New Data on Pell Grant Graduates & Student Homelessness

Cooke Transfer Scholars at Scholars Weekend 2018

February 22, 2019 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. Read about supporting students with financial need at elite institutions, along with community college transfer pathways and basic needs insecurity in K-12.

Do you know an academically talented 7th grader with financial need?  Encourage them to apply for the Cooke Young Scholars Program, a 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. The application deadline is March 14, 2019.

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Elementary & Secondary Education:

  • “The number of students in kindergarten through the 12th grade who are homeless has increased by 70 percent over the last decade,” states U.S. News & World Report. A related article from The 74 charts student homelessness by state.
  • When the community eligibility provision for the National School Lunch Program was introduced in 2014, there was some concern that it might make tracking student poverty difficult for research and evaluation. The Hechinger Report explains that the new data is “not as drastic as many feared.”

 

Higher Education:

  • “As selective liberal arts schools and flagship public universities open their doors wider to students from modest backgrounds, the figures show many of those schools don’t serve poor students as well as they do others,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
  • The Center for American Progress also examines recent data from the Department of Education and determines: “Part-time Pell students do slightly better than their full-time peers, and nonfirst-time, part-time Pell students’ credential completion rate is 10 percentage points higher than that of their non-Pell peers.”
  • A new brief from MDRC describes interventions to increase the year-round use of Pell Grants among students at community colleges.
  • “Requiring students to ante up conference funds up front without the hope of being reimbursed for months makes academia less welcoming for scientists who are financially disadvantaged,” writes Jessica Sagers for Science.

 

Cooke Foundation Highlights:

  • Findings from our recent “Persistence” report are cited in The Christian Science Monitor‘s coverage of transfer pathways and Inside Higher Ed‘s summary of the #EndCCStigma social media campaign. KHQA News in Quincy, Illinois shares the report’s findings in a TV segment.
  • Cooke Scholar My Bui is quoted in Princeton University‘s coverage of the 1vyG conference: “I was really grateful my junior and senior year to work with the first-generation and low-income mentoring group and help students find value in themselves. … I wish someone had sat me down [my first year] to say there is so much you are capable of and so much you are going to do at Princeton.”
  • Watch Charlotte Marckx perform a cover of “Feeling Good” with fellow Cooke Scholar Peter Dugan and other musicians on From the Top. Another one of Charlotte’s collaborations, a cover of “Shake It Off”, is one of the top five classical covers ranked by Strings Magazine.

 

Social Media Spotlight:

 

Photo header: Cooke Transfer Scholars at Scholars Weekend 2018.