When I left home at 17, I knew I wanted to go to college. I knew earning a degree would help me find a path to a more secure future. And I knew that I was interested in pursuing a career focused on social justice.

I also had no idea how I could afford college when I was already working multiple jobs just to earn enough money to make ends meet. I had never met my father, and I had a rocky relationship with my mother, so I was largely on my own. Fortunately, I was able to use financial aid to enroll at Prairie State College, a community college just outside of Chicago. It remains the best decision I have ever made.

I thrived at Prairie State, where I was surrounded by an incredible community of faculty, staff and other students who had my back at every turn. The support I received eventually allowed me to earn a scholarship and transfer to a four-year college to begin my pre-law journey.

I’m now a senior at Howard University, where it remains all too obvious that the four-year college experience is not designed for transfer students like me — a realization that leaves us feeling isolated and overlooked.

Like many transfer students, I felt stigmatized during the admissions process and alienated by other students; I didn’t get an orientation when I started, as first-year students do; and many of my previous credits didn’t transfer with me.

That even an HBCU — commonly known for community-building efforts — struggles to effectively support transfer students underscores the gravity of this issue.

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Solving such challenges will require four-year universities to reimagine how they support transfer students. Creating a sense of belonging for learners is critical. Research shows that students who feel as though they belong at their institution are more likely to remain and persist. Developing that connection can be challenging for transfer students, especially those coming from community colleges, as there are typically so few of us on a given campus.

Some 80 percent of community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, yet just one-third transfer to a four-year institution. In total, community college transfers account for just 5 percent of undergraduate students at elite colleges and universities.

The most obvious starting point for institutions looking to better support transfer students from community colleges is to admit more of us. This can be achieved by intensifying outreach efforts at local two-year colleges and more effectively promoting the message that transferring to a selective, four-year university is not only possible but encouraged. Some schools are already making an effort to admit more transfer students.

Community college transfer students can find themselves adrift in their new institutions due to a lack of proper guidance and support. We are typically not given the insider knowledge required to navigate the complexities of a four-year university. For example, I’ve been excluded from being a part of student-led organizations that I would have needed to join as a freshman — when I was still in community college. A history of belonging to these organizations is mandatory when being considered for larger and more prominent selective organizations, including sororities and fraternities.

Related: ‘Waste of time’: Community college transfers derail students

The absence of a support system can transform what initially felt like an exciting step forward into a daunting and solitary journey. I am fortunate to have benefited from the support of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which provides me with access to a network of fellow transfer students and alumni who have successfully navigated this path.

But many transfer students are not as lucky.

Colleges could help by connecting transfer students with one another — either through on-campus groups or external organizations — to ensure they have the support, community and resources they need to thrive.

Schools should make it clear that transfer students will be warmly welcomed and supported throughout their academic journey. By doing so, these schools can begin to foster a more inclusive environment, one that acknowledges and values the unique perspectives community college students bring.

Colleges should also work to dismantle obstacles that complicate the transfer process and serve as subtle deterrents to students. Every prohibitive application fee, convoluted form or arbitrary rule might as well be a sign that says, “Turn back now.”

For example, students lose an estimated 43 percent of their credits when they transfer, wiping out semesters of hard work, extending their time and increasing their costs to a degree. Institutions can proactively create clearer, more consistent transfer agreements with local community colleges, guaranteeing that credits will transfer.

The financial aid and application processes for transfer students, who are not typically provided financial award packages upon admission, must also take into account their unique needs and circumstances.

Here’s why this all matters: Data is clear that students who transfer from a community college are just as capable of succeeding as students who are first-time freshmen or transfer from four-year institutions.

We know we can do this. We just need opportunities and support.

Rebbie Davis is an English major, Philosophy minor who previously attended Prairie State College before transferring to Howard University. She is president of the Howard University Writers Guild and vice chair of HU’s Future Law Scholars’ board of directors.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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Imagine sending your 4-year-old to preschool knowing they will spend nearly all day happily traipsing through the woods, climbing trees and resting in hammocks. Imagine that they also take part in what most of us would view as risky activities for a preschooler, like building fires and using knives to whittle figures out of sticks. For children growing up in Norway, this is a daily reality in the country’s “barnehagen”: child care programs designed for children ages 1 through 6.

In Norway, childhood is seen as a time of innate value that must be joyful and respected. Early learning — especially involving outdoor play — is part of that. The country has enshrined the right to child care into law and demands that early learning programs be rooted in “tolerance and respect” and teach values like empathy, charity and “a belief in human worth.”

The country is so committed to early childhood education, it covers the vast majority of operating costs and subsidizes care for parents, who pay the equivalent of about $190 per month for the first child in care, and less for additional children in care. Children are guaranteed a spot in child care at age 1.

Sounds idyllic, right? In April, as a Spencer Education Journalism Fellow at Columbia University, I traveled to Oslo to see it for myself. Over the course of a week, I spent time in nine different kindergartens to learn more about how Norwegians view the early years, how the country’s approach to early learning contends with a changing social demographic, and what the rest of us can learn from Norway. I returned hopeful and rejuvenated, but also with a greater sense of urgency about America’s need to address our own approach to child care. You can read the story, which was published in partnership with The Christian Science Monitor, by clicking the link below.

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The free community college movement effectively began in 2014 when Republican Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee signed the Tennessee Promise Scholarship Act, which offered the state’s high school graduates free tuition to attend any two-year public community college or technical college in Tennessee.

Communities around the country had been experimenting with free college programs since 2005, usually with private funding, but Tennessee was the first to make it a statewide policy, and it inspired 36 states to follow suit. This year, Massachusetts was the most recent to make community college free. (Here is a search tool for all the free college programs, including more than 400 local ones.) 

But as free-tuition programs have multiplied, so have questions and doubts. Are low-income students benefiting? Is free tuition leading to more college graduates? 

Unfortunately we have to wait years to allow students time to get through college, but answers to these important questions are starting to emerge from Tennessee. College Promise, a nonprofit that advocates for making college free, along with tnAchieves, the nonprofit that helps administer the Tennessee program, released a 10-year anniversary report on Oct. 14. The report offers encouraging signs that the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, which now costs about $29 million a year in tuition subsidies and other services, has helped more students go to college and earn two-year associate degrees. In addition, Tennessee shared some of the lessons learned. 

First the numbers. The report highlights that more than 90 percent of all Tennessee high school seniors apply for the free college program. All students regardless of family income are eligible, and roughly 15,000 students a year ultimately use the program to enroll in college right after high school.  About half come from low-income families who qualify for the Federal Pell Grant. 

Thirty-seven percent of students who initially enrolled in college with the Promise scholarship program earned a two-year associate degree within three years, compared with only 11 percent of students who applied for the scholarship but never met its requirements, such as financial aid paperwork and service hours.* Tennessee projects that since its inception, the scholarship program will have produced a total of 50,000 college graduates by 2025, administrators told me in an interview.

Before the free tuition program went statewide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate degree three years later. Graduation rates then rose to 22 percent for students who started community college in 2014. At this time, 27 Tennessee counties had launched their own free tuition programs, but the statewide policy had not yet gone into effect. 

By 2020, when free tuition statewide had been in effect for five years, 28 percent of Tennessee’s community college students had earned a degree in three years. Not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, but many did. 

It’s unclear if the free tuition program is the driving force behind the rising graduation rates. It could be that motivated students sign up for it and abide by the rules of the scholarship program and might have still graduated in higher numbers without it. It could also be that unrelated nationwide reforms, from increases in federal financial aid to academic advising, have helped more students make it to the finish line.

I talked with Celeste Carruthers, an economist at University of Tennessee Knoxville, who has been studying the free tuition program in her state. She is currently crunching the numbers to figure out whether the program is causing graduation rates to climb, but the signs she sees right now are giving her “cause for optimism.” Using U.S. Census data, she compared Tennessee’s college attainment rates with the rest of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide scholarship program, beginning with the high school class of 2015, there is a striking jump in the share of young adults with associate degrees a few years later, while associate degree attainment elsewhere in the nation improved only mildly. Tennessee quickly went from being a laggard in young adult college attainment to a leader – at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph.)

While evaluation of the Tennessee program continues, researchers and program officers point to three lessons learned so far: 

• The scholarship program hasn’t helped many low-income students financially. The Federal Pell Grant of $7,395 far exceeds annual tuition and fees at Tennessee’s community colleges, which hover around $4,500 for a full-time student. Community college was already free for low-income students, who represent roughly half of the students in Tennessee’s free college program. Like other free college programs around the country, Tennessee’s is structured as a “last dollar” program, which means that it only pays out after other forms of financial aid are exhausted. 

That means that tuition subsidies have primarily gone to students from higher income families that don’t qualify for the Pell Grant. In Tennessee, the funding source is the state lottery. Roughly $22 million of lottery proceeds were used to pay for community college tuition in the most recent year.

• Free tuition alone isn’t enough help. In 2018, Tennessee added coaching for low-income students to give them extra support. (Low-income students hadn’t been receiving any tuition subsidies because other financial aid sources already covered their tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee added emergency grants for books and other living expenses for needy students – up to $1,000 per student per semester.* The extra assistance for low-income students is financed through state budget allocations and private fundraising. For students who are the first generation in their families to attend college, current graduation rates have jumped to 34 percent with this extra support compared with 11 percent without it, the 10-year report said. 

“Pairing the financial support with the non-financial support – that mentoring support, the coaching support – is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, chief community and government relations officer at tnAchieves. “It’s the game changer, and that is often overlooked for the money part.” 

Coaching is best conducted in person on campus. During COVID, Tennessee launched an online mentoring platform, but students didn’t engage with it. “We learned our lesson that in-person is the most valuable way to go when building relationships,” said Ben Sterling, chief content officer at tnAchieves.

• The worst case scenario didn’t happen. When free community college was first announced, critics fretted that the zero price tag would lure students away from four-year colleges, which aren’t free. That’s bad because the transfer process from community college back to a four-year school can be rocky with students losing credits and the time invested. Studies have shown that most students are more likely to complete a four-year degree if they start at a four-year institution. But the number of bachelor’s degrees did not fall. It seems possible that the free tuition policy lured students who wouldn’t have gone to college at all in the past, without cannibalizing four-year colleges. However, bachelor’s degree acquisition in Tennessee, though rising, remains far below the rest of the nation. (See graph.)

As an aside, students are also able to use their Tennessee Promise scholarship funds at a limited number of public four-year colleges that offer associate degrees. About 10 percent of the program’s students take advantage of this option.

Despite all the positive signs for educational attainment in Tennessee, recent years have not been kind. “Everything that’s happened to enrollment since COVID  kind of erased all of the gains from Tennessee Promise,” said the University of Tennessee’s Carruthers. The combination of pandemic disruptions, a strong job market and changing public sentiment about higher education hammered enrollment at community colleges nationwide. Students have started returning again in Tennessee, but community college enrollment is still below what it was in 2019.  

* Correction and clarifications: Because of incorrect information supplied to The Hechinger Report, an earlier version of this story mischaracterized the two groups of students that succeeded in earning a college degree within three years. This story was also modified to clarify that only coaching was introduced in 2018. A separate mentoring service already existed. In addition, the $1,000 emergency grants, which began in 2022, are not one-time grants but can be issued multiple times.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about free community college was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters. 

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Predicting the future is often compared to reading tea leaves. In the case of forecasting what education policies Kamala Harris might pursue as president, though, a more apt analogy might be reading her mind. Frankly it’s anyone’s guess what her education policies would be given how few clues we have.

It wasn’t always this way. Previously, presidential candidates laid out detailed plans for schools. George H. W. Bush wanted to be the education president. Bill Clinton wanted to use stronger schools to build a bridge to the 21st century. George W. Bush wanted to leave no child behind, and move the Republican party in a more compassionate direction. Barack Obama wanted Democrats to break with teacher unions by embracing merit pay.

But in more recent cycles, education has dropped from the list of voters’ top-tier issues, and candidates have become increasingly cagey about their plans.

Donald Trump’s administration was known for its advocacy of school choice, but that wasn’t something he talked much about on the campaign trail in 2015 or 2016; it only came into focus with his selection of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education.

And Joe Biden’s unwillingness to challenge progressive orthodoxy on education would have been hard to predict, given his moderate persona in 2019 and 2020. What turned out to be the best guide to his education policies was his self-identity as the “most union-friendly president in history” — plus the membership of his wife, community college professor Jill Biden, in the National Education Association.

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So here we are with another election in which education issues are barely registering, trying to predict what Harris might do if elected. She has said even less than Trump or Biden, partly because of the truncated nature of her campaign, and partly because of her strategy of leaning into positive vibes and declining to offer policy specifics in the hope that doing so will better her chances of prevailing in November. Official statements — a Harris campaign policy document and the Democratic Party Platform — are thin on details.

Making things even harder is Harris’ well-known willingness to run away from previous positions. She did that in 2019 when the Black Lives Matter movement made it awkward for her to embrace her record in law enforcement — including her tough stance on prosecuting parents of truant children.

That’s why looking at Harris’ statements from the campaign trail five years ago or her record as a U.S. senator only goes so far.

What we do know is this: She’s sitting vice president. She has positioned herself in the middle of the Democratic Party, not wanting to break with progressives on the left or business-friendly centrists in the middle.

And while her image is not blue-collar like Biden’s, she’s been careful not to put any sunlight between herself and the unions, including teachers unions. One of her first speeches as the presumptive Democratic nominee was to the American Federation of Teachers.

For these reasons, it is likely that a Harris administration would bring significant continuity with Biden’s policies, including on schools.

Picture her appointing a former teacher as secretary of education, proposing healthy increases in school spending and speaking out against privatization, book bans and the like. Call it the Hippocratic Oath approach to Democratic policymaking on education: First, do no harm.

Can those of us involved in K-12 education hope for bolder strokes from a President Harris — including some that might move the needle on reform? Anything is possible.

Her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate thrust the issue of universal free school meals onto the national radar, given Minnesota’s leadership on that policy. Perhaps she will throw her support behind a congressional effort to provide federal funding for such an initiative.

The most significant play we might anticipate, though, could be on teacher pay. Boosting teacher salaries by $13,500 per year (to close the gap with other professionals) was the centerpiece of her education agenda when she ran for president in 2019.

It’s a popular idea, especially since so many Americans underestimate what teachers are paid today.

She has a ready vehicle to pursue it thanks to the looming expiration of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which makes new legislation around tax reform a must-pass item for Congress next year. The most straightforward way for the federal government to put more money into teachers’ pockets isn’t through a complicated grant program to states and districts, but via tax credits that would flow directly to educators.

The tax code already allows teachers to deduct up to $300 for classroom expenses. There are also several student loan forgiveness programs for teachers.

A major teacher tax credit could quickly get expensive, however, given the size of America’s teaching force (3 to 4 million depending on how you count it). At, say, $10,000 per teacher, that’s $30 to $40 billion a year — in the neighborhood of what we spend on Title I and IDEA combined.

A smarter, more affordable approach would be to target only teachers serving in high-need schools — as the student loan forgiveness programs already do. Studies from Dallas and elsewhere acknowledge that great teachers will move to high-poverty schools — but only if offered significantly higher pay, in the neighborhood of $10,000 more per year.

We also know that when we pay teachers the same regardless of where they teach — the policy of almost every school district in the country — the neediest schools end up with the least-experienced teachers.

A tax credit for teachers in Title 1 schools — which get government funding for having high numbers or high percentages of students from low-income families — could transform the profession overnight, significantly closing the teacher quality gap, school funding gap and, eventually, the achievement gap, too.

Related: OPINION: If Trump wins, count on continued culture wars, school vouchers and a fixation on ending the federal Department of Education

Given Democrats’ interest in boosting the “care economy,” perhaps such a tax credit could flow to instructors in high-poverty childcare and pre-K centers, as well. This would fit well with Harris’ promise to move America toward an “opportunity economy,” including by boosting the pay of childcare and preschool teachers.

Still, a big effort on “differential pay” for teachers might be just one wonk’s wish-casting. We’ve had two presidential administrations in a row with little action on K-12 education. It’s quite likely that a Harris administration would be a third.

But here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise after November.

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served in the George W. Bush administration.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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As is so often the case, education largely has been left out of the spotlight in this year’s presidential election. But many of the topics candidates — and voters — are talking about directly affect and involve schools and colleges.

The Hechinger Report has covered many of the key election issues, including abortion, the economy and immigration. Read our coverage of some of the biggest topics on this year’s campaign trail.

We want to know what questions you have about the election and education policy. Write to us: editor@hechingerreport.org.

On abortion

Immediately after Roe was overturned, we wondered what the fallout would be for medical education and soon reported on future doctors who were rethinking where they wanted to conduct their training. The concerns raised in that piece — that abortion bans could intensify OB-GYN shortages in certain parts of the country — began to be realized when we checked back in the following year. States with abortion bans saw the largest drops in OB-GYN residency applications. Medical school students in those states expressed frustrations with the complete lack of training in abortion, while program directors scrambled to find out-of-state training options.

We also looked at anti-abortion clinics known as crisis pregnancy centers and the outsized role they play in schools in Texas, despite offering risk-focused sex ed courses with little evidence that approach helps reduce teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.

“Student education has become a very, very important part of our focus,” one center director said on a panel at a conference. “It’s a great way for us to begin to instill and teach and to educate these individuals on the pro-life message.”

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

On the economy

In many ways, reporting on higher education is reporting on the economy. We’ve written about the impact of high housing costs on graduate students, the difficulty working college students can face getting food stamps and problems with many short-term certificate programs meant to lead to a well-paying career.

Many educators across the country are trying to explicitly tie their offerings to local industry needs, like we found in Colorado where a group of school districts has banded together to offer students a new array of career and technical education classes in keeping with the area’s job market. Similarly, at the higher ed level, trade school enrollment is booming, buoyed by students who see the credentials as an affordable, clear path to a job.

Related: College student voting is way up

On immigration

The surge in asylum seekers and immigrants into the country has had real effects on many communities where these individuals have settled – including the schools. We took a deep dive into Denver and its surrounding area, where thousands of newcomer students were enrolled last academic year. And while the schools aimed to welcome everyone and provide appropriate support, there were also signs of strain. As one district official put it: “We have some less-than-ideal circumstances. We have some very full classrooms. We hear most from teachers, ‘This is kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot more kids and they all need a lot more from me.’”

The political debates and culture wars over immigration have also trickled down to schools, as we reported in Alabama. There, a superintendent who prioritized helping English learners was ousted. Dozens of interviews suggested that antipathy towards immigrants played a role in his downfall.

On the Supreme Court

The next president will likely appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice, experts predict. And those appointees will likely consider key education cases over the course of their tenure. Take, for instance, last year’s landmark case banning affirmative action at the nation’s colleges and universities.

We’ve been tracking the impact of that ruling, looking closely at how it’s affecting high schoolers applying for college. As part of that work, we gathered 50 college essays from high school seniors and talked to the students about how they pitched themselves to admissions officers. Many reported struggling with the question of whether to talk about their racial identity.

In 2022, the Supreme Court took up a school prayer case, ruling in favor of a football coach who prayed on the field following games. Now, educators and lawmakers are testing just how far they can go with a school-prayer friendly Supreme Court.

On climate change

For years, Hechinger has been reporting on the effects of climate change — and the increase in extreme weather it brings — on education, from fires to floods to intense heat. These weather events disrupt schooling, sometimes forcing students to flee their homes and adding to mental health strains. As one expert said, “Extreme weather is going to increasingly impact and disrupt learning. That is something that school leaders and administrators are going to have to grapple with and start to better plan for.”

Related: Interested in climate change and education? Sign up for our newsletter.

But we’ve also looked at ways schools and universities are using climate change as a teaching opportunity. And it could be an economic one as well — potentially leading to the creation of thousands of new jobs.

On LGBTQ+ rights

Protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people remain a divisive issue. State lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills and the Supreme Court has indicated openness to reconsidering the right to same sex marriage. Against this backdrop, we looked at the mental health of LGBTQ+ college students, who described feeling drained and emotionally exhausted.

Some high school students are struggling too, especially when the campus groups founded to support them come under attack. We reported on one Kentucky mom’s attempts to push her school to create a Gay-Straight alliance despite the state’s harsh anti-LGBTQ law.  And we’ve profiled an Alabama principal who was removed from her post after she began coming out as gay to colleagues.

And we’ve reported on how, thanks to a legal morass, the nation’s K-12 schools and colleges are operating under completely different regulations for how to handle issues of sex and gender discrimination, including determining which bathrooms transgender students can use.  

Contact investigations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at 212-678-3585 or butrymowicz@hechingerreport.org.

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As a special education teacher, I often encountered students who struggled with solving math problems. Many would simply add all the numbers they saw without grasping what the problems were actually asking.

To help, I introduced keywords like “all together” for addition and “difference” for subtraction.

However, this approach fell short when students focused solely on the keywords, missing the problem’s context. Today, elementary school teachers share similar struggles with their students.

The issue isn’t just about teaching math; it also involves addressing gaps in literacy. Reading skills are closely related to children’s ability to solve math problems. And, as much as early literacy development plays a critical role in developing problem-solving abilities, early numeracy strongly predicts overall academic success, including literacy development: Research has found that literacy and math development are intertwined.

Yet, pre-K teachers spend an average of only 2.5 percent of their day on numeracy skills — a gap that underscores the need for teaching approaches that bridge math and literacy.

Teachers must do more to help students build foundational cognitive skills, such as logic and reasoning.

Related: Our biweekly Early Childhood newsletter highlights innovative solutions to the obstacles facing the youngest students. Subscribe for free.

Integrated teaching can help students view math and English language arts as complementary disciplines that help them solve real-world problems. It could lead to better academic outcomes and a richer understanding of the world. Unfortunately, most elementary schools teach math and English language arts separately.

One way that teachers can address these comprehension gaps is to initially remove numbers from word problems and encourage students to read through the entire problems before they add or subtract. By solving “numberless word problems,” students can visualize and grasp the context before computing.

We can also use the power of storytelling. In my classroom, I incorporated engaging literature into math instruction to help my students better understand word problems. We used “Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream,” a Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book by Cindy Neuschwander, to explore multiplication concepts; the book’s illustrations helped students identify repeated addition and multiplication and allowed them to recognize similar scenarios in math problems. Incorporating math through storytelling helps children better understand and remember math concepts and also improves their confidence and reduces math anxiety. By building on the critical skills students need to excel in math and ELA, we can better equip them to apply math to real-world problems.

Here is what this approach encourages:

• Improved comprehension: Stories and real-world scenarios promote a better understanding of math concepts, making abstract ideas more accessible.
• Math visualization: Using descriptive writing and storytelling to explain math concepts, such as measurement and fractions, gives students a tangible reference for math principles as they exist in the world.
• Vocabulary development: Just as students learn new words in ELA, with math storytelling they learn math vocabulary to enhance their understanding of the math concepts needed to solve problems.
• Critical thinking skills: When students analyze problems from various perspectives and use language to describe them, they’re better equipped to apply problem-solving skills across disciplines.
• Contextualized problem-solving: By establishing context through literature, students are able to construct meaning to solve other problems.

Administrators should encourage training for teachers and provide resources that effectively blend math and ELA. Supporting a curriculum that encourages the teacher to be a facilitator — rather than a sage on a stage — will encourage more students to talk about math, draw upon their language skills and solve problems together.

Here are some approaches educators can use to blend instruction to challenge students and enhance math and ELA skills:

• Project-based learning: Assign hands-on projects that require mathematical analysis and language arts skills, such as reviewing datasets, creating infographics and writing interpretations.
• Collaborative learning environments: Ask groups of students to work together to solve complex problems that require mathematical reasoning and effective communication. Their work could include debates or reviews of written mathematical explanations.
• Literature-based mathematical discussions: Read books that incorporate mathematical themes or concepts and include a character who uses math to solve problems; such books can spark lively debate and serve as a springboard to discuss how math applies to real life.

These strategies strengthen the connection between math and ELA and promote deeper learning and engagement for all students.

Related: You probably don’t have your preschooler thinking about math enough

Using an integrated approach with literature also provides a level of comfort for teachers. Not surprisingly, most elementary school teachers didn’t choose their profession due to a deep love of mathematics — and some may suffer from math anxiety themselves. Teachers can model problem-solving beyond the classroom by expanding what it means to teach math through children’s books and hands-on activities.

Math instruction will only improve if administrators, educators, parents and policymakers push for integrated curricula. Doing so will not only help students’ math, but promote a more effective education system overall.

Thera Pearce is the learning services manager at ORIGO Education. She has experience in instructional design, curriculum consulting and professional development coordination. She has also worked as a special education teacher and coach for 15 years in North Carolina.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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Fifteen years ago, the Obama administration and philanthropic foundations encouraged more Americans to get a college degree. Remedial classes were a big barrier. Two-thirds of community college students and 40 percent of four-year college students weren’t academically prepared for college-level work and were forced to take prerequisite “developmental” courses that didn’t earn them college credits. Many of these college students never progressed to college-level courses. They racked up student loan debts and dropped out. Press reports, including my own, called it a “remedial ed trap.”

One controversial but popular solution was to eliminate these prerequisite classes and let weaker students proceed straight to college-level courses, called “corequisite courses,” because they include some remedial support at the same time. In recent years, more than 20 states, from California to Florida, have either replaced remedial classes at their public colleges with corequisites or given students a choice between the two. 

In 2015, Tennessee’s public colleges were some of the first higher education institutions to eliminate stand-alone remedial courses. A 10-year analysis of how almost 100,000 students fared before and after the new policy was conducted by researchers at the University of Delaware, and their draft paper was made public earlier this year. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and may still be revised, but it is the first longer term study to look at college degree completion for tens of thousands of students who have taken corequisites, and it found that the new supports haven’t worked as well as many hoped, especially for lower achieving students .

First the good news. Like earlier research, this study of Tennessee’s two-year community colleges found that after the elimination of remedial classes, students passed more college courses, both introductory courses in English and math, and also more advanced courses in those subjects.

However, the extra credit accumulation effect quickly faded. Researchers tracked each student for three years, and by the end of their third year, students had racked up about the same number of total credits as earlier students had under the old remedial education regime. The proportion of students earning either two-year associate degrees or four-year bachelor’s degrees did not increase after the corequisite reform. Lower achieving college students, defined as those with very low ACT exam scores in high school, were more likely to drop out of college and less likely to earn a short-term certificate degree after the switch to corequisites.

“The evidence is showing that these reforms are not increasing graduation rates,” said Alex Goudas, a higher education researcher and a community college professor at Delta College in Michigan, who was not involved in this study. “Some students are benefiting a little bit – only temporarily – and other students are harmed permanently.”

It seems like a paradox. Students are initially passing more courses, but are also more likely to drop out and less likely to earn credentials. Florence Xiaotao Ran, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and the lead researcher on the Tennessee study, explained to me that the dropouts appear to be different types of students than the ones earning more credits. Students with somewhat higher ACT test scores in high school, who were close to the old remedial ed cutoff of 19 points (out of 36) and scoring near the 50th percentile nationally, were more likely to succeed in passing the new corequisite courses straight away. Some students who were far below this threshold also passed the corequisite courses, but many more failed. Students below the 10th percentile (13 and below on the ACT) dropped out in greater numbers and were less likely to earn a short-term certificate. 

Data from other states shows a similar pattern. In California, which largely eliminated remedial education in 2019, failure rates in introductory college-level math courses soared, even as more students also succeeded in passing these courses, according to a study of an Hispanic-serving two-year college in southern California. 

Ran’s Tennessee analysis has two important implications. The new corequisite courses – as they currently operate – aren’t working well for the lowest achieving students. And the change isn’t even helping students who are now able to earn more college credits during the first year or two of college. They’re still struggling to graduate and are not earning a college degree any faster.

Some critics of corequisite reforms, such as Delta College’s Goudas, argue that some form of remedial education needs to be reintroduced for students who lack basic math, reading and writing skills. 

Meanwhile, supporters of the reforms believe that corequisite courses need to be improved. Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, described the higher dropout rates and falling number of credentials in the Tennessee study as “troubling.” But he says that the old remedial ed system failed too many students. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

“The answer is not to go back,” said Brock, “but to double down on corequisites and offer students more support,” acknowledging that some students need more time to build the skills they lack. Brock believes this skill-building can happen simultaneously as students earn college credits and not as a preliminary stepping stone. “No student comes to college to take remedial courses,” he added.

One confounding issue is that corequisite classes come in so many different forms. In some cases, students get a double dose of math or English with three credit hours of a remedial class taken concurrently with three credit hours of a college-level course. A more common approach is to tack on an extra hour or so to the college class. In her analysis, Ran discovered that instructional time was cut in half for the weakest students, who received many more hours of math or writing instruction under the old remedial system.

“In the new scenario, everyone gets the same amount of instruction or developmental material, regardless if you are just one point below the cutoff or 10 points below the cutoff,” said Ran.

There are also big differences in what takes place during the extra support time that’s built into a corequisite course. Some colleges offer tutoring centers to help students fill in their knowledge gaps. Others schedule computer lab time where students practice math problems on educational software. Another option is extended class time, where the main professor teaches the same material that’s in the college level course only more slowly, spread across four hours a week instead of the usual three.  

Overcoming weak foundational skills is not the only obstacle that community college students face. The researchers I interviewed emphasized that these students are struggling to juggle work and family responsibilities along with their classes, and they need more support – academic advising, career counseling and sometimes therapy and financial help.  Without additional support, students get derailed.  This may explain why the benefits of early credit accumulation fade out and are not yet translating into higher graduation rates. 

Even before the pandemic, the vast majority of community college students arrived on campus without a strong enough foundation for regular college-credit bearing classes and were steered to either remedial or new corequisite classes. High school achievement levels have deteriorated further since 2020, when the data in Ran’s study ended. “It’s not their fault,” said Ran. “It’s the K-12 system that failed them.”

That’s why it’s more important now than ever to figure out how to help under-prepared college students if we want to improve post-secondary education. 

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at (212) 678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about corequisite courses was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters. 

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Young people experiencing family instability and trauma are at increased risk for precarious living situations and interrupted educational experiences. And students who leave school before graduation are considerably more likely to experience homelessness and less likely to enroll in college. 

By failing to systematically and preemptively address youth homelessness through our schools, we are increasing the chances of hundreds of thousands of young people becoming and remaining homeless. 

We can change this. 

Schools are key to intervention. Schools can and should serve as indispensable resources for students who are experiencing unstable housing or outright homelessness. Lamentably, too often, there aren’t enough staff members to carry out existing support programs, much less manage additional programs designed for youth who are at risk for or are already experiencing homelessness.

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I saw these issues firsthand when I worked as the chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, but they are prevalent at schools nationwide. For roughly 700,000 youth ages 13 to 17, not having stable or any housing is top of mind, a recent study found. 

Here are some suggestions for identifying youth at risk and tackling youth homelessness systemically. 

Paying more attention to risk factors will increase the chance that at-risk students will be identified earlier and interventions enacted. 

We’ve learned a lot about risk factors at the independent, nonpartisan policy research center I lead. For example, a family’s income is a strong indicator of risk, so school officials and staff should be hypersensitive in districts where families are struggling financially.

Yet appearances alone won’t necessarily indicate which students are struggling. Many schools rely on student self-reporting, which students are less likely to do if they don’t know there are resources available or if they are too ashamed to reveal their status. 

Schools should initiate a universal screening at the beginning of the school year to gauge if students are vulnerable to homelessness. All staff should routinely be trained to look for signs of homelessness and risk factors. 

Not everyone at a school needs to deeply engage with each student, but they should be aware of signs so they can make referrals to a social worker or the school’s McKinney-Vento liaison if needed.

The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes a requirement for schools to provide “comparable” transportation for homeless students to get to and from school. And while every school has a McKinney-Vento liaison who administers programs funded by federal dollars, at many schools that assistance boils down to just providing a bus pass for homeless students, nothing more. 

If their school is only able to provide a bus pass, students’ many other needs — like clothing and mental health care — will not be met. 

Having more school social workers would also help identify students struggling with housing stability and match them to programs and services that could meet their needs. 

Another significant risk factor for homelessness is dropping out of school. A truancy officer’s role is critical when students drop out. Administrators should be asking themselves what it takes to get kids back in school to stay. The goal of that position should not be to identify and punish students but to figure out what resources they need to get them back to school and keep them there. 

Related: Couch surfing, living in cars: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

One way to ensure that interventions are available and applied would be to mirror the work of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, the place where evidence-based interventions for child welfare are vetted, rated and made eligible for federal reimbursement. 

The inclusion of an evidence-based clearinghouse in a federal program is a legislative component that has historically enabled bipartisan buy-in. Since schools are already burdened by tight budgets and overworked staff, adding a clearinghouse for homelessness prevention efforts would allow qualified outside agencies to provide — and be reimbursed for — evidence-based intervention services. 

Two other points not to be overlooked are that youth homelessness is experienced disproportionately by Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ youth, and youth homelessness is a leading pathway into adult homelessness. That’s why supporting young people at risk for or experiencing homelessness — through substantial investments and increased services — is a significant way to address racial inequity and break these cycles. 

The point of school is to educate and nurture our youth so they can successfully pass on to the next phase of life. If we work together, we can disrupt the brutal cycle of homelessness and give more young people the future they deserve. 

Bryan Samuels is executive director of Chapin Hall. He previously served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, director of Illinois DCFS, and commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Obama administration.

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As the start of the school year approaches, high schools, colleges and universities across the country are figuring out how to help young people navigate the 2024 elections during these highly polarized and contentious times.

Here’s a way we can help students become informed and active participants in our democracy, while potentially avoiding fights in classrooms and on playing fields: Provide them with free, digital access to their community’s local newspaper so they can read it on their phones.

Engaging young people in democracy — getting them to follow the news and to vote — has always been a concern for educators and has always been a challenge. Young people pay less attention to the news and participate less than older people. This was the case fifty years ago and remains the case today.

That’s why in Oneonta, New York, Hartwick College’s newly launched Institute of Public Service is offering students a free digital subscription to the local paper, The Daily Star. This new initiative has emerged from the institute’s mission to help young people become more informed about and engaged with local government and the issues affecting the community where they go to school.

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It’s no surprise that the vast majority of teens report spending a lot of time on social media, especially YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram; a growing share say that they are on social media “almost constantly,” a recent report by the Pew Research Center shows.

Young people also say that social media is the most common way that they get news; many add that they do not actively seek out news, but are only exposed to it incidentally as part of their curated social media feeds.

Reliance on social media for information about candidates, policies and the actions of our government is a serious problem since much of the news content on social media is not the product of authentic, verified journalism. Inaccurate, misleading and conspiratorial information is common.

Moreover, the way social media algorithms work, readers with certain political leanings will increasingly be exposed only to content reflecting those leanings. This dynamic makes it hard for young people to find any common ground across partisan divides.

Providing young people with barrier-free access to a local newspaper is a concrete way for educational institutions to counter that trend and foster engaged citizenship.

This works because local politics is much less partisan than national politics, as New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein pointed out in “Why We’re Polarized.” In most localities, we still see Democrats and Republicans working together to solve problems. The work of local government directly affects the lives of those in their communities.

Furthermore, Pew Research shows that Americans of both parties see value in local newspapers. Views about local news are not as starkly divided as opinions about the national media. As a result, local government and local news provide a good entry point to democracy for young people.

I’m heartened by new partnerships between local news outlets and academic institutions across the country, such as the one at the University of Vermont, through which the school is providing journalism students with the opportunity to write for local newspapers and get hands-on civic experience while also helping provide professional news coverage for their communities.

Related: Could colleges make voting as popular as going to football games?

By investing in local news, schools and colleges can invest both in their communities and in democracy. Due to the changing news media environment, local newspapers have been in serious decline. Over the past several decades, we have seen hundreds close down. Currently, the majority of counties in America have only one local newspaper or, even more problematically, none at all.

Without local news, it is very difficult for people and communities to know what their local elected officials are doing and to hold power to account.

Many high school and college libraries have databases that allow students to search and access stories from a range of newspapers, and these are wonderful services. But they also take time and work to access, requiring students to log in and wade through multiple portals to get to news stories. And often the content in these databases is not updated throughout the day.

Giving students subscriptions to their local newspapers enables them to simply click the app on their phones and start reading.

Moreover, research shows that, like many other democratic behaviors, including voting, reading a newspaper and following the news is a habit: Once you start doing it, you are likely to continue.

At Hartwick, we hope that providing free, easy access to our local newspaper will result in more students consuming verified, objective news and lead to more informed and thoughtful discussions on campus and in our classrooms.

We encourage other schools to do the same. Nudging even a handful of students to become lifelong newspaper readers is a way for educational institutions to transform the lives of those students while strengthening our democracy — and our local newspapers.

Laurel Elder is professor and chair of political science at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and is co-director of the Hartwick Institute of Public Service.

This story about college students and newspapers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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On the first day of seventh grade, Elijah Brown clambered onto a bus and watched the tall buildings of the city slowly recede. He was part of a desegregation effort that took him from his predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Louis to a school in the predominantly white suburb of Wildwood, Missouri.   

The education was excellent, but students made denigrating comments about where he was from and his race. His mom worked hard – often two jobs – but sometimes there wasn’t enough money for rent. Some nights, he and his mom and sister slept in their car. Some days he could only eat when he was at school. 

Brown began to think of the University of Missouri as a way out of hard times. It was the only college he applied to, and he got in – but even with full federal financial aid, he would have needed to come up with thousands of dollars every year to cover the rest of tuition and room and board. 

To his overwhelming relief, he was awarded a prestigious George C. Brooks scholarship, which was designed to help students from groups underrepresented at the university and covered about 70 percent of tuition annually. 

“It changed my life, it really did,” Brown said.

The scholarship money meant that he didn’t have to work two or three jobs at Subway or the local gym like his friends. Brown graduated in three and a half years, in 2020, with a 3.98 GPA.

“I worked so hard. I was relentless with it, because I felt like I had something to prove,” he said. “I felt so grateful to be getting a Brooks scholarship.” 

That scholarship no longer exists. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban affirmative action, Missouri, like many other universities, dropped scholarships that until this year had been reserved for students from underrepresented racial groups, even though the Court’s ruling didn’t mention financial aid.

Students say the money allowed them to attend top colleges that otherwise would have been financially out of reach, putting them on a path to the middle class. The scholarships often included mentorship programs, which helped them succeed. The financial support freed them to focus on their studies without working too many hours. And – crucially – it helped them graduate without loads of debt.

Missouri’s interpretation – that the Supreme Court’s ruling applied to financial aid as well as admissions – swept through a swath of states last year. Colleges have canceled race-conscious scholarships worth at least $60 million, according to data from public universities; the total is likely significantly higher.

In some states, elected officials ordered institutions to change the scholarships in favor of ones that didn’t consider race. In others, universities preemptively made the change, fearing lawsuits from groups eager to test the Supreme Court’s willingness to prohibit the consideration of race not only in admissions but in financial aid as well.

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But a survey of the country’s 50 flagship public universities – whose stated missions are to provide high-quality, affordable education to the residents of their home states – shows that not all have responded the same way. While at least 13 have changed or eliminated scholarships that took race into account, another 22 have kept them intact, according to spokespeople and scholarships listed on university websites. ​​The University of Wisconsin-Madison would only say that its scholarships were “under review.”

The remaining 14 flagships either never had race-conscious scholarships or use what’s known as a “pool and match” system that honors donors’ requests for race-specific awards without creating barriers to any student who applies. 

The University of Iowa changed the Advantage Iowa Award, which last year provided $9.4 million to more than 1,500 high-performing students from underrepresented racial groups, to a purely need-based scholarship. Administrators said they made the changes, “based on the principles articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The 22 schools that kept the scholarships interpreted the ruling differently.

Pennsylvania State University, for example, decided that because the Court’s ruling “focused solely on admissions, it did not impact Penn State’s scholarship awarding,” the university’s assistant vice president for strategic affairs, Lisa M. Powers, said in an email. 

Some experts worry that slashing the scholarships could increase educational disparity, discouraging more Black and Hispanic students from going to college. About 28 percent of Black adults and 21 percent of Hispanic adults have college degrees compared with 42 percent of white adults, the U.S. Census reports.

The changes could also deepen financial inequalities. In 2020, Black college graduates on average owed $58,400 in loan debt four years after graduating – 30 percent more than white graduates, according to the Education Department. Meanwhile, Black college graduates aged 25 to 34 on average earned about 25 percent less than their white counterparts in 2022, making loan repayment more difficult.

Last fall, just 4 percent of incoming freshmen at the University of Missouri, where Elijah Brown went, were Black, down from 8 percent five years earlier. Despite ending two scholarships previously designated for underrepresented students, which were awarded to more than 350 students each year, the university expects an increase in the number of underrepresented students enrolling in the fall, according to Christian Basi who was a spokesperson there until earlier this month. Students already enrolled and receiving the scholarships will not lose them, he said.

Brown says relying on merit for scholarships without considering race will hurt Black students. SAT scores – widely considered a measure of academic merit – for Black, Hispanic and Native American students lag significantly behind white and Asian scores. 

“People who say, ‘Oh, our scholarships are all available for everyone now.’ No, they’re not,” Brown said. “They’re still going to go to mostly white people who have already been set up, generations back, for college, whose parents are college grads, and who didn’t only apply to one school because they didn’t know any better.”

Related: How could Project 2025 change education?

After he graduated, Brown worked for the University of Missouri as an admissions representative assigned to recruit students from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented there. He drove to high schools in Kansas City and St. Louis to convince Black and Hispanic students to choose his alma mater over other options, such as colleges closer to home or historically Black colleges or universities.

At meetings with students, Brown told them what he had gained by going to the University of Missouri — from the organizations he joined to the guest speakers he got to hear to the classes he took. He told them about the Brooks scholarship, saying that if they worked hard, they could have the same opportunities he had. 

“I was telling them about my experience,” he recalled, “and their eyes would light up, and they’d get so excited, like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s possible.’”

When he heard about the university’s decision to cancel the Brooks scholarship, he was angry.

“I talked to these freshman and sophomore students, and it’s like I lied to them,” Brown said. “They will never be able to get that opportunity at Mizzou. It makes me sick to my stomach that so many of these kids will not get that experience.”

Eyram Gbeddy doesn’t remember any college representatives visiting his Pennsylvania high school during the Covid-laden winter of his senior year, in 2020-2021, but he did get a recruitment email with an offer he thought couldn’t be real.

The University of Alabama wanted to give him a full ride. He visited the campus and fell in love with it. His mom didn’t pressure him, but she was grateful for his decision.

“She told me she was praying that I would go to Alabama because it would be so helpful to the whole family,” he said, freeing up financial resources for his two brothers’ educations.

Alabama’s National Recognition scholarship, which was earmarked for high-performing Black, Latino, Indigenous and rural students, was discontinued starting with students entering this fall. Gbeddy, who is Black, said it had allowed him to concentrate solely on his studies, and he graduated this past spring – in just three years. He will enter Georgetown University law school in the fall, which he said would have been unthinkable if he had been carrying thousands of dollars in undergraduate loan debt (median federal student debt for all graduates of Alabama is close to $23,000).

“When I sit here and I think that there are students who are just like me – who are qualified, who are smart, who would make absolutely wonderful additions to the Alabama community – who aren’t even going to be able to consider Alabama,” said Gbeddy, who is 21 years old. “It’s just heartbreaking to me.”

Just a few years ago, the University of Alabama was touting the Recognition Scholarship and its positive impact on the campus’s racial diversity. 

Related: How did students pitch themselves to colleges after last year’s affirmative action ruling?

Black students made up 10 percent of freshmen at Alabama in 2022, while 32 percent of public high school graduates in the state were Black, but that gap has decreased over the past five years.

Gbeddy predicts ending the National Recognition scholarship will reverse that trend.

“When you lose these scholarships that are targeted at Black Americans,” he said, “at people from rural areas, people of Latino ancestry, you lose such a strong recruiting tool for a university that desperately needs it.”

The University of Alabama did not respond to questions about why they canceled the scholarship.

“[T]he University will continue to offer competitive scholarship opportunities to its students in a manner that complies with federal and state law,” the university’s associate director of communications, Alex House, said in an email. 

Kimberly West-Faulcon, a professor of law and the James P. Bradley chair in constitutional law at Loyola Law School in California,said decisions to end the race-conscious scholarships can boil down to weighing the possibility of lawsuits against an institution’s commitment to racial inclusion.

“Institutions are making decisions to not defend these kinds of policies,” but to change them, said West-Faulcon. “Why are they changing their policies, instead of going to court and defending them?”

Last year’s Supreme Court admissions decision has indeed prompted a flurry of lawsuits against race-conscious scholarships and a wave of complaints to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by groups like the Equal Protection Project. That group, which sees the scholarships as discriminatory, says it has already succeeded in getting more than a dozen scholarship programs canceled or altered.

Indiana’s flagship was EPP’s most recent target, with a complaint filed in July against 19 private bequests that consider race. For example, one scholarship indicates a preference for an underrepresented minority student with financial need majoring in business and another for an African American law student who has at least one dependent.

“The source of funding does not matter,” William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor who leads the Equal Protection Project, said in an email. “The scholarships are promoted by Indiana University to its students, and IU handles the application process through its scholarship portal. As such, it needs to adhere to relevant law governing educational practices.”

A group of white students even filed a class action lawsuit against the University of Oklahoma for its institutional aid program — which doesn’t take race into account. The suit claims that Black students have been receiving financial aid disproportionately.

Related: OPINION: Following the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, we must find new remedies to promote educational equity

Still, even with the legal uncertainties, some universities are holding the line. 

After consulting with legal counsel, the University of New Mexico decided to keep its National Recognition scholarship, since the Supreme Court didn’t mention financial aid and because the criteria for the National Recognition scholarship in particular are set by the College Board.

Last year, 149 Indigenous, Black and Hispanic high-performing students received these selective scholarships at the University of New Mexico, each worth about $15,000 per year. The graduation rate for students who receive those scholarships and the university’s other top merit-based scholarships ranges between 80 percent and 95 percent, the university said, compared with 52 percent for all students.

For Diego Ruiz, the scholarship, which is enough to cover tuition, fees, dorm costs and books, has been life-changing. 

“I can go to school and graduate and not have any debt,” said Ruiz, who was salutatorian of his Albuquerque high school and is entering his second year at the University of New Mexico. “This is all I wanted. This is all my parents wanted.”

Ruiz had considered going out of state for college, but the scholarship kept him in New Mexico. His mom’s family has lived in the state for many generations, mostly in rural areas, and his dad’s parents emigrated from a small town in Mexico. He is studying public health and wants to find ways to improve access to health care, especially in the rural areas of New Mexico.

He plans to go to graduate school in a medical field, which he says will be easier since he won’t have debt after college (this semester he’ll be working 20 hours a week on campus).

“I’m just really interested in trying to give back to the community that raised me,” said Ruiz, who is 19. “I’m super interested in battling the disparities that we have in New Mexico.”

Brown, the Missouri grad, just finished his first year at the University of Virginia School of Law. This summer, he worked at a top law firm and earned more than his mom does in an entire year.

In May, he took his entire family to a soccer game in St. Louis. He bought them jerseys. He gave them his credit card so they could buy whatever they wanted from the concession stand. “It was the first time in my life I’ve ever seen my mom and my stepdad so stress-free,” Brown said. 

“My mom loves me so much… I’m just so happy I can give back to her,” he said, fighting back tears. 

“I feel so blessed, because this is a life I could never have dreamed of growing up,” he said. “I’m just so grateful for my education.”

This story about scholarships based on race was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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