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Secondary Education

Kalamazoo Promise reaches a milestone, and faces a challenge

Kalamazoo Promise reaches a milestone, and faces a challenge

Laura Perna of the Graduate School of Education weighed in on programs like The Kalamazoo Promise, which guarantees college scholarships to public high school students. “We should be asking questions about whether the benefit is going to people who would have gone to college anyhow, even without the award,” she said. “We should also be asking questions about the extent to which the students who are getting the award have enough of the supports to actually complete whatever educational program they start.”

Obfuscating net price

Obfuscating net price

A study by the Graduate School of Education’s Laura Perna found that many colleges have failed to meet the federal standards for disclosing the net cost of student enrollment. Researchers identified “a pattern of findings relating to misleading presentation of information,” Perna said.

Prepping Philly high schoolers for college
student works in Penn Dental's simulation lab

Prepping Philly high schoolers for college

Rising 11th graders in the Provost Summer Mentorship Program at Penn spend a month on campus diving into the professional fields of dentistry, medicine, law, nursing, and engineering.

Lauren Hertzler

Learning while you earn in college

Learning while you earn in college

Laura Perna of the Graduate School of Education was quoted about the implausibility of working less than 15 hours per week while enrolled in college. “Most college students are now not only employed but also working a substantial number of hours, a fact not widely understood or discussed by faculty members and policy makers,” said Perna.

Questions abound after Trump threatens to strip funding from colleges that don’t support free speech

Questions abound after Trump threatens to strip funding from colleges that don’t support free speech

Sigal Ben-Porath of the Graduate School of Education said that a proposed executive order that would make funding for universities contingent on support for free speech may be “a blunt tool against … the wrong question.” A better question, she suggested, would be, “what is some work that we can do to make sure that [students] are heard, to make sure people consider diverse views?”

Physics on display
a metal tube with a line of flames coming out of the top and a blurred person posing in the background

A Rubens’ tube, which uses pressurized propane to bring sound waves to life with fire, was one of several demonstrations from the lights and waves winter physics show.

Physics on display

Hundreds of regional junior high and high school students visited Penn’s campus in early January to beat the winter blues—and reds—by watching physics demonstrations about lights and waves.

Erica K. Brockmeier

From snowflake students to outspoken professors: Why protecting campus speech matters

From snowflake students to outspoken professors: Why protecting campus speech matters

Sigal Ben-Porath of the Graduate School of Education and the School of Arts and Sciences penned an op-ed about free speech in academia. “The problem is that these institutions, protective of free speech as they tend to be, are beholden to outside stakeholders who do not always understand the role that open expression plays on campus and how it is used to promote the broader mission of higher education.”

Against endorsing the Chicago principles

Against endorsing the Chicago principles

The Graduate School of Education’s Sigal Ben-Porath wrote about the Chicago principles, which many institutions use as a guide to handling free-speech issues, and its shortcomings. The principles “rely on a legalistic and formal framework that purports to offer a response to a set of problems that has little use for such blunt tools,” she said.

Rate of births to white single moms accelerates, as low-income women wrest ‘beauty’ from hard lives

Rate of births to white single moms accelerates, as low-income women wrest ‘beauty’ from hard lives

The Graduate School of Education’s Rebecca Maynard said that middle- and upper-class women are taught that having kids before marriage can derail one’s college and career, which explains why higher-income women use contraception more consistently than lower-income women.