…An innovative district leader, collaborative local funders, and a promising strategy they all agree on. Sounds simple, right? According to a recent paper out of the Bridgespan Group, those are the three most important ingredients to sparking real change in results for students through local philanthropic efforts. Highlighting major transformation efforts in Memphis, Tenn., Jacksonville,…
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The most shocking thing I learned from the American Institutes for Research’s new report by Dr. Gary Phillips? The gap in expectations between states with the highest performance standards and those with the lowest standards is equivalent to three to four grade levels. That’s double the national achievement gap between white students and black students. Unlike…
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Last fall, the Mass Insight State Development Network (SDN) released a toolkit in which we identified the top ten “levers” that a State Education Agency (SEA) could use to strengthen and better support turnaround efforts at the school and district levels. The publication provided the reader with an in-depth understanding of each of the levers,…
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Liberty Street Economics, the blog of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, posted an interesting series last week on the value of a college degree. We’ve posted on this topic before, thanks to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, but in an era of ballooning college tuition costs and rising student loan debt, it’s…
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Our monthly news round-up continues below with August’s highlights. Tug-of-war over Common Core in Louisiana. Last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) filed a legal suit against the federal government over the Common Core initiative. The suit alleges that the federal government has created a “national curriculum,” which is illegal under federal law. The impact…
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Bonus post this week! Mass Insight Education President Justin Cohen shares his thoughts on Common Core roll-out and how #edreformers can better engage the public. I am enjoying the ongoing debate on the edreform interwebs about how the rollout of the Common Core State Standards has hit a completely predictable bump in the road known…
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For some students, the summer before college is filled with hunting down dorm room necessities, wrapping up a summer job, and finding the best deals on college textbooks. But how much of this serves to arm students with the skills they will need once they enroll in college? Last month, a Huffington Post infographic came…
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Type the words “STEM crisis” into Google, and it spits back nearly 30,000 results for articles chronicling the current state of science and mathematics preparation among American students and workers. Whether there is a crisis or not is a matter of debate, at least according to the Google results, but what’s not in dispute is…
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It’s not news to anybody that the cost of college these days is through the roof. Nor would anybody be surprised to learn that to cover those increasingly astronomical costs, more students than ever are taking out student loans: seven in 10 students who graduated college last year did so with at least some student…
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“From our research, a few things are clear. Perhaps most importantly, it is plain that some districts can get more bang for their buck.” -Parallel Lives, Different Outcomes: A Twin Study of Academic Productivity in U.S. School Districts (Center for American Progress) No, today’s blog isn’t about savvy shopping or living on a tight…
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The bad news: Nationally, college persistence rates – the rate at which students return to college for a second year – are down 1.2 percentage points from 2009, according to a report released last week by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The percentage may sound small, but on an enrollment of 3.1 million students,…
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The numbers are pretty clear: a student’s income level plays a hugely significant role in whether he or she will graduate from college. In a recent New York Times Magazine story, Paul Tough cited a staggering statistic that of college freshman who come from the bottom half of this country’s income distribution, only about 25…
read moreOur blog features commentary and insights from our staff and, from time-to-time, special guest bloggers about school improvement practices and policies that are changing student lives and changing schools. Contact jschneider@massinsight.org for more information.