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These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
A new study finds that the benefits of preschool cross generations.
Colorado legislators invest in more mental health care for children.
A school-based legal clinic addresses the needs of Los Angeles’ immigrant families.
To read more, click on the following links.
“To the children whom our school system and our society have failed for far too long.”
That’s the sobering dedication that co-authors Elaine Weiss and Paul Reville chose for their new book, “Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty.”
In this book, Weiss and Reville call on schools and communities to stop failing by creating “systems of integrated student supports (ISS) for all children.”
The two authors say it is crucial to create ISS systems that support the whole child — like City Connects and others in the field — because of the nation’s history of mediocre policy achievements.
“Decades of education reform efforts have yielded modest if any improvements in most places where poverty is present,” they write. “To be sure, there are outliers, schools and individuals defying the odds, but on average, we still have an iron-clad correlation between socioeconomic status and education achievement and attainment.” Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
City Connects’ model of integrated student support stands out because of evidence that shows it helps reduce dropout rates.
Maine is a step closer to expanding its pre-K programs statewide.
San Francisco’s plan to reduce segregation backfires.
To read more, click on the following links.
The old recipe for school success was to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But Julia Freeland Fisher has added a fourth ingredient: relationships.
To close opportunity gaps, Fisher, the Director of Education Research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, says schools have to close relationship gaps in families’ social networks. That’s the premise of her book, “Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations that Expand Students’ Networks.”
One barrier to accomplishing this work: people think it can’t be done.
In a recent article posted on 74 Million’s website, Fisher points to New York Times Columnist David Brooks, who wrote an op-ed earlier this year praising the work of “weavers,” people who “want to live in right relation with others and to serve the community good.” Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Many low-income and minority students live in communities with limited access to extracurricular activities.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a bill into law that establishes a Children’s Behavioral Health System State Board to oversee and implement the creation of a statewide system.
The United States could face a child care affordability crisis.
To read more, click on the following links.
By the time Elizabeth McKernan graduated from Boston College in 2018, she had been a student teacher at Brighton High School, Milton High School, and Waltham High School.
In her senior year, she was already taking graduate school classes at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development and working on her master’s degree, and she was determined to have an impact on students.
“That’s always been my perspective on teaching: If I can make one student’s life a little bit better then I’m doing it right,” she says.
Last month, McKernan made her mark in educational policy with an opinion piece in CommonWealth magazine — “Customized student support can level the playing field” — that begins:
“As a new high school teacher, I paid attention when educators, mayors, and Patriots players gathered before the Joint Committee on Education last month to testify on behalf of high needs students in Massachusetts. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Early educators do not have to choose between strong relationships and academic rigor. They can have both in their classrooms.
Tennessee’s Legislature is hammering out a school voucher plan.
New York University trains all teachers to use special education and dual language learner strategies.
To read more, click on the following links.
A new policy brief, written by our colleagues at Boston College’s Center for Optimized Student Support, shares the lessons of City Connects with policymakers, explaining how integrated student support can ignite success even when students face poverty, mental health challenges, traumatic experiences, and other out-of-school burdens.
The brief – “Building Systems of Integrated Student Support A Policy Brief for Local and State Leaders” – explains the problems policymakers face:
“When leaders examine the existing tangle of programs, services, agencies, and funding streams in the context of deep needs among children and persistent academic achievement and opportunity gaps, impactful ways to transform chaotic service delivery systems are often hard to identify and harder to realize.”
Fortunately, over the last fifteen years, “insights from the sciences of child and youth development, experimentation in communities, and mounting outcomes data point to an approach that is producing results: integrated student support.” Continue reading
