Black Lives Matter writing contest plans to tackle some societal issues. “I want to be on the Supreme Court because I want to be a part of change to make a more fair, just and equitable society, and what better way to do that than from inside.”

Her inspiration: Shepherd was in kindergarten when her father died. More recently, she lost both of her maternal grandparents to COVID. “Education meant everything to them, so I didn’t really have a choice but to do well in school,” she says. When her grandmother passed, Shepherd channeled her grief into making her proud. “It made me feel like everything I do moving forward .”&�Բ�����;

The Council of Chief State School Officers representatives of a dozen major education organizations, state departments and local districts to share stories about their most successful efforts and how they plan to maintain the programs that yielded the best outcomes as budgets tighten. The 74’s Beth Hawkins moderated one of the sessions, which showcased one district’s decision to collect data on what was working.

Organizers have released videos of the panels, focusing on innovative efforts at the state, district and school levels. In one, North Carolina officials to create an office of learning recovery within the state Department of Public Instruction, which will conduct research to help legislators make data-informed decisions about K-12 policy. The state also built a “funding cliff dashboard” for school systems to use as they confront the end of the federal aid.

Attendees also heard from a who slashed student office referrals to one third of pre-pandemic rates by gathering detailed, personal information on young people’s well-being and changing expectations for how staff spend their time. Teachers and administrators now join students for an extended lunch period, for example, and school leaders frequently ask students about everything from stress to thoughts of suicide, instead of relying on teacher referrals to support staff.

On Hawkins’s panel,  Adam Kunz, assistant superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, and Indianapolis Public Schools Deputy Superintendent Andrew Strope delved into how their districts with “right-sizing” efforts despite an infusion of cash that they could have used to forestall painful decisions. Instead, both school systems spent their federal funds on the recovery efforts that showed the strongest returns on investment.

In addition to fixing longstanding inequities in how special education and gifted and talented services are provided, Indianapolis invested in a high-dosage tutoring effort credited with reducing lost ground in math and reading to a third of losses in similar districts. 

St. Paul’s presentation described the district’s decision to plan for the end of federal funding even before the money arrived and showcased a novel high school credit recovery effort that has yielded major gains in student engagement and graduation readiness.

Here are videos of the other sessions on the program:

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt and state Sen. Michael Lee talk with CCSSO CEO Carissa Moffat Miller about their state’s creation of a research hub to collect data on effective recovery efforts that lawmakers can tap when deciding education policy priorities. 

Georgia Association of Secondary School Principals’ 2023 Middle School Principal of the Year Suzan Harris and eighth-grader Carter Glover describe dramatic improvements in their Jackson school’s disciplinary climate and ability to support student mental health.

CCSSO’s 2023 National Teacher of the Year Rebecka Peterson talks to educator Jo-Anne Smith of Waterbury, Vermont, about her role as a kindergarten intervention specialist at Brookside Primary School.

Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development with the U.S. Department of Education, talks with Council of the Great City Schools Executive Director Ray Hart about opportunities to continue the most effective ESSER investments. 

In a conversation moderated by The 74’s Beth Hawkins, three state leaders describe their creative uses of local and federal innovation laws. The director of college and career readiness at the South Carolina Department of Education, Stephanie DiStasio talks about creating a “playbook” to let educators know what flexibility exists and what kinds of programs they’re allowed to try; Julie Murgel, chief operating officer for the Montana Office of Public Instruction, talks about her state’s assessment experiment, which measures student skills throughout the year instead of in one end-of-course exam; and Minnesota’s Lucy Payne, a member of the teacher education faculty at the University of St. Thomas, describes bringing students’ voices to policy discussions.

Castillo, who is in her fourth year of teaching, says she finds joy in making her classroom a safe haven not only for herself, but for her students by creating a well-equipped, stimulating and hands-on environment for learning.

Castillo teaches middle school physical science and Earth space science at the Florida A&M University Developmental Research School in Tallahassee. The K-12 laboratory school, located on the campus, is affiliated with the university’s College of Education, Castillo’s alma mater. She received her bachelor’s in biology education there in 2021.

During her first year of teaching, she designed her classroom based on the Cartoon Network show Total Drama Island and posted pictures on social media. Her received over a quarter-million likes — and she’s never looked back. She documents her elaborate, hand-made classroom decorations on TikTok —  typically based on favorite childhood shows and movies such as Stitch from Disney’s Lilo and Stitch or the characters from Disney Channel’s hit show The Proud Family —  and posts videos of special Friday projects that teach students essential skills like cooking, sewing, proper table etiquette and balancing a checkbook. 

Would you cook with your students?

Castilllo has received so many messages from teachers asking for tutorials that she posts theme concepts on TikTok and offers custom borders and posters on Etsy.

My classroom reveal for my Proud Family Themed Classroom

Her social media presence also garnered the attention of Grammy Award-winning rapper Megan thee Stallion, who sent Castillo and her students a special in 2021. 

That moment you and your students get a special shout-out from Megan Thee Stallion @theestallion

Castillo also uses her Instagram account, @ScholarDreams_, to keep her students and parents informed about school events such as sports tryouts, weather-related cancellations and class supply lists.

Making her classroom as lively as possible is no small feat. It typically takes Castillo the entire summer to prepare, and she spends between $300 and $400 for decor each school year, plus about $100 for every “life skills” project. Support from the college and online donations help to offset the cost.

It’s totally worth it, she says, to always make her students feel welcome and know that someone took the time to invite them in and make them comfortable.

If they’re too quick to close schools, families strapped for child care — or facing another day of indoor “fun” — suffer. If they hold back and ice or whiteouts trap kids on buses, that’s a different kind of misery-making.

In December, Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Kent Pekel made fun of his first wrong school-closure call of the season in a Twitter video that ended up going viral.

Standing in the dry, sunny parking lots of a series of shuttered schools, he mocked himself: “Certainly the worst conditions that have ever existed in Rochester history — maybe in American history.”&�Բ�����;

“I could never have made it out here to Bamber Valley Elementary School in these terrible road conditions if I didn’t have an incredibly powerful all-terrain vehicle like my Kia Optima,” Pekel proclaimed to his phone camera. “If you don’t have an amped-up car like mine, don’t go out. You’re never going to make it.”

Gantlet thrown down, students have spent the rest of the winter tapping their critical thinking and creative writing skills to persuade Pekel to call snow days. 

Earlier this week, the superintendent singled out an entreaty from Fahad A. as one of the year’s best.  

Runners-up so far this school year include an argument that the district’s 17,400 students are becoming accustomed to sleeping in on Thursdays, which one claimed have been especially snow-prone;

That stressed-out teachers need the extra rest;

And that homebound pupils will use the day to catch up. 

There was a variation on the classic “uphill both ways” lament …

…and outright flattery. 

But not everybody was amused. 

The superintendent did not miss a beat, replying to a thread of armchair meteorologists that he had not “thrown any [forecasters] under the proverbial school buses we are all trying to keep on the road.”

As it turns out, how many inches are enough to justify a snow day is a math problem with no right answer. 

Few would question the importance of diversifying America’s teacher corps and ensuring their makeup more closely resembles that of the students they teach. But how? What are the most successful tactics? And because of the stresses and health concerns faced by so many educators during the pandemic?

These are some of the questions that will be on the table today at 1 p.m. Eastern, when The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute present a panel discussion: “Teacher Diversity in a Post-COVID World.” Experts will include Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality; Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development; Daniel Helena, English language development coordinator for Los Angeles’s Kory Hunter Middle School; and Brienne Bellavita, senior advocacy manager for the Walton Family Foundation and Walton Education Coalition. Curtis Valentine, deputy director of Reinventing America’s Schools at the Progressive Policy Institute, will moderate.

Click and join the official Zoom, or watch the livestream by either , or refreshing this page at 1 p.m. ET when we’ll embed the stream in progress.

Go Deeper — Some important related articles to help shape the conversation:

• Analysis: Kate Walsh: New Study of 1,200 Teacher Preparation Programs Shows Academic Selectivity and Diversity Can Go Hand in Hand

• First person: Sharif El-Mekki: Just 2% of U.S. Teachers Are Black Males, but at National Convening We Come Together as a Powerful Force for Change

• State policy: Two Steps Forward, One Back: Teacher Diversity Bill May Push Hundreds of Minnesota Educators of Color from Classrooms

• Interview: ‘A Diverse Teaching Force Is a Quality Teaching Force’: Researcher Seth Gershenson Talks About His New Book and the Changing Demographics of American Schools

• Research: Why Diversity Matters: Five Things We Know About How Black Students Benefit From Having Black Teachers

• Explore the Data: The State of America’s Student-Teacher Racial Gap: Our Public School System Has Been Majority-Minority for Years, but 80 Percent of Teachers Are Still White