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Progress in getting underrepresented people into college and skilled jobs may be stalling because of the pandemic

The Hechinger Report

With schools mostly online, nearly one in four public school students in Detroit aren’t logging in or showing up , the superintendent says — many because they don’t have laptops or Wi-Fi. Experts say that this means dropout rates, which had been declining for more than a decade, will likely start to rise again.

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How one city closed the digital divide for nearly all its students

The Hechinger Report

Ramos would connect to the library’s Wi-Fi — sometimes on her cellphone, sometimes using her family’s only laptop — to complete assignments and submit essays or tests for her classes at Skyline High School. Ramos’ parents promised to buy her a laptop eventually, but bills mounted and it wasn’t in the family’s budget.

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How a Chinatown school is trying to bring more diversity to theater

The Hechinger Report

In the foreground, music teacher Ryan Olsen operates the sound on a laptop. Each year since, they have won numerous awards, including the trophy for Outstanding Production for the best overall elementary school performance three years in a row, from 2013 to 2015, and again in 2017. Photo: Eveline Chao for The Hechinger Report.

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A year of personalized learning: Mistakes, moving furniture and making it work

The Hechinger Report

District officials theorized that students’ disillusionment with the curriculum contributed to Vista High’s 10 percent dropout rate. For the 2017-18 school year, they broke up Vista’s freshman class of almost 700 students into six self-contained “houses.” points higher.

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As enrollment falls and colleges close, a surprising number of new ones are opening

The Hechinger Report

These are hot fields in a state with a growing tech sector that employs 12,140 people , but whose existing colleges and universities collectively produced only 103 computer science graduates with bachelor’s degrees or higher in 2017 — the last year for which the figures are available — including just 10 with master’s degrees.

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How do you manage college online — quarantined with eight people?

The Hechinger Report

He spent more than one morning at his family’s kitchen table, staring at his laptop, his thoughts frayed. Consuela Robinson, 35, returned to college in 2017 after dropping out more than a decade earlier, working two, sometimes three jobs to make ends meet.

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With no silver bullet, innovation abounds at this bilingual high school

The Hechinger Report

José Pinales, a 2017 graduate, credits the school’s band program with getting him off the streets and keeping him out of trouble. Ferneidi Pina Baez, a 2017 graduate, counts that as her favorite project of the year. José Pinales, 2017 graduate, Margarita Muñiz Academy. He said he turned himself around during his junior year.

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