GreatBigBlog

The more early college high schools we visit, the more success stories we hear. Like the story of Tomal Ahmed, who waited most of his young life to emigrate here from Bangladesh. There, access to public education was not guaranteed and college was an impossible dream.

“I didn’t get a chance in my country,” he says. But he’s gotten a chance at International High School, an early college program in Queens where Tomal has been tackling university-level coursework since 10th grade.

Today, you can celebrate programs like International High School by urging your elected officials to give them additional support.

In doing so, you are helping “sustain something at risk,” says Dan Kaplan, who coordinates early college at International High School.

Like other early college programs, International High School works with students who might otherwise struggle to graduate—in this case, recent immigrants, many from low-income households, who are learning English as a second lan...

At 50CAN, we pride ourselves on constantly revisiting our work and measuring our progress.  Changing the system so that all kids can have great schools is a difficult job, but it’s also an urgent one and we can’t waste our time on things that don’t get results. So I was excited to read initial reviews by the Department of Education about the the success of the federal School Improvement Grants program.

Excited firstly because I am—like so many of my 50CAN teammates—a data nerd. Excited secondly because I believe that any program supported by public dollars should be constantly reviewed to make sure they’re actually working. And excited thirdly because these preliminary numbers suggest that despite all the criticisms and doubts, the program is working.

The numbers are still early, but for 2010-11 (the only year for which data is available) the Department of Education reports that proficiency levels have increased in 60 percent of schools.  Twenty-five percent of schools showed an impressive double-digit increase in math proficiency, with 20 percent showing an increase...