Passage 1: A Free Ride to School PATNA, India. For Indian teen Nahid Farzana, the daily trip to high school was very long. It was also very expensive. She saw no other choice than to drop out of school. Then, she received a bicycle as part of a government program. Everything changed. Now, Nahid is about to complete high school. She plans to become a teacher. For the Indian government, bicycles have turned out to be a fairly simple answer to a big problem. For years, officials in Bihar—one of India’s poorest states—have worried about how to educate its teenage girls. In India, only 53 percent of girls can read and write. This is mainly because many girls live far away from their high schools. Poor families cannot afford cars. They cannot afford to spend money on public transportation. Some families are also hesitant to let girls travel so far away. They fear for the girls’ safety. Anjani Kumar Singh is one of Bihar’s top education officials. “ We found that the high school dropout rate soared when girls reached the ninth grade, ” said Singh. “ This was primarily because there are fewer high schools. So girls had to travel longer distances to get to school. ” Nahid’s high school, for example, is four miles (6.4 kilometers) from her home. Her daily bus fare was an extra burden that her father Mohammed Shiraz Ahmad could not afford. “I wouldn’t have been able to keep [Nahid] in school for long,” said Ahmad. Many young girls like Nahid forgo their education when faced with long, costly trips to high school. Officials wanted to help. In 2007, the Bihar state government started a new program. The program provides free bicycles to girls entering the ninth grade. To take part in the program, girls must have an attendance rate of 75 percent or better. School officials check to see whether girls use their bicycles or sell them and leave school. Five years in, the program has shown real benefits. In remote villages, school girls can be seen cheerfully bicycling to school. Thanks to the program, the number of ninth-grade girls in Bihar’s high schools has increased a great deal. It went from 175,000 in 2007 to 600,000 in 2012. “The results are remarkable; the school dropout rate for girls has plunged,” said Singh. “[The bicycle program] has worked very well,” said Syeda Hameed, an Indian government official. The results in Bihar were so encouraging that the program is now expanding. Neighboring states have set up similar programs. The Indian government is considering using the program across the country. Nizhat Parveen is a 16-year-old from a village in Bihar. Her bicycle is her proudest possession. It is one that has allowed her to dream of greater things. “Even college doesn’t seem far away now,” Nizhat said.