Reducing Child Poverty & Increasing Higher Education Equity

Posted March 1, 2019 | By Cooke Foundation Staff

Cooke Scholars do an activity at Scholars Weekend 2018

March 1, 2019 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. Higher education advocates discuss how to better support equity goals and students’ basic needs. Additional articles address child poverty and social mobility.

Our Cooke Young Scholars Program application deadline is in two weeks, on March 14, 2019. Do you know an academically talented 7th grader with financial need? Encourage them to apply for this selective pre-college scholarship that offers educational support to exceptionally promising students from across the nation. Cooke Young Scholars receive comprehensive advising and financial support from 8th grade through high school. 

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Elementary & Secondary Education:

  • Andrew Johnson and Ryan Kinney, both college and career access advisers in Chicago, note that the city’s personalized College Readiness Guides omit an important metric: the graduation rates at recommended institutions. “Regardless of high school GPA, students graduate from college at higher rates when they attend more selective institutions,” explain the authors in Chalkbeat.
  • The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine releases a roadmap to reducing the child poverty rate to half of its current levels over the next ten years. NPR reports on the policy details.

 

Higher Education:

  • “Community colleges are realizing that addressing racial and income equity are the missing pieces to improving completion rates,” reports Inside Higher Ed.
  • The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) recommends strategies for helping students with financial need succeed, such as providing emergency grants and other resources to meet basic needs.
  • “For the United States to effectively expand opportunity to low- and middle-income Americans, enabling them to enroll in college, gain a good education, and graduate while not taking on an unreasonable amount of debt, we must redirect resources and invest in institutions and policies that promise to be most effective,” states Suzanne Mettler in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • Eric Waldo reflects on the Reach Higher initiative’s North Star goal and looks toward the future in the Harvard Kennedy School Review.

 

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • Seminole State College of Florida celebrates Cooke Scholar Latifah Maasarani’s academic achievements, highlighting her interests in optics and photonics, and her “sense of belonging” within the Cooke Scholar community.
  • “Right now, there is no one else I can point to who does exactly what I do,” says Cooke Scholar Ian Ralby. As an international expert on maritime crime, Ian knows what it takes to chart a unique and meaningful career. Read his insights in our latest Cooke Conversation.
  • “Who is more likely to graduate—the student who transfers from a community college or the student who goes straight into a four-year school?” Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine covers recent findings from our “Persistence” report.

 

Social Media Spotlight:

 

Photo header: Cooke Scholars work together on an activity at Scholars Weekend 2018.