Making College Decisions & Supporting Students
April 12, 2019 – Here’s our weekly roundup of education news you may have missed. This week, read about how community colleges are finding ways to effectively serve students. School funding and under-matching are discussed in other coverage.
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Elementary & Secondary Education:
- High-achieving students with financial need often resort to “under-matching” when making a college choice, and the Achievement First charter school network has identified that institutional financial aid packages are often the deciding factor. Chalkbeat reports on how Achievement First hopes to encourage students to attend more selective schools with higher graduation rates by providing scholarships that offset the differences in price.
- “Contrary to other research, the socioeconomic achievement gap has remained unchanged over the past 50 years, according to a new study published by Education Next,” states Education Week. The outlet also publishes a commentary by Dr. John H. Jackson, which recommends how school-community partnerships can support academic success.
- Articles from The Hechinger Report and The Atlantic illustrate how school funding disparities and residential segregation exacerbate educational inequities. Both articles also illustrate the pressures of code-switching that students can experience when living in one community and attending school in another.
Higher Education:
- “How, one might wonder, in an era of shrinking state support and declining enrollments, can a financially challenged two-year college afford to swoop in with rent payments, transportation vouchers, child-care subsidies, and free food and clothing?” The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the outcomes beginning to show from Amarillo College’s “culture of caring.”
- Colleges and universities should consider undertaking equity audits in order to better understand how their policies and practices impact the experiences of underrepresented students, states the Center for American Progress.
- Community colleges are increasingly popular with middle-class families, reports The New York Times. This option can allow students to save money on tuition while still pursuing a four-year degree.
Cooke Foundation Highlights:
- The Foundation announces our 2019 Good Neighbor Grant recipients. These 12 nonprofit organizations from Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC will receive a total of $250,000 to serve over 7,500 students collectively in a broad variety of programs focused on high-quality academic enrichment, college access, and arts education.
- “According to new research from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation on community college transfer students at elite institutions, these transfer students excel—outperforming their classmates that started there as freshman,” states Dr. Lynn Tincher-Ladner in Forbes. Dr. Tincher-Ladner, president and CEO of Phi Theta Kappa, also shared her “new favorite graph” in a speech to PTK Catalyst 2019 attendees.
Social Media Spotlight:
Photo header: Cooke Scholars work on research projects at Foundation-sponsored summer programming.