Latest Edu-Reads

Beth Hawkins has your must-read of the week with the incredible true story of the Rosenwald schools. Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build more than 5,000 schools for black communities across the South. Researchers from the Federal Reserve “concluded that the Rosenwald schools significantly bolstered literacy, earnings and South-to-North migration among rural blacks.” Check out the full story here.

“Dallas ISD is in fact retaining its best teachers at rates above the state’s and the district’s retention rates before the implementation of TEI. Overall, the district has kept 93% of teachers rated “Proficient II” or above. The district has retained 100% of its master-level teachers.” That’s from an update on how Dallas is doing on retaining its best teachers.

Education Strategy Group has a new resource on how states can boost FAFSA completion rates.

InsideHigherEd reports on a new study finding that many programs at public and nonprofit colleges would also fail the “gainful employment” test.

A new brief by John V. Winters concludes, “Working in a locality where a greater share of the population has a college degree is correlated with higher wages and better employment outcomes even controlling for individuals’ own education and other characteristics. Studies based on various natural experiments suggest that this positive relationship is causal.” That is, education is not just a benefit to individuals, it also has wider societal benefits.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman