Part 1 of the "Equity or Bust: Are Ontario's Public Schools a Model for Pennsylvania" Series: Ontario has become widely lauded for its education system, celebrated for both high performance and relatively smaller achievement gaps between wealthy and poor students, thanks to the concept of "equity." This manifests, in essence, as more funding per-pupil to the school boards that serve students who face the greatest obstacles. The model contrasts starkly to the school system in Pennsylvania, regarded as "the most inequitable in the nation.”

In many parts of the world, not owning one's own land is more directly correlated to poverty than other factors such as illiteracy, but land reform is controversial, difficult, and expensive. A new program called Landesa is having success in India through a non-confiscatory model that gives families tennis-court size plots.

Rwanda offers universal health coverage to its citizens, with a reported 25 percent having to pay no premiums. The system has allowed for great advances in health across the nation, with a dramatic rise in life expectancy—from 48 to 58 in the last 10 years. This article looks at a number of ways in which Rwanda's policies and programs have led to their success.

At Johns Hopkins, implicit gender bias was recognized as one of the main reasons for unequal diagnosis and treatment of preventable blood clots. A blood clot prevention checklist was created to disrupt this bias, both by dissagregating decisions as well as reducing intervention of human judgement.

Drawing on his experience creating affordable housing abroad, Hugh Brennan created the Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance just outside Dublin, Ireland, where state and city officials are grappling with a shortage of affordable housing. The OCCA has brought together local governing councils and private investors to remedy the issue.

The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative is working to structure an inclusive economy by bridging socioeconomic gaps between classes; by connecting large employers with the pool of people currently seeking work, this community-empowered group is working to create "an actionable strategy for ... pathways into the middle class"