Despite the growing popularity of WBL, the community college and workforce development fields need greater transparency and clarity on the design of these programs to broaden workforce pathways, ensure the transferability of exemplary program models, and support the advancement of equitable outcomes for all students, especially learners from…

Much attention has been focused on the importance of providing physical and mental health services to students in educational environments in recent years. Millions of students receive school-based health services, and for many students, schools are their first and only option to receive health care. State policymakers have a lot to consider in…

Introduction: In the USA, syringe services programmes (SSPs) provide a range of harm reduction services and have numerous benefits for communities. However, stigma, misconceptions about SSPs and changing policies/legislation remain a challenge to effective implementation. This study reviews the implementation of two digital interventions,…

The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by using multinomial logit analysis to compare trends…

In spring 2022, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (OET) committed to advancing digital equity through the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative. Through DEER, OET hosted a series of national conversations with leaders from community-based organizations, as well as families and learners furthest…

As American teacher educators and teachers are being roiled by restrictive legislation around critical race theory and divisive concepts in some states, our investigation explored the impact of critical communities of practice (CoP) on redesigning and teaching introduction to education courses with a transformative lens. This manuscript details…

The author graduated with an associate degree in liberal arts from Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Although he was one of over a thousand students to graduate that day, his situation was a little different than those of his peers. The author is a full-time faculty member at NECC with a Ph.D. in organic…

This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative (the Collaborative) report examines how faculty and staff at seven community colleges and two broad-access universities reconsidered students' online learning needs in the midst of the pandemic. The report focuses on a set of interconnected student mindsets and competencies that the authors…

This study examines the efforts of higher education systems in six states to implement large-scale changes to improve student outcomes in mathematics in community colleges and four-year colleges and universities as part of the Mathematics Pathways to Completion (MPC) project. The three-year project was launched in 2015 to help Arkansas,…

This two-page executive summary highlights primary points from the report, "Connecting Community College Students to SNAP: Lessons from States That Have Expanded SNAP Access and Minimized the 'Work for Food' Requirement." The report recommends two primary pathways state policymakers, education agencies, college administrators, and…

Within Massachusetts alone, 23,000 students are experiencing homelessness. And, with the expiration of COVID-era protections like an eviction moratorium and rental assistance, many experts predict that number will increase. Child and family homelessness is associated with a host of negative outcomes including poor physical and mental health, lower…

Most young people face challenges on the road to a college degree. They must make important decisions about career preparation, financing a college education, and how college and work fit together to ensure income security while in school. These challenges often seem particularly daunting for two groups of students: opportunity youth (OY)--the 5…

In the past, parents of children with disabilities have spearheaded several policies for individuals with disabilities. However, little is known about their experiences with legislators. To address this gap, focus groups and surveys about legislative advocacy were conducted with 127 parents of individuals with disabilities across four states. The…

The concept of reciprocity permeates the literature on campus-community partnership as a matter of principle, aspiration, and--ideally--best practice. More recently, principles and practices of sustainability have pervaded scholarly and popular discourse, emerging from and applying to environmental studies, economic development, and social justice…

Background/Context: In this essay, I propose a design research agenda that braids equity research and technology research in education. More specifically, I propose that researchers join educators, youth, families, and community partners in tackling a central challenge for education research today: figuring out how and when low-cost and…