Community Checkup

It’s graduation season. What better (or worse) time to examine the value of time spent in higher ed. I recently read this op-ed by Marty Nemko, a career counselor on this issue that was so on point. In fact, I think every college aspirant and their parents should read it. Here’s how [...]

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No, he’s not light-skinned (or “light-skindid”)…
[Josh] Packwood will graduate as the 2008 valedictorian, the first white student to do so in the 141-year history of Morehouse, which has never counted more than a handful of white students among its enrollment of roughly 3,000. [Source: KCStar]
So what’s the word? Is this a good thing or a [...]

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Bloggingheads recently posted a great discussion between Glenn Loury (Brown University economist) and Heather McDonald (of Manhattan Institute) about the NYC school system incentives program. Since this program was implemented last June, it has been something that has bothered me to no end. From a 2007 NYT article:
NEW YORK CITY has decided [...]

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Yesterday, The Washington Post, for a second time, accused Obama of being wrong, or lying about his statement that there are more black men in jail than in college.
Obama’s exact words on November 29th were, “I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men [...]

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This one’s strictly for the nerds [my hand raised].
I promise to only hit you with these more technical “checkups” (what I’ll be labeling as tech checks from here on) every couple of months or so. Sometimes, I just can’t help myself. Plus, just maybe, some of you (okay, maybe one or two) [...]

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The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) released its report on minority-serving institutions (MSI). They describe MSIs as, “colleges and universities serving a large percentage of minority students” and identify 6 different subgroups of such schools.
Here are some of their findings:

In 2004, the 1,254 MSIs accounted for just under one-third of all degree-granting Title [...]

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The first installment of NBC’s five-part series was almost as much about the underachievement of black men as it was about the success of black women (check their website for videos). It pointed out a few gender gaps such as 64% of black college students consisting of black women–no newsflash here. Haywood Strickland, [...]

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Following on the theme of my last post on models of educational success… A couple of years ago, PBS produced a great program, “Making Schools Work” where they highlighted effective educational approaches such as Success for All, Comer School Development Program (SDP), and Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). There is extensive research on [...]

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Think the educational system for low-income ethnic minority children is hopeless? Then check out some of the research on 90-90-90 schools. This work shows that schools successfully educating such students do exist and the data points to some of the contributing factors. 90-90-90 schools are schools identified with the following characteristics:
• [...]

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Recently, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) published its report Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities. There is some good news and bad news here. Some good news: Blacks and Latinos are increasing in terms of numbers going to college and numbers taking AP classes is increasing. [...]

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