Funding is Coming: Get Your Evidence Ready! Here’s a sentence we don’t often get to say in education: the motherlode of funding is coming our way! The recently-passed American Rescue Plan Act has set aside … brace yourself … over $2 BILLION for out-of-school time (OST) — after-school and summer — programs!Not to mention, there is funding for community schools
Education’s lessons learned from a year at home It’s hard to believe that a year ago this week, my husband and I returned from a trip to visit my family and went into lockdown for the first time. At that time, the thought of staying at home for even two weeks straight sent my anxious brain into overdrive. Now, it’s
We need teachers today. When I was a senior in high school, I thought the coolest job would be to serve as a member of Congress. I was lucky to be part of an amazing course (in a public school, might I add!) called Government and Law-Related Experiences, affectionately known as GALRE. Our teacher, Doug Martin, a hero of mine,
We can’t let them fall through the cracks. I started writing a completely different blog post for this week, but when I read the news this morning, I knew I had to shift gears. CNN featured a story yesterday called “Teachers and social workers search for students who are ‘missing’ in the pandemic.” The word “missing” made my heart drop.
Start the School Year By Hearing from Stakeholders Growing up in New Jersey, the day after Labor Day always marked the start of a new school year … and the day I finally got to wear the new outfit I had carefully planned and crack open my new, pristine notebooks. If you couldn’t tell, I have always loved the excitement
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Tamara Hamai and I have been sowing the seeds for our new program, Evidence for Engagement, for months. Our partnership happened so organically – a meeting of the minds for two evaluators who have experience with and a passion for organizations that serve youth and families. We’d been toying with the best way to
The COVID Slide Last week, I watched a powerful webinar from Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center about health inequity and COVID-19. One of the first speakers, Dr. Nwando Olayiwola, started to talk about vulnerable populations but quickly corrected herself. She called them, “populations that have been made vulnerable.” What a difference such a small change made. Instead of assuming that
How COVID-19 is Bringing Inequality to the Forefront For the past few weeks, one image has been recurring in my mind. I keep picturing the living conditions of a student whose home I visited a few times when I was working as a community school coordinator in Baltimore. This student had struggled at other schools but was thriving at ours.
Adapting for Improvement in Light of COVID-19 I naively said to my family a few weeks ago that I was lucky that my business wouldn’t be affected in the way that so many restaurants and other small businesses are by the pandemic. I couldn’t see then, but it has become incredibly clear since that every business and every industry have
Resolving Data Fears in Evaluation I had some great conversations this week with colleagues about establishing a culture of data in organizations and training organizations who are new to evaluation and data. These conversations reminded me about one of my favorite old blog posts, that I originally wrote for the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) in 2017. Given
