The Massachusetts community college system is entering a second year with funding for each of its 15 schools determined using a new performance-based formula. Under the new model, 50% of each college's allocation is based on performance on metrics related to enrollment and student success, with added incentives for "at-risk"…

Leaders engaged in Massachusetts' public higher education system--including at community colleges, state universities, and UMass--have demonstrated their strong commitment to improvement in recent years. The state Department of Higher Education's Vision Project is focused on reforms necessary to "produce the best educated citizenry…

The New Hampshire Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs has come a long way since the inception of the state's first Club in Manchester more than 100 years ago. The goal of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America is to provide youth with programs and services that allow them to realize their full potential as productive members of society. State and federal…

The debate about the need for change in America's K-12 education system has been raging for decades. Teachers, parents, administrators and government leaders alike have been grappling with how to transform a system that has been failing too many students for too long, according to a recent Center for Education Policy study. Until recently, the…

A 2008 report from the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Culture Affairs of the Maine Legislature indicates a quarter of those who enrolled at a public university in Maine required a remedial course to catch them up to the level where they should have been when they completed high school. Regardless of how hard Maine has tried and how much…

Community colleges are under increasing pressure today from a number of directions. Student demand is at an all-time high, fueled by demographics, student and employer need for new and increased skills; structural changes in labor markets have pushed the under- or unemployed to community colleges to acquire new job skills; and students who would…

In education, economic impact studies have been largely the product of higher education institutions. Colleges and universities have recognized that they can cultivate public, political and financial support by effectively demonstrating their high return-on-investment value. For more than a decade, all types of higher education institutions have…

Once upon a time, the relationship of Boston universities to the city's school system was simply to accept worthy candidates into the freshman class and produce a few dozen new teachers each year to fill staff vacancies. For many decades, universities stayed away from Boston schools. Boston trained its elementary teachers at its own normal school,…

In 2001, the author wrote legislation that required all public schools in Maine to teach Maine Indian history. On June 14 of that year, Gov. Angus King signed "An Act to Require Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine's Schools" into law--the first of its kind in the U.S. What makes the law unique is its requirement that specific topics…

When President Barack Obama took office, he pledged to revitalize an economy in the midst of the deepest recession in a generation. Working with Congress, he acted quickly to enact an $878 billion package to stimulate the economy in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). More than $100 billion of that will be for education, spanning…

In its first hundred days, the Obama administration demonstrated a strong commitment to expanding access to higher education. The economic stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), increased funding for the Pell Grant program and over the next two years, the maximum award will grow to $5,550 in 2010-2011--the…

As a receding economy contributes to public anxiety about jobs and an uncertain financial future, education becomes a target of state and local cuts. Reducing education funding does not help solve economic woes, however. According to the most recent economic impact report of the New England Association of Schools & Colleges (NEASC), cuts in…

New England higher education is about to experience a decade-long demographic crisis unlike anything in its history. While the crisis will significantly affect all six New England States, it will be most acute in the three northern states, as the competition for qualified high school graduates begins to intensify. The New England states, including…

New modes of everyday communication--textual, visual, audio and video--are already part of almost every high school and college student's social life. Can such social networking principles be effective in an educational setting? In this article, the author describes how the students at his school, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), are provided…

As of the 2007 Data Quality Campaign annual survey, 22 states reported having the ability to share P-12 student-level data with higher education systems. With the ability to match student-level records between P-12 and postsecondary systems, policymakers and educators will be able to obtain data for strategic planning, cost-benefit analysis of…