‘Lost year’ for education: Global lessons on how students can rebound

As an Afghan boy growing up in a refugee camp in northwestern Pakistan, Ismail Khan remembers his first lesson in the power of education – and its disruption. In 1996, when he was in 6th grade, protests by Islamic militants shut down schools and government offices in the area for about four months, forcing him and his siblings to stay home.

 “Those kids whose parents were educated kept studying at home, and were kind of ok,” he recalls. “All those kids who did not study for four months were struggling, and kept struggling for a year or two to get back to the same level.”

From his formative days in the refugee camp, to his years running a school in the war zone of his native Afghanistan, to now parenting his own school-aged children in Kent, Washington, during

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