Engineering Belonging: The Link Between Student Safety and Systemic Success

For years, the education sector has treated student well-being as a secondary service, something to layer on once the academics are handled. 

The 2025 data from the 4.0 community tells a different story.

So does the national data. The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that the percentage of high school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness rose from 30% in 2013 to 40% in 2023, a 10-point climb in a single decade. 

When four in ten students are struggling emotionally before they even open a textbook, well-being can no longer sit on the margins of education. It belongs at the center.

In our latest Year in Ideas Report, Trend 1: Building a Strong Foundation for Learning emerged as the bedrock of modern innovation. Comprising 24% of all pilots this year, this trend addresses the structural and psychological friction that prevents learning from happening in the first place. 

At 4.0, we believe that if you want to change the status quo, you have to start where the system is most fragile: the human foundation.

Small Bets, High Efficacy

The Tiny pilot model produces rapid, high-fidelity proof points. 

Our founders are showing that community-led, agile interventions can achieve results that massive bureaucracies struggle to replicate.

Emotional Resilience as a Core Competency. AD Williams (Legacy Academy) used basketball as a high-engagement hook to teach emotional regulation. 100% of participants, all from at-risk demographics, reported measurable increases in self-regulation and confidence. What looks like a sports program on the surface is a scalable model for mental health intervention.

Radical Belonging as a Protective Factor. In an era of rising isolation, Jess Jones (Lavender Youth Alliance) created a space for queer and gender-expansive youth that yielded a 99% increase in hope and resilience. For a population often sidelined by traditional systems, this pilot offers a blueprint for building the emotional safety required for academic persistence.

Removing the Silent Barriers. Innovation often looks like solving simple, ignored problems. Vanessa Garrett (Empower HER Flower) achieved 100% efficacy in period poverty education, ensuring that a basic biological reality never becomes a reason for a student to miss school.

Moving the Needle

The 2025 Tiny cohort provides a wealth of data proving that when the foundation is secure, learners excel in ways the traditional system often misses.

Holistic Success for Neurodiverse Learners. Ashlee Dollar (Dare To Be Academy) achieved 100% student retention in her sensory-friendly microschool. 

Beyond academic progress in Language Arts and Math, parents reported a significant shift: their children felt safe and valued, leading to a marked increase in emotional regulation and engagement compared to their previous public school experiences.

Dignity in Representation. Dr. Courtney Mauldin-Jones (The Breedlove Readers) created a third space for Black girl readers that achieved an 88% engagement rate. 

100% of participants expressed an increased sense of belonging, with nearly all requesting to join a permanent book club to continue the work.

Safe Spaces for Difficult Conversations. Isabella Kulstad (Cloud IX) demonstrated the power of technology in sensitive areas, with 95% of students reporting comfort in utilizing AI tools for counseling and resource navigation following campus sexual violence.

The fragility in education extends beyond students. RAND's 2025 State of the American Teacher Survey found that 62% of K-12 teachers reported frequent job-related stress, nearly double the rate among comparable working adults. 

Dahlia Quintanilla (Return to Center) and David Charles Metler (Swing Set Institute) are responding to this crisis directly. They focused on the adults in the ecosystem, and 100% of their participants reported immediate relief from anxiety and a new understanding of the root causes of educator burnout, creating a more stable environment for the students they serve.

A Laboratory for What's Next

Why do these small bets deserve attention? 

Because they bypass the administrative bottleneck that swallows most innovation.

The founders in Trend 1 are operating in permissionless space. They are not waiting for a district-wide policy change to address educator burnout or student anxiety. They are testing solutions in real time with real families, producing a diversified portfolio of evidence-based models that can be imported into any region or system.

From SELvie's AI-powered mentoring to Building Bridges' transformative educator training, these ventures are building the infrastructure of the mind. 

They are proving that when we invest in the foundation, everything built on top of it gets stronger: attendance, engagement, retention, and ultimately, learning itself.

The imagination crisis in education is over. The evidence is here. We invite you to explore the full data behind these pilots and see how Trend 1 is setting the stage for the next decade of American education.

Explore the 2025 Year in Ideas Report

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