On a chilly day before Christmas, Teresa Rivas helped a tween boy pick out a new winter coat. 'Get the bigger one, the one with the waterproof layer, mijo,' she said, before helping him pull it onto his string-bean frame. Rivas provides guidance counseling at Owen Goodnight Middle School in San Marcos, Texas. She talks with students about their goals and helps if they're struggling in class. She's also a trained navigator placed there by a nonprofit called Communities in Schools. The idea behind CIS and other 'community school' programs is that students can't succeed academically if they're struggling at home. 'Between kindergarten and 12th grade, kids spend only 20 percent of their time' in a classroom, Rob Watson, the executive director of the EdRedesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told me. If America wants kids to thrive, he said, it has to consider the 80 percent. Educators and school administrators in San Marcos, a low-income community south of Austin,...
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