Tag: Benny Cenac Education

Is There a Nontraditional Student Anymore?

Just what is a “traditional” and a “nontraditional” college student these days?  It seems that more and more people are going back to school as parents, taking a “gap year” after high school, and making other life decisions that used to not be the norm.  Popular culture tells us that college students are recent high school graduates, living on campus, taking remedial classes, and (hopefully) graduating four years later. But these days that narrative of the residential, collegiate experience is way off, says Alexandria Walton Radford, who heads up postsecondary education research at RTI International in North Carolina. Today’s college student is decidedly nontraditional — and has been for a while. Radford has done a lot of research on this and defines the nontraditional student as having one or more of the following characteristics:

Financially independent from their parents
Having a child or other dependent
Being a single caregiver
Lacking a traditional high school diploma
Delaying postsecondary enrollment
Attending school part time
Being employed full time

Close to 74 percent of undergrads fall into one of these categories — and about a third have two or three. Here’s a snapshot of the 17 million Americans enrolled in undergraduate higher education, according to numbers culled by the National Center for Education Statistics.

1 in 5 is at least 30 years old
About half are financially independent from their parents
1 in 4 is caring for a child
47 percent go to school part time at some point
A quarter take a year off before starting school
2 out of 5 attend a two-year community college
44 percent have parents who never completed a bachelor’s degree

As demographics shift, Radford argues, policy should follow. It’s vital that institutions look at the characteristics of their undergrad cohorts, she adds, to explore how to address their students’ unique concerns. Perhaps that means offering services like financial aid, advising or tutoring after-hours (instead of the typical 9 to 5). Maybe it means offering child care for student-parents, or extra parking for commuters. One thing for sure, says Radford, is that it’s probably time to coin a new phrase for nontraditional students, considering they are the new norm. Click here to read more.

For more articles similar to this one, click here.

Gates Foundation Gives $92 Million in Grants

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced $92 million in grants to help students of color and low-income students into college—marking its first major wave of K-12 giving since last fall.  The money is divided into 19 separate grants that will support improvements in everything from middle school language arts, to Algebra 1, to solving the problem of “undermatching,”—when high-achieving, low-income students select colleges that are less ambitious or rigorous than what their track records qualify them for. “Rather than coming in with a bright, shiny new idea, we’re asking districts, schools, and intermediaries to look at investments they’ve already made, and we’re trying to make that last-mile investment that enables them to connect their work, to set the strategies or data that will enable them to be successful for students,” said Robert Hughes, the foundation’s director of K-12 education. It’s a remarkably different strategy than its past K-12 philanthropy. The foundation received about 530 applications for the first cohort of giving, Gates officials said, and it plans to roll out more grants sometime in the fall. Below are brief descriptions of the 19 winners; all the grants are targeted to help black, Latino, and low-income students.

  • Achieve Atlanta
  • The Baltimore City school district 
  • The Bank Street College of Education 
  • California Education Partners
  • The Center for Leadership and Educational Equity
  • City Year 
  • The Community Foundation of Texas 
  • The Community Center for Education Results 
  • The CORE Districts
  • The High Tech High Graduate School of Education 
  • The Institute for Learning
  • KIPP
  • The Network for College Success 
  • New Visions for Public Schools
  • The Northwest Regional Education Service District
  • Partners in School Innovation 
  • Seeding Success
  • The Southern Regional Education Board 
  • Teach Plus

Click here for more information.

For more articles similar to this one, click here.

Program Launches for Teacher to Advocate for Education Initiative

The Louisiana Department of Education has developed a new program that would allow one teacher to take a year off to go around the State advocating for the education initiative of their choosing.  The teacher that will be chosen will come from nominees for Louisiana Teacher of the Year from the previous year. The fellowship was announced at the 12th Annual Cecil J. Picard Educator Awards Gala, and was awarded to 2018 Louisiana Teacher of the Year Kimberly Eckert, who will continue her efforts to recruit and train the next generation of Louisiana educators.

Eckert, who is an English teacher at Brusly High School in West Baton Rouge Parish, spent some of her time as 2018 Louisiana Teacher of the Year recruiting new educators and elevating the teaching profession. She will continue this work by focusing her fellowship on pioneering the national “Educators Rising” program in Louisiana. The program identifies young people, starting with high school students, interested in teaching and provides them with the information, skills and hands-on experience to become successful educators.

The fellowship is supported by a $50,000 stipend of state funding that is paid directly to the recipient’s school system. It allows the teacher to take a year-long sabbatical and may be used to help pay for their substitute, travel costs, and any other expenses incurred during the advocation period by the recipient.

“Louisiana has taken the Teacher of the Year award and turned it into a true leadership opportunity. Our winners and finalists are scholars, spokespeople, mentors,” said State Superintendent John White. “We need to be doing more to nourish and support them in realizing their leadership potential.”

For more articles similar to this one, click here.

LA May Receive Millions in Education Grants

The Louisiana Board will take to the polls soon to choose whether to award more than $10 million in education grants to go towards 67 school systems across the state specifically to improve the reading and writing skills of struggling students.

The main focus of this funding is “to advance the pre-literacy, reading and writing skills of disadvantaged youth, birth through grade 12, including English learners and students with disabilities.” There were only 11 states in the US to be chosen to receive this funding and Louisiana was one of them.

According to State Superintendent John White, “Research shows the early grades are vital for later school success. The key skills students develop one year must be built upon and reinforced the next.  As we enter into the second year of this grant, we must focus our attention on ensuring our children have access to a high-quality continuum of learning that could make a difference in positive, long term achievement outcomes.”

In order to fulfill the grant requirements, if awarded each of the 67 school systems implement the following 4 policies:

  • Extend CLASS, a nationally regarded system of measures used in Louisiana’s early childhood accountability system to evaluate teacher-student interactions, into Kindergarten classrooms;
  • Collaborate with experts to review students’ writing samples to gauge their knowledge of language and conventions in grade 1;
  • Adopt classroom observation tools to measure teachers’ use of standards-aligned materials that impact student learning experiences in grades 1 and 2; and
  • Implement a new skills check-up at the end of grade 2 to provide insight on students’ mastery of literacy and numeracy.

For more details on educational grant funding in Louisiana, click here.

For more articles similar to this one, click here.

High School Students Earning College Credits Up 12%

The number of public high school students earning college credits rose 12 percent over last year, the state Department of Education announced Thursday.  The increase is nearly 167 percent since 2012. The credit is called Advanced Placement (AP) and schools offer AP classes in several different subjects such as Literature, History and Psychology. Advanced Placement allows students to earn credits in 38 subjects. They do so by taking a rigorous class in high school and then a national exam. Scores from range from 1 to 5. A score of at least 3 means students can earn credit at any college in Louisiana and many nationwide. The state launched a push in 2011 to increase the number of students earning AP credit. Those who do so boost their chances for getting a state scholarship that pays for most college tuition, called the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students. Schools achieving high levels of AP courses and tests get a boost in annual rankings.

Louisiana has long ranked among the lowest in the nation for students who qualify and in 2017 it finished next to last with a total of 8.5 percent of high school students got AP credit. The national average was 22.8 percent. Massachusetts was the top ranker in the nation for the second consecutive year at 32.1 percent. A total of 7,330 students in Louisiana earned the credit this year compared to 6,519 last year. Among the school districts showing notable gains was West Feliciana, where students earning qualifying scores rose 15 percent over last year. Scores for black students rose nearly 13 percent, to 884 students, including 156 more in the East Baton Rouge Parish School District. Dutchtown High School in Ascension Parish led the state in one-year growth 328 students, up 69 percent and up 57 percent for the district. Students can also get  costs of the test reimbursed by the state.

Not only are these courses helping students earn college credits but they are also saving them money.  A report says students and families save $310 for each college credit earned in high school but once adding in the cost of books and other course-related fees, that amount could be significantly more.  Not to mention student loan interest that student won’t be paying later, essentially saving them from large amount of debt. Check out this site for more information on Advanced Placement courses.

Electronics In The Classroom: Helpful or hurtful?

While the last decade brought pushes to improve the choice and frequency of technology and electronics use in America’s classrooms, recent research makes the argument against this push. A study published in the journal Educational Psychology found that students who had technology for use in conjunction with the lesson, such as cell phones or laptops, scored five percent, or half a letter grade, lower on exams than students who didn’t use electronics.  According to a press release from Rutgers University, the study is the first-ever to show a causal relationship between distractions from electronics and exam performance.

 

Researchers separated 118 college students enrolled in the same course into two groups. Each group was taught the same material by the same professor, but one group was allowed to have cellphones and laptops open for non-academic purposes, while the other group was not. While the students allowed electronics didn’t score lower on comprehension tests during lectures, they scored lower on exams at the end of the term.

 

“The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet and cell phone) has transformed the modern college lecture into a divided attention task,” the study stated.  “Many dedicated students think they can divide their attention in the classroom without harming their academic success – but we found an insidious effect on exam performance and final grades. To help manage the use of devices in the classroom, teachers should explain to students the damaging effect of distractions on retention – not only on themselves, but for the whole class.”

Focus Word: electronics

 

While the last decade brought pushes to improve the choice and frequency of technology use in America’s classrooms, recent research makes the argument against this push. A study published in the journal Educational Psychology found that students who had technology for use in conjunction with the lesson, such as cell phones or laptops, scored five percent, or half a letter grade, lower on exams than students who didn’t use electronics.  According to a press release from Rutgers University, the study is the first-ever to show a causal relationship between distractions from electronics and exam performance.

Researchers separated 118 college students enrolled in the same course into two groups. Each group was taught the same material by the same professor, but one group was allowed to have cellphones and laptops open for non-academic purposes, while the other group was not. While the students allowed electronics didn’t score lower on comprehension tests during lectures, they scored lower on exams at the end of the term.

“The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet and cell phone) has transformed the modern college lecture into a divided attention task,” the study stated.  “Many dedicated students think they can divide their attention in the classroom without harming their academic success – but we found an insidious effect on exam performance and final grades. To help manage the use of devices in the classroom, teachers should explain to students the damaging effect of distractions on retention – not only on themselves, but for the whole class.”

For more articles similar to this one, click here.