Hungry Learners & Student Moms

Posted September 22, 2017 | By Cooke Foundation Staff

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September 22, 2017 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. New research shares powerful impacts for low-income students in K-12 and early education. Coverage of higher ed focuses on supporting diverse needs.

We are currently accepting applications for our Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, a program for community college students, and our College Scholarship Program for high school seniors. Both scholarships provide up to $40,000 per year, along with opportunities for internships, study abroad, and graduate school funding.

Youth-serving nonprofits in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (including parts of Northern Virginia and Maryland) may apply now to our Good Neighbor Grants program.

 

Elementary & Secondary Education:

  • For students whose families rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also referred to as food stamps), food can run low towards the end of each monthly benefit. NPR describes new research that correlates poor test performance with the times students are hungry each month.
  • “Early childhood education benefits more than the kids who participate — it also helps their kids, even decades later,” Chalkbeat reports.

 

Higher Education:

  • Some elite colleges and universities are addressing Excellence Gaps by recruiting talented students from low-income and other underrepresented backgrounds. The New York Times highlights strategies from different institutions, including Amherst College, the 2016 recipient of the Cooke Prize for Equity in Educational Excellence.
  • One in five of all women in college is a single mom. The Hechinger Report notes the financial obstacles these students face to graduate, including “working full- or part-time, the high cost of daycare (and decreasing availability of it on campuses) and housing.”
  • The Christian Science Monitor reports that “colleges and universities are stepping up efforts to protect students enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program.”

 

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • Ben Castleman, a Cooke Scholar and University of Virginia Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy, writes a memo for the Urban Institute on low-cost methods for the federal government to support student matriculation and graduation.
  • Cooke Scholar Miranda Wheeler shares how perseverance, initiative, and the Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship brought her from community college to Mount Holyoke College in a student video series on YouTube.

 

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