FutureEd Launches Social Mobility Initiative; Our Latest Commentary

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Introducing FutureEd’s Social Mobility Initiative

It’s no secret that talent is widely distributed in the United States, but opportunity is not—and that for too many Americans, social mobility remains out of reach. While education is a powerful engine of opportunity, it is increasingly clear that it often cannot overcome the broader structural barriers that shape children’s lives. Policies in education, housing, health care, and other social sectors interact to determine who gets ahead and who falls behind. Yet for decades, policy solutions have been siloed—educators tackling education problems, housing experts implementing housing initiatives—without fully accounting for how progress in one area can be undermined by barriers in another.

FutureEd is launching a new social mobility initiative to connect these dots, showing how policies across sectors combine to either advance or limit upward mobility. The first product of that effort is a report by FutureEd Senior Fellow Josh Anderson, How Inequality Works: The Public Policy Barriers to Social Mobility in Urban America. It maps the policy mechanisms that perpetuate inequity across seven key social sectors and explores how disadvantage compounds over a lifetime. Drawing on decades of social science research, the report lays the foundation for FutureEd’s forthcoming work to identify strategies that can increase mobility for millions of struggling Americans.

Read the Report

Webinars

Upcoming

A Win-Win: How Teachers in Training are Supporting High-Quality Tutoring

As schools work to scale and sustain high-quality tutoring, schools of education are stepping up by engaging undergraduates to tutor in partner districts—tapping into a potentially vast pool of inexpensive tutors while creating new learning opportunities for the nation’s future teachers. Join us for a conversation on how innovative programs in Ohio and Virginia are making these win-win partnerships work and how they offer models for sustaining tutoring now that federal Covid-relief funding has ended.

In Case You Missed It
We recently hosted two FutureEd webinars: one on measuring school performance, examining how states and districts can better define and assess school quality, and another on school choice, unpacking the new federal education tax-credit program and its policy and political implications.

Other Recent Work

Commentary

Latest Education Department Layoffs Threaten Students Most in Need
FutureEd Director Thomas Toch and Associate Director Maureen Tracey-Mooney warn that recent layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education could weaken the federal government’s capacity to support the nation’s most vulnerable students.

Commentary

New Parent Research Helps Explain Causes of Post-Pandemic Absenteeism Crisis
Research by FutureEd Senior Fellow Morgan Polikoff and his University of Southern California colleague Amie Rapaport reveals how parents’ perceptions about illness, school climate, and the importance of attendance are contributing to the nation’s chronic absenteeism crisis.

Commentary

Students Would Pay More to Attend College With Peers Who Match Their Politics
FutureEd Research Associate Giana Loretta highlights new research showing that political polarization may be increasingly shaping college enrollment decisions, with many students willing to pay more to attend institutions aligned with their political views.

From the Archive

Education Lessons from New Orleans, Two Decades After Katrina
Measuring School Quality for Accountability and Improvement
Excellence with Equity: The Case for Rethinking Gifted Education
- In a recent New York Times article by Troy Closson, Toch noted that the nation’s schools are failing to educate many talented students of color and low-income students to their potential.

Student Experience

By the Numbers

7 million

Children who are enrolled in an afterschool program

22.6 million

Children who are not enrolled in an afterschool program whose parents would enroll them if programs were available

Source: Afterschool Alliance

The Churn

The latest leadership changes in the education sector

Kirsten Baesler, North Dakota state superintendent of public instruction, has been confirmed as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education in the U.S. Department of Education.

Dr. Victor Wakefield, former vice president of special projects at Teach For America, is now the Nevada superintendent of public instruction.

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