Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Colleges Are No Match for American Poverty

    Journalist Marcella Bombardieri calls community college "one of America's largest and most important anti-poverty programs." The president of Amarillo College in Texas is testing just how far community colleges can go to fight systemic issues - day care, social workers, and emergency funds for students' daily expenses are part of his plan. Other administrators are looking on at the dramatic experiment with mixed views and takeaways.

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  • An Honors College That Honors Grit

    Unlike the honors colleges at most universities, the Honors Living-Learning Community at Rutgers University-Newark recruits students based on "grit" and commitment to social justice. The Community creates a supportive experience within the larger campus and focuses students' studies on issues ranging from civil rights to environmental justice. “For the first time these students are learning about themselves and about that corner where they come from,” an assistant dean commented. Honors students' freshman GPAs are on average half a grade higher than the grades of non-honors students.

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  • Three years in, an ambitious experiment to improve the odds for kids at one elementary school is scaling back

    A Colorado nonprofit takes a "place-based" approach to improving student outcomes. By offering wraparound social and educational services, Blocks of Hope aims "to flood a carefully defined geographic area with services in the hopes of touching a critical mass of residents, usually around 60 percent." On its third anniversary, the trumpeted program has started to lose steam, running up against the realities of a gentrifying neighborhood and funding shortages.

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  • Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus?

    Researchers at Columbia University undertook an exhaustive ethnography, interviewing hundreds of students on campus to understand the conditions under which sexual assault occurs. The idea was to get past common assumptions about the dynamics of assault and find what strategies might work best to protect all students. Researchers concluded small structural adjustments to student life could bring substantial change, including more mental health services and different types of responses based on the individual students and the types of incidents.

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  • California School District Explores Strength-Based Learning

    Lake Canyon Elementary School in California takes a strength-based approach to instruction - teachers identify students' natural talents and create personalized lessons to encourage the development of these skills. "Focusing on the traits and skills kids don't have can lead them to become disengaged, while focusing on strengths produces greater levels of happiness and engagement at school and higher levels of academic achievement," one psychology professor explains. Teachers discipline by highlighting "a surplus of something good, not a deficiency." Can the expensive, time-intensive model succeed elsewhere?

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  • How one rural Alabama district is closing the gap, raising scores for all children

    Closing the achievement gap requires raising the expectations not only of students, but also of leadership and institutions. In Pike County, Alabama, the school district has improved its learning outcomes by investing more in students and leadership, thanks to a crucial one-penny sales tax in favor of the schools. In addition to taking better care of teachers, the district monitors data at the student—not subgroup—level, and offers curricula with community college credits. The district has also launched an Advanced Academics and Accelerated Learning program.

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  • Here's An Innovative Idea: Give Students A Say In Teaching

    Denver Public Schools and other local organizations are encouraging teachers and students to experiment with the physical space and practical techniques of over-standardized curricula. Within these trial schools, called "innovation labs," teachers have piloted grade-free incentive programs and "shadow-a-student" days. DPS hopes that these new initiatives will provide teachers with insights into children's hectic routines and over time increase children's involvement in shaping their own educational experiences.

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  • Rural areas recruiting well trained foreign workers for hard to fill jobs

    In Montana, schools and hospitals are in desperate need of teachers and nurses as brain drain leads young people to leave the state. In response, the state is working with Guardian Healthcare Providers to employ foreign nurses, mostly from the Philippines. Foreign teachers are also coming to Montana, and they need to meet clear certification requirements to be able to teach. Cut Bank, Montana residents are welcoming the foreign workers into their communities.

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  • The push to find more gifted kids: What Washington can learn from Miami's wins

    In most "gifted" programs across the U.S., students are predominantly middle income and white, regardless of the variation in demographics between districts. Since the 1990s, Miami public schools have made it their quest to defy this trend and identify overlooked students who may be still learning English as a second language or whose potential may not be identified by traditional tests designed to find "gifted" students. In Miami, low-income and ESOL students take a different test than peers designed to account for certain stressors not present in other students' lives. Can Washington learn from this model?

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  • How Effective Is Your School District? A New Measure Shows Where Students Learn the Most

    Too often people use standardized test scores as the only measure of how good a school system is. A new measure looks at the growth and proficiency of the students as a measure of performance and may be more accurate in comparing public schools across the USA.

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