Category: Education Policy

Pavlakis and Richards Analyze Education Outcomes of Homeless Students in Houston

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Alexandra Pavlakis, assistant professor, Education Policy and Leadership Department

Student homelessness is on the rise nationally, and roughly 10 percent of all U.S. homeless students live in Texas. To see how this growing student population is faring educationally, professors Alexandra Pavlakis, Meredith Richards, and postdoctoral fellow Kessa Roberts are engaged in long-term research with the Houston Independent School District, the seventh-largest district in the country. The number of homeless students there rose to approximately 30,000 after Hurricane Harvey, and many have not recovered.

Meredith Richards, assistant professor, Education Policy and Leadership Department

Working with the school district and Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) at Rice University, Pavlakis, Richards, and Roberts want to know how homeless students are doing relative to non-homeless students. They are examining attendance, discipline, achievement, and attainment. Part of what they are seeing is that outcomes depend on factors such as where students sleep at night, and if they are on their own or accompanied by adults.

They just concluded their first phase of research, which involves quantitative analysis, and their report comes out in the spring.

As a commitment to the project, their research team created and distributed a bilingual directory of community resources to homeless families in the school district. The Moody Foundation and SMU’s University Research Council support the research.

 

CORE Finds Positive Results for Summer Programs Run by the Dallas City of Learning Collaborative

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Annie Wright, director of evaluation for CORE

The Dallas City of Learning, an organizational effort to fight student loss of learning during summer, received a positive assessment from the Center on Research and Evaluation at SMU Simmons.

Annie Wright, CORE’s director of evaluation, reported that the more students participated in summer learning programs, the more pronounced were the gains.

“What we’re seeing is that the effect of summer learning extends well into the school year,” Wright said.

The Dallas City of Learning is a partnership between the City of Dallas, Dallas ISD, and Big Thought. Read more.

Marketplace Radio Reports on Status of Student Loans Using Dominique Baker’s Expertise

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More students from higher-income families are taking out loans to go to college, according to a Marketplace report on public radio. Assistant Professor Dominique Baker explains how higher-income families are more apt to chose more expensive schools and also use Parent PLUS, which allows borrowing up to the full cost of attendance.

Baker says, “Income is not wealth. That’s critical to keep in mind because there are some families that have the same amounts of income, but they have different economic resources that they can tap into to help support students through college.”  Read more.

Gándara Selected as Finalist for William T. Grant Scholars Program

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Denisa Gándara, assistant professor of higher education in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, is one of ten finalists for the William T. Grant Scholars Program. Early career researchers submit proposals for five-year research and mentoring plans designed to expand their skills and knowledge. Applicants are nominated by their institutions.

The ten finalists will be interviewed in February 2019 and four to six Scholars will be announced in March. Those selected will each receive $350,000 over five years and participate in annual meetings. The Scholars Program began in 1982 and has a rich history of supporting the development of early-career researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences.

Dean Knight Responds to DMN Commentary on the Moral Imperative to Bridge Dallas’ Economic Divide

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The strength of a dedicated partnership between SMU Simmons, Dallas ISD, and Toyota to create a new STEM school in West Dallas will create new opportunities for students and their families, says Dean Stephanie L. Knight in a commentary published in The Dallas Morning News, November 26, 2019. Her op-ed was written in response to a city-wide challenge issued by the chairman of the Dallas Citizens Council to bridge the economic divide found in under-resourced areas.

Toyota awarded a $2 million planning grant to the Simmons School for the development of a new STEM  pre-K to eighth-grade school, and Dallas ISD anticipates opening the school in 2021. Read more.

Dean Stephanie Knight and leaders from SMU, Dallas ISD, and Toyota give updates on the STEM school at a meeting, Wednesday, September 11, 2019, at the Lakewest YMCA in West Dallas.

Batenberg Discusses Gifted and Talented Education in Parents Magazine

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Ann Batenberg, clinical associate professor of gifted education in Simmons, provides a framework for how gifted education is working in the U.S.

In a Parents magazine article, she discusses how a lack of federal laws pertaining to gifted education has lead to a lack of identifying and serving students. She also says using local norms may be better determinants than national testing. “High test scores have proven to be better at predicting the income level of a student, not their academic achievement,” she adds. Read more.

 

Pavlakis Contributes Insights on Uprooted Students in Public Radio Documentary

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Alexandra Pavlakis, assistant professor in Education Policy and Leadership, researches the effects of homelessness on students, so when APM Reports decided to do a documentary on children who get uprooted from schools repeatedly, Pavlakis was consulted.

Her insights on the increasing population of homeless students are featured in “Students on the Move: Keeping uprooted kids in school.” The documentary was distributed to 300 public radio stations, including KERA 90.1 in North Texas. The station aired the documentary August 18, 2019.

APM Reports provides the audio story and the transcript.

The Atlantic Features Gándara’s Expertise in Article on U of Alaska Cuts

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Assistant Professor Denisa Gándara in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership was interviewed by The Atlantic on state funding cuts to the University of Alaska system. Initially, the governor asked the university for $130 million in cuts, then negotiated $70 million over three years.

Gándara points out that both the state and the university have been relying heavily on revenues from the oil market, and not moving away from that dependence. The university should be emphasizing its role in educating students for non-oil dependent jobs, she says. Read more of her observations on the consequences of these cuts.

 

Dominique Baker Examines Student Debt-to-Income Ratio at Texas Public Universities

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Dominique Baker, assistant professor of Education Policy and Leadership, has done the first study looking at debt-to-income ratio for Texas public university graduates. Her research, published in AERA Open, covered students who started college between 2004 and 2008.

College students with a bachelor’s degree had, on average, student loan debts that equaled 74 percent of what they earned in their first-year wages. This is higher than the 60 percent threshold the state calls for in its 60x30TX strategic plan.

The plan challenges public colleges and universities to increase completion of undergraduate programs in shorter periods of time, as well as efforts to keep undergraduate student debt at or below 60 percent of first-year wages by 2030. Read more.

See coverage in Forbes and   The Dallas Morning News.

Inside Higher Ed Features Opinion Piece by Ferguson on Bias Response Teams

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Kiersten Ferguson, clinical associate professor in higher education, collaborates with a team of scholars to examine misconceptions of bias response teams at 19 universities around the country. In their opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed, they argue that the truth about these teams is more complex than what headlines claim. See excerpt here.