Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Poverty
This white paper focuses on an important and under-conceptualized thread in the weave of efforts needed to ensure that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and/or career training: enhanced student supports. It argues that in order to overcome the educational impacts of poverty -- the poverty challenge, schools that serve high concentrations of low income students need to be able to provide direct, evidence-based supports that help students attend school regularly, act in a productive manner, believe they will succeed, overcome external obstacles, complete their coursework, and put forth the effort required to graduate college- and career-ready. Next, it highlights the unique role that nonprofits, community volunteers, and full-time national service members can play in the implementation of these direct student supports. It concludes by exploring how federal and state policy and funding can be designed to promote the implementation and spread of evidence-based, direct student supports. The paper draws on the emerging evidence base to examine these topics, and calls upon the insights gleaned through the author's fifteen years of participant-observation in the effort to create schools strong enough to overcome the ramifications of poverty and prepare all students for adult success.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Ohio's charter-closure law is touted as one of the toughest in the nation because it requires the automatic closure of charter schools that consistently fail to meet academic standards. The law has been showcased by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) in its "One Million Lives" campaign, which calls for tougher state laws to close failing charter schools.
The widespread attention and support of the NACSA campaign has pushed Ohio's closure law into the spotlight as a model of accountability for low-performing charter schools. However, The Plain Dealer's editorial board, in a commentary on NACSA's praise of Ohio's charter school accountability standards, pointed out what NACSA did not: Ohio's charter school laws, while they may have stronger mandates for closure than those of other states, are still replete with loopholes.
Since the charter-closure law went into effect in 2008, 20 schools across the state have met closure criteria, and all are currently listed as closed by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). But an investigation of the schools by Policy Matters revealed that eight schools -- and the management companies that run them -- have found ways to skirt the closure law and remain open, severely undermining the law's effectiveness and highlighting the lax accountability that prevails in Ohio's charter sector. For-profit managers -- the Leona Group, Mosaica Education and White Hat Management -- operate six of the reopened schools.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Ohio
Education and Literacy, Poverty
This summary presents the latest international research findings on social mobility, educational achievement, and other key characteristics of the four major Anglophone countries - the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The report, which highlights some of the key findings to be presented at a London summit jointly sponsored by the Sutton Trust and Carnegie of New York, is the latest in a continuing line of work investigating international comparisons of mobility.
In 2005, a Sutton Trust report catapulted the issue of Britain's low social mobility into mainstream public debate in the country. It highlighted that the chances of climbing (or dropping down) the income ladder had declined for today's adults compared with those from a generation before, and that Britain together with the US has the lowest social mobility of any advanced country for which there is data. In 2008 the Trust jointly organised with Carnegie of New York a summit exploring the factors behind low mobility in the US and UK.
The 2012 Sutton-Carnegie summit is a follow-up to the 2008 meeting, widening the scope of the study to compare and contrast the UK and US with Canada and Australia, two countries which have high mobility rates by international standards. Many of the key findings come from a new book Parents to Children published to coincide with the summit by the US based Russell Sage Foundation, following a partnership with the Sutton Trust and the Pew Trusts, also based in the US. The work is motivated by profound concerns that the educational performance and life chances of less privileged children continues to lag behind their more advantaged peers. The hope is that looking at international comparisons and the differences between countries will yield some lessons to improve mobility
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States, North America-Canada, Europe (Western)-United Kingdom, Australia-Australia
Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
The Joyce Foundation launched Shifting Gears in 2007 with the goal of helping six Midwest states significantly increase the number of low-skilled adults with the education and skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy. Between 2007 and 2011, the Foundation awarded a total of about $8 million in grants to Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, with the expectation that officials in these states would pursue a systems change agenda for making existing education and skills development systems work better for adult learners. Shifting Gears emphasized the need for aligning policy and priorities across adult basic education, workforce development, and community and technical college systems to improve adult transitions to postsecondary education. State officials were expected to identify innovative strategies for serving lowskilled adults in new ways that, over time, would be infused into these systems and the mainstream operations of their local providers and institutions. The premise of Shifting Gears was that states would be able to bolster postsecondary success of low-skilled adults if the old ways of delivering education and related services were replaced with more effective and aligned approaches.
The Joyce Foundation recognized that change would not come easily or quickly and was unlikely to be realized during the first five years of Shifting Gears. Accordingly, this evaluation focuses on the extent to which each of the six states "gained traction on the ground" by implementing their innovative strategies within local institutions and providers of education and skills development. This evaluation specifically focuses on the innovative strategies that connected a state's adult basic education (ABE) system with its community and technical college system. The overarching evaluative questions answered by this report from the first five years of Shifting Gears are:
- To what extent have states begun to adopt and implement an innovative strategy to improve transitions from adult basic education into community and technical colleges, including serving participants in these new ways?
- What are the factors that influenced progress in the states to adopt and implement these innovative strategies during the initiative?
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern)
Community and Economic Development, Education and Literacy
Large-scale public school closures have become a fact of life in many American cities, and that trend is not likely to stop now. This report
looks at what happens to the buildings themselves, studying the experiences of Philadelphia and 11 other cities that have decommissioned large numbers of schools in recent years: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tulsa and Washington.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Missouri-St. Louis County-St. Louis, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Missouri-Jackson County-Kansas City, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Michigan-Wayne County-Detroit, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Illinois-Cook County-Chicago, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Ohio-Cuyahoga County-Cleveland, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Ohio-Hamilton County-Cincinnati, North America-United States (Midwestern)-Wisconsin-Milwaukee County-Milwaukee, North America-United States (Northeastern)-Pennsylvania-Allegheny County-Pittsburgh, North America-United States (Southern)-District of Columbia-Washington, North America-United States (Southern)-Georgia-Fulton County-Atlanta, North America-United States (Southern)-Oklahoma-Tulsa County-Tulsa
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;International Development
The Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University and UNICEF collaborated to create a capacity-building programme: the WASH in Schools Distance-Learning Course. Case studies by the graduates from 13 countries and one regional office are included in this report.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: Africa (Central);Africa (Northeastern) / Sudan;Africa (Southeastern) / Malawi;Africa (Western);Africa (Western) / Nigeria;Asia (Central) / Afghanistan;Asia (Southern) / Nepal;Asia (Southeastern) / India;Africa (Western) / Sierra Leone;Asia (Southern) / Sri Lanka;Asia (Central) / Kyrgyzstan;Eurasia / Georgia;Asia (Southeastern) / Myanmar;Africa (Southern) Angola;Asia (Southern) Bhutan
While districts regularly make placement decisions regarding all core subjects (math, English, science, social studies), one area is most significant: math. Most universities (including California State and University of California) require at least three years of math for college eligibility, and they prefer students who have taken highlevel math courses such as Calculus or AP Statistics. However, such high-level math courses are generally only available to students who begin high school in Geometry. Ninth grade math placement can therefore not only have far-reaching impacts on a student's confidence, general knowledge of mathematical concepts, and high school experience -- more importantly, it can impact the college and life opportunities available to that student.
This report is intended to call attention to the math misplacement issue; to educate districts, community members, and parents about the potential liability associated with such placement decisions; and to encourage districts to take relatively simple steps to remedy the problem of math misplacement. Part I of this report explores the problem of math misplacement in greater detail and reviews the publicly available data regarding 9th graders' math class placement in school districts in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Part II explains the disparate impact doctrine and demonstrates why a district that engages in math misplacement, even if unintentionally, puts itself at legal risk. Part III explores other possible bases of legal liability. Finally, Part IV presents practical solutions to the problem of math misplacement and provides recommendations for school districts, community advocates, and lawyers to follow to remedy this critical civil rights issue.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Western) / California
While districts regularly make placement decisions regarding all core subjects (math, English, science, social studies), one area is most significant: math. Most universities (including California State and University of California) require at least three years of math for college eligibility, and they prefer students who have taken highlevel math courses such as Calculus or AP Statistics. However, such high-level math courses are generally only available to students who begin high school in Geometry. Ninth grade math placement can therefore not only have far-reaching impacts on a student's confidence, general knowledge of mathematical concepts, and high school experience -- more importantly, it can impact the college and life opportunities available to that student.
This report is intended to call attention to the math misplacement issue; to educate districts, community members, and parents about the potential liability associated with such placement decisions; and to encourage districts to take relatively simple steps to remedy the problem of math misplacement. Part I of this report explores the problem of math misplacement in greater detail and reviews the publicly available data regarding 9th graders' math class placement in school districts in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Part II explains the disparate impact doctrine and demonstrates why a district that engages in math misplacement, even if unintentionally, puts itself at legal risk. Part III explores other possible bases of legal liability. Finally, Part IV presents practical solutions to the problem of math misplacement and provides recommendations for school districts, community advocates, and lawyers to follow to remedy this critical civil rights issue.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Western) / California
