Monthly Blog Archives: January 2012

Even if teachers understand how to use data to improve learning, they need a school leader to create a collaborative culture around its use.

At the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation set out to better understand the role of performance-driven education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) classrooms. We wanted to examine teachers’ cultural, behavioral and procedural shifts in response to the transition to more data intensive instructional models...

When Ana Trejo moved to Austin 13 years ago, she joined the expanding Latino population in Travis County, which has grown by 50% over the last 10 years and is expected to double again in the next 10 years. She hardly knew anyone and barely understood English

There’s a treasure trove of valuable educational data being collected about K-12 students in the U.S. But historically, most of it has been stored in silos, reported on in aggregate for compliance purposes, and then largely forgotten… kind of like last year’s best-sellers, back before Amazon came around to make all those great books, previously buried in warehouses and remainder stacks, available to anyone who needed them at the click of a mouse.

Americans are eating too much and too often, and not getting enough physical activity. Unhealthy foods, such as soda, chips and candy, have become relatively less expensive, while more nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables have become relatively more expensive. What’s more, access to healthy food is a challenge for many communities.

We recently visited People’s Community Clinic, whose mission is to improve the health of medically underserved and uninsured Central Texans by providing high quality, affordable healthcare. We met Feliciana Gonzalez, who shared her story of how the doctors and staff at PCC have helped her family.

With programs in Central Texas and greater Houston, College Forward offers three core programs– high school college prep classes, parent education and support, and college persistence programs –that help students not only gain admittance to college, but earn their degrees. Listen to what Ricardo Espitia, his mom, persistence coach, and others have to say about how the program works.