In London, Diversity and a Great School System Go Hand in Hand (And Other News to Chew On)
YES! illustration by Jennifer Luxton.
Why you can trust us
Welcome to The Crunch, our weekly roundup of stories from around the web; like reading the news while chomping on granola. Here’s what we’ve been chewing on lately.
To prevent rape, start with the boys
Rape prevention focuses on empowering women and girls, teaching self-defense, and ways to prevent dangerous situations. But one group decided to ask what should be an obvious question: How can we stop men from committing rape to begin with? An anti-rape curriculum in Kenya shows that educating boys alongside girls has real effects. (via Upworthy)
The White House wants you to know the cost of your education
The White House on Saturday unveiled a website that does not attempt to rate schools with any kind of grade, but provides information to prospective students and their parents about annual costs, graduation rates, and salaries after graduation. Information like that should help savvy students avoid debt traps. (via U.S. Department of Education)
The digital, black intelligentsia
In the past, black intellectuals came from Ivy League schools. They were elite. Nowadays, “Black Twitter” and the like has sparked a new black digital intelligentsia. These aren’t black men and women with academic backgrounds. They’re just black men and women with a voice—and they’re “changing American ideas.” (via New Republic)
What happens when schools take on the student loan struggle?
This investigative piece from ProPublica shows how some of the most profitable private universities in the United States leave low-income students with debts of more than $20,000. New York University in particular comes out looking bad. But there are solutions in here too! The piece goes on to show how Vassar and other schools are graduating poor students with less than half the half the average debt of the ones at NYU. (via ProPublica)
Big city, high test scores
If you look at London’s high concentration of low-income students, you’d expect to see lower educational outcomes. But they’ve managed to do what many major American cities haven’t: maintain diversity while boosting test scores. How did they do it? By paying their teachers well and revamping policy. (via CityLab)
Department of Justice commits millions to rape kit backlog
After a rape, the victim undergoes the process of collecting DNA in order to identify their assaulter. But too often, the rape kits sit untested. The Department of Justice has provided $81 million to help reduce the backlog, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch saying “No victim’s suffering should be extended one minute longer because of procedural issues.” (via Time)
All photos from Shutterstock.
