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What We’re Reading: Week of May 23, 2022

May 27, 2022

This week, we join the nation in mourning the loss of students and educators in Uvalde, TX. In addition to reflections on the student supports needed to guide young people in navigating these difficult news events, we also share news of the Linked Learning Alliance’s participation in the Gates Foundation Accelerate ED grant program, building student social capital, and job training gaps. As always, thank you for reading with us.


Linked Learning in the News
Helping Young People Ages 14-24 Shift From HS to College, Work & Beyond, The 74 Million
The decade between ages 14 & 24 is crucial for young people and for the future of the workforce. Education leaders should help make a seamless transition from middle school to high school, college and careers, writes All4Ed's Deborah S. Delisle and Linked Learning Alliance's Anne Stanton.

Gates Foundation offers grants to scale high school pathway programs, EdSourceThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it is wading into the world of dual enrollment and career technical education. Through its new “Accelerate ED” initiative, it is donating $175,000 each to twelve teams across the country, including one in California led by the Linked Learning Alliance.


College & Career Readiness
Helping Students Build Social Capital — and a Path to the Future, The 74 Million
It’s time to include social capital alongside the quality academic, skill and work experiences that are already established as essential elements of student success, writes David Etzwiler and Matt Gandal.

Students will move forward post-pandemic if we give them new pathways and opportunities, Hechinger Report
Investing in students through youth entrepreneurship is helping our district achieve what other districts might take for granted — access to role models and hands-on learning opportunities. These experiences are helping our students become active participants and leaders in their own learning and futures, writes Johnnie Thomas, superintendent of Rich Township High School District 227.


Higher Education
Undergraduate enrollment falls 4.7% this spring, Higher Ed Dive
About 662,000 fewer undergrads enrolled in college in spring 2022 compared to the year before, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found.


Student Supports
How Much Trauma Can Our Schools Withstand?, EdWeek
Once again, the nation has called upon its K-12 educators to withstand unimaginable tragedy, and to carry our children to emotional safety. And despite a wrenching, nonstop barrage of pain—a pandemic, a racial reckoning, and multiple mass shootings—that’s what they are doing.


Workforce Development
The Teaching Profession Is ‘Crumbling': What Can School Leaders Do to Help?, EdWeek
The longstanding structural problems—a ballooning workload, scant resources, difficult working conditions—have become more urgent lately as schools grapple with staffing shortages and struggle to meet students’ academic and social needs, in the wake of a global pandemic.

Rocky Pathways From Youth to a Good Job, Diverse Education
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) released two new reports that showed how by age 35, workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher are nearly twice as likely as workers with just a high school diploma to land a good job. Yet race, class, and gender disparities compound inequalities on the uneven journey to good jobs as well as wealth.

‘This is a crisis point’: Job training deficit leaves critical jobs unfilled, Politico
The U.S. spends far less on workforce development than most other wealthy nations, which has made it difficult for its workforce and supply chain to meet the challenges of the pandemic.