Education Trust – PHENND

Broken Mirrors: Black Student Representation at Public State Colleges and Universities

hillarya — Mon, 13 May 2019 17:52:51 +0000

If America’s public colleges and universities are supposed to be true democratic engines of opportunity and social mobility, their student body and graduates should at least mirror the racial and ethnic demographics of the state in which they reside. Public institutions should reduce — rather than exacerbate — race-based inequalities and advance the public interest by ensuring all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, are able to seek and earn a college degree. Although these expectations of public colleges and universities are more than sensible, they reflect more of an idealistic aspiration than a current reality.

It is well-known that Black students continue to be underrepresented at the public flagship universities in most states. But how about at the hundreds of other public institutions of higher education across the country, both two-year and four-year? That’s the question we’ve set out to answer with our State of Higher Education Equity project. As the next part in the project, Broken Mirrors digs deeper into where Black students go to college and what kinds of degrees they receive.

To do this, we posed six questions related to Black student representation among undergraduates and degree earners. The answers clearly illustrate that public institutions in too many states are falling short of their obligation to enroll and graduate Black students.

The State of Higher Education Equity

hillarya — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 18:24:49 +0000

The U.S. requires a well-educated workforce to grow our economy, strengthen our democracy, and solve big problems at home and abroad. And individuals with a college degree benefit from more job security, employment opportunities, and higher wages. Yet, today, the U.S. lags other nations in the share of our population with a college degree. As others have expanded access to higher education, we’ve stagnated. Why? It’s because the 7,000 colleges and universities across our states and territories still aren’t doing a good enough job getting Black and Latino Americans — whose population numbers are on the rise — across the finish line. And too many policymakers and state leaders are letting them get away with it, failing to make decisions that would increase college access and completion, particularly for historically underserved groups of students. This project offers state-by-state snapshots of where we stand in the quest for racial equity among degree-holders, how far we have to go, and what we need to do to get there.

Funding Gaps Report: Analysis on School Funding Inequity

hillarya — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 02:16:47 +0000

An Analysis of School Funding Equity Across the U.S. and Within Each State

School districts that serve large populations of students of color and students from low-income families receive far less funding than those serving White and more affluent students. And despite widespread attention to inequitable school funding formulas — and courts that have declared them unlawful for shortchanging school districts serving large percentages of low-income students — too many states continue this unfair practice.

School Funding by Students of Color
In the U.S. today, school districts serving the largest populations of Black, Latino, or American Indian students receive roughly $1,800, or 13 percent, less per student in state and local funding than those serving the fewest students of color. This may seem like an insignificant amount, but it adds up. For a school district with 5,000 students, a gap of $1,800 per student means a shortage of $9 million per year.

https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/

Report: A Look at Black Student Success

hillarya — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 20:32:03 +0000

The White House acclaim for HBCUs comes in the same week as a study by The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, revealed that the nation’s HBCUs are doing a much better job than predominantly white schools in graduating low-income black students.

The study, entitled “A Look at Black Student Success,” concluded that at most of the nation’s four-year public and private colleges and universities, a significant gap exists between the graduation rates of black students and white students. At the 676 public and private nonprofit institutions included in The Education Trust survey (not including HBCUs), the six-year graduation rate for black students was 45.4 percent — 19.3 points lower than the 64.7 percent graduation rate for white students.

The authors of the report, Andrew H. Nichols and Denzel Evans-Bell, point out a major reason for the gap: Black freshmen are less likely to enroll at institutions where most freshmen graduate (the nation’s most selective schools) and more likely to enroll at institutions where few do.

Article: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/01/517770255/hbcus-graduate-more-poor-black-students-than-white-colleges

Report: https://edtrust.org/resource/blackstudentsuccess/