Supporting High-Achievers from Kindergarten through College

Posted April 20, 2018 | By Cooke Foundation Staff

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April 20, 2018 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. Read about how education leaders are working to increase support for high-achieving students with financial need.

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Elementary & Secondary Education:

  • Timothy Daly, a founding partner of EdNavigator, writes an opinion for The 74 outlining the organization’s recommendations for improving school support for high-performing students with financial need.
  • A new study presented at the American Educational Research Associate conference shows that racial segregation in schools remained constant over a 15-year period. Education Dive summarizes.
  • In view of recent teacher protests around the country, The New York Times asked 4,200 teachers to shed light on the reality inside America’s public schools. Low wages, a lack of supplies, and dilapidated classrooms are common themes among the teachers’ responses. Michelle Gibbar, a 20-year veteran high school teacher in Arizona writes, “As I near retirement age, I realize I will retire at the poverty level. The antiquated myth of the noble, yet poor, teacher must go.”

 

Higher Education:

  • NPR speaks to leaders of the American Talent Initiative, a group of selective higher education institutions focused on enrolling 50,000 students with financial need by 2025. The article notes that “every year tens of thousands of top students who don’t come from wealthy families never even apply to elite colleges.”
  • The Hechinger Report outlines state initiatives that have focused on re-enrolling “near college completers,” some of the more than 35 million adults over 25 with some college credits but no degree.

 

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • Seppy Basili, chief operating officer at the Cooke Foundation, talks to Marketplace about the recent Department of Justice investigation into the practice of early decision admissions. “Early admission programs do disadvantage students from lower-income backgrounds,” he said. Our 2016 “True Merit” report found that 29 percent of students whose families earned more than $250,000 a year used early decision compared to only 16 percent of students whose families made less than $50,000.
  • In an article about the phenomenon of undermatching among minority and low-income high schoolers, The Atlantic cites Cooke Foundation research that shows that since 2000, colleges have barely increased the number of Pell Grant recipients on campus.
  • The Seattle Times highlights Amherst College’s efforts to ensure that their students have funding for unpaid internships during the summer. The funds came, in part, from the $1 million Cooke Prize for Equity in Educational Excellence awarded to Amherst in 2016.
  • “The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is the largest BEAM supporter and is responsible for our expansion to Los Angeles this year,” says Richard Rusczyk in Education Week.

 

Social Media Spotlight:

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) hosted an event honoring our executive director, Harold O. Levy: