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Can a student’s choice of college lift them out of poverty? John Friedman, an associate professor of economics and of international and public affairs, took on a massive statistical analysis to discern trends in access to colleges for low-income students. He and   colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity Project identified the schools that move the most low-income students up the economic ladder.

Friedman and the research team looked at 30 million students, using data that included family incomes in students’ teenage years, as well as statistics on the earnings of those graduates who have reached their early 30s. Students from divergent economic backgrounds who graduate from the same universities, he said, can achieve similar economic status later in life. With so much data, the study created a foundation for the development of policies that might increase access and mobility in a way that takes into account the specific characteristics of a place or higher education institution.

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Why did the federal study show no significant gains? We believe that the study’s “statistical power” was so weak that the student performance gains in SIG schools “would have had to be unrealistically large for the study to have been able to detect them,” in the words of Brown University researcher Susanna Loeb. Moreover, the sample of about 190 schools was not nationally representative, so the results can’t be generalized to the nation. And the states they reviewed had widely varying processes for awarding and administering the grants, introducing a lot of static that can drown out positive findings.

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The Rhode Island Foundation has convened a group of education leaders and other stakeholders to craft a 10-year strategic vision for improving the state’s struggling public schools.

The foundation’s decision to create a Long-term Education Planning Committee was made before standardized test results released last week showed Rhode Island’s students trailing far behind their neighbors in Massachusetts, but president Neil Steinberg said he’s hopeful the woeful scores will create a sense of urgency for members of the group.

.@SusannaLoeb and @HarryBrighouse1 join @ProfMartyWest to discuss how the tools of philosophy and social science can help #policymakers make better decisions https://t.co/ziOhcanTZw

— Annenberg Institute at Brown (@AnnenbergInst) October 11, 2018

Celebrate World Teachers’ Day with these 9 facts about educators https://t.co/q0fmbPL4F2

— Annenberg Institute at Brown (@AnnenbergInst) October 7, 2018

Susanna Loeb, an expert in education policy and a professor of education at Stanford University, has been appointed the next director of Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Loeb will join the institute in the wake of “The Annenberg Institute: A Road Map,” a January 2017 plan that refocused its mission and added strength to its capacity to serve the community, the region and the nation as a leading hub for social science scholarship related to education. “Susanna joins the Brown community and Annenberg Institute at a moment of extraordinary opportunity,” University Provost Richard Locke wrote in an Aug. 28 email announcing Loeb’s appointment. “She is a distinguished scholar and collaborative academic and administrative leader who brings to this role a depth of understanding about the application of research to affect policy development and change.”

'A place of belonging' Andrea Flores, an anthropologist who's studied how undocumented status affects a student's experience in obtaining a higher education, says these private universities are filling in a gap left by public institutions and government. "That sense of belonging to a civic institution from K to 12 is gone," said Flores. "Private schools provide a place of belonging again." Public education is available to all children in the United States, regardless of their legal status. That stops in 12th grade.