Feb. 26: Education News We're Reading This Week

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Feb. 26, 2016 – Here’s our weekly roundup of the biggest news you may have missed. Strategies for supporting low-income students are the focus of several thought pieces and efforts highlighted this week by the media.

Elementary and Secondary Education:

  • The Cooke Foundation and CLASS Coalition are hosting our second annual Closing the Excellence Gap Summit in Washington, D.C. this week. Principals from selective high schools across the nation are sharing ideas and advocating to policymakers to better support high-achieving, low-income students.

  • “Five decades of research confirm that students in socioeconomically and racially diverse schools have higher test scores, are more likely to enroll in college, and are less likely to drop out, on average, than peers in schools with concentrated poverty,” reads an op-ed in The New York Times. Despite these well-established benefits, schools remain more segregated than in the 1970s. Policy experts from The Century Foundation share ideas and examples for reversing this trend.

Higher Education:

  • How can higher education both support and celebrate first-generation students? A piece in The Atlantic by True Merit co-author Richard D. Kahlenberg details ongoing efforts.

  • Micro-grants are one strategy that colleges and universities are taking up to help students stay on track for graduation when financial hardships arise. The Coalition for Urban Serving Universities has created new guidelines for implementing these programs and The Washington Post shares stories of how different institutions have used micro-grants to support student retention.

  • In an effort to more accurately track college graduation rates, the Education Department will begin collecting a wider variety of information on Pell grant recipients, says The Hechinger Report.

  • “Students from the poorest households are shouldering more of the pain from rising college costs, borrowing at far higher levels as a share of family income than ever,” states The Wall Street Journal.

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • NBC News honors Cooke Scholar William Tarpeh in NBCBLK28, their celebration of Black History Month and leadership.

  • Our Young Scholars Program is seeking talented seventh graders with financial need to apply for our pre-college scholarship and advising program. Applications must be completed by April 14, 2016.

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