Cooke Chronicle: Dec. 16, 2016

Posted December 16, 2016 | By Cooke Foundation Staff

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Dec. 16, 2016 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. Investing in students pays off, and advocates in both the K-12 and higher ed realms encourage support for high-achieving students with financial need.

 

Elementary & Secondary Education:

  • States should have policies in place that help high-achieving, low-income students reach their full potential, writes The Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews.

  • Does education spending improve student outcomes? The New York Times reports that “states that send additional money to their lowest-income school districts see more academic improvement in those districts than states that don’t.”

  • “Investing in preschool beats the stock market, hands down” reads an NPR headline. The accompanying interview with Nobel laureate James Heckman reveals the outcomes of a long-term research study that found a 13 percent per annum return on early childhood programs.

  • The 74 Million reports on how mass incarceration affects students, who are more likely to drop out and have psychological or health problems than their peers with non-incarcerated parents. “By the age of 14, a quarter of black children will have experienced a parent being imprisoned for some period of time, compared with just 4 percent of white children,” notes the article.

 

Higher Education:

  • The American Talent Initiative, a Bloomberg Philanthropies collaboration with 30 colleges signed on, announces its 10-year goal to enroll an additional 50,000 talented low-income students in institutions with high graduation rates. Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of the initiative includes comments from Executive Director Harold O. Levy.

  • Low-income students are less likely to receive mentoring beyond their extended family. The Atlantic looks into what makes a positive mentorship experience.

  • Despite broad support for providing students with potential earnings data to guide their college choice, a recent data analysis from The Urban Institute finds that “only about a third of high school seniors can use earnings data to make a meaningful distinction between programs of study at two or more institutions.”

 

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • Along with the Center for American Progress and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, we are encouraging governors and state superintendents to keep high-achieving, low-income students in mind as they design their accountability systems. Our joint letter is available to read in Education Week (paywall) and The High Flyer blog from Fordham.

  • In an opinion piece for Fox News, our executive director shares ideas on how the incoming administration can use edtech to support equity.

  • The foundation is also mentioned in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s advice for grant seekers, and a piece on the college preparation process from U.S. News & World Report.

 

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