Texas is facing a potential $4 billion slash in school funding, which brought protestors to the State Capitol in Austin on Saturday.  But public education cuts are one thing that may not be bigger in Texas.  In California, general fund spending for K-12 schools dropped $9.4 billion over the past two years. Administrators are searching high and low for places to cut and areas where they can increase effectiveness for the same money or less.  In many cases, education technology is one piece of the puzzle.

Does this sound familiar?

• Data is not accessible – only a small group of people know what’s there, how to get to it and what to do with it.
• Data is siloed, and how/where it’s stored (index card?) varies greatly across the institution
• Strategic decisions are sometimes 100% not strategic, like a 15% across-the-board budget cut
• Everybody (and nobody) wants to own the data

Only 18% of today’s ninth-graders will eventually graduate with a postsecondary degree.  To help mitigate this impending crisis, Blackboard clients and contacts across the globe are implementing innovative policies and practices to close the gap between high school and college.  And in true educator fashion, they allowed us to share their greatest challenges and opportunities with you in Closing the Gap between High School and College – the newest publication in Blackboard’s growing body of practice-driven research.

For the report, we interviewed 24 education experts and leaders to pinpoint the three key challenges to closing the achievement gap: disparity between high school exit requirements and college entry expectations; lack of understanding and support for the modern student; and disconnect between skills being taught in high school and skills necessary for success in college and career.

At the Blackboard Institute, our mission is simple: help education leaders at all levels improve student progression. By partnering with a community of education visionaries, we can gain valuable insight and create a collaborative environment for identifying actionable solutions to tough education challenges.

The Institute provides a forum for leaders to come together and discuss scalable solutions that are working to increase graduation rates around the world.  And, together, we take on research projects that illuminate programs and policies at work right now to help more students progress through higher education.  You can find research into dual enrollment and effective online programs – and multiple publications that bear our trademark user-friendly approach – on our website. 

At the Blackboard Institute, we’re committed to improving student progression with actionable guidance drawn from Blackboard’s proximity to a large body of practice at all levels.  Our friends in both K-12 and higher education told us that dual enrollment – high school students taking college credits that count toward a diploma and degree – is an impactful and feasible way to improve student progression.  We took their advice to heart and started out on a year-long research project to share best practices for implementing and strengthening online dual enrollment programs.  To us, online is an underexplored and lower-cost medium for supplying dual enrollment classes to all students.  We’re about halfway to our goal of pulling together practice-driven guidance for the time- and resource-pressed educators we hear from each day – so they can do more for the students least likely to complete college.  Former superintendent Dr. Mary Bull – who’s worked closely with at-risk students – joined us in Columbus, OH to present the first stage of that research.  Here, Mary shares what we learned so far.  If you’re interested in more information, email us here!