Three authors describe a collaboration between a Massachusetts college and a nearby prison, which leveraged the volunteer efforts of a college professor by including incarcerated men who assisted in Spanish language teaching inside and outside the classroom.

Induction and mentoring are widely considered in the United States and in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as a basic universal and critical intervention for a successful launch of new teachers. Based on an expanded set of survey data, this article focuses on how Jewish day schools offer professional…

Though scholars agree that professional development (PD) is a key mechanism for implementing education policies that call for teacher change, and that PD generally needs to be content-focused, active, collaborative, coherent, and sustained, the application of this framework has yielded mixed results. In this qualitative study, we employed…

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting financial crisis are forcing millions of students to reconsider their educational plans--a development that's likely to increase the number of students transferring among institutions in the years ahead. Affordable and close to home, community colleges in particular are now poised to attract more students…

This case study describes the Enough Abuse Campaign, a multidisciplinary, statewide effort to prevent child sexual abuse in Massachusetts. The study uses the Institute of Medicine's Framework for Collaborative Community Action on Health to provide a systematic description of the campaign's process of implementation, which includes: (a) developing…

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) developed the Adult Learner Leaders for Institutional Effectiveness (ALLIES) Framework to help guide institutional policies and practices in their work to support adult learners. This document begins by describing the Framework's series of planning and operational domains through which…

The goal of equal educational opportunity remains unrealized at most of America's colleges. The children of wealth and privilege fill nearly all the seats at these institutions, while the children of poverty are almost completely absent. Far too often, a young person's educational path is determined not by intellect, but by parental income. That a…

This qualitative study illustrates how complex perceptions of identity influence the community college experience for student veterans who have been in combat, creating barriers to their overall persistence. The collective experiences of student combat veterans at two community colleges in northwestern Massachusetts are presented, and a Combat…

Despite largely mixed reports about the impact of School Improvement Grants (SIGs) on school improvement nationwide, Massachusetts has experienced proven success with these grants, termed School Redesign Grants (SRGs) in Massachusetts, as evidenced by comparative interrupted time series analyses, which show that SRGs have a significant impact on…

Community college students face a number of financial decisions and obligations along the path to degree completion. Students must secure resources to pay for college expenses, including their tuition, fees, and basic living necessities. Central to this is students' abilities to access financial aid resources including federal, state, and…

Some higher education leaders have suggested that colleges and universities could generate state support if they were more productively engaged in addressing societal needs. This multi-case study examines how community engagement is expressed and understood at institutions that vary in their expected levels of state appropriations. The findings…

Can simply talking about policy strengthen democracy? Drawing on data collected for case studies of one Canadian and two U.S. grassroots organizations, we demonstrate that taking part in policy dialogues hosted by grassroots organizations enables participants to gain greater clarity regarding policy issues, policy processes, and citizens'…

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students comprise the most rapidly expanding, and among the most educationally marginalized, group in the United States. CLD students' opportunities to learn are often diminished through service delivery models that are deficit-oriented, viewing linguistic diversity as a challenge to overcome, not a…

This paper identifies approaches, challenges, and best practices related to planning and designing today's academic library learning spaces. As part of the Project Information Literacy (PIL) Practitioner Series, qualitative data is presented from 49 interviews conducted with a sample of academic librarians, architects, and library consultants.…

Each year, the Rennie Center collects a set of key indicators in the Data Dashboard to provide context on the status of education in the Commonwealth. This data is collected from the MA Department of Early Education and Care; MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; MA Department of Higher Education; U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Department…