How a Short Task in Middle School Puts Latinos on a Path to College


latino school boy desk class student

A simple assignment has the power to sharply increase Latino middle-schoolers' chances of getting to college, researchers have found. The assignment? Write essays about your core values and why they are important to you. For the past few years, Stanford University-led researchers followed 81 Latino, 158 black, and control students in middle schools who wrote these types of essays—which can provide "self-affirmation," reinforce adequacy, and add resilience, John Timmer reports in Ars Tecnica. Researchers then compared these essay writers to other students who wrote on neutral topics, like their afternoon routine. For Latinos, the self-affirmation essay writers cut their risk in half of ending up on the remedial track, and they were more than twice as likely to end up ...

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Four States Targeted to Enroll Uninsured



With next phase of open enrollment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) scheduled to take place from November 1 through January 31, and the current administration is focusing efforts to expand health coverage to the uninsured in Dallas, Houston, New Jersey, Chicago, and Miami. “Overall, this open enrollment period is going to be tougher than last year,” said Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services. “With our economy improving, more people can get coverage under employer plans.” While many have taken advantage of enrollment already, the administration will focus on 10.5 million uninsured Americans who were eligible through the public insurance exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office predicted in March of this year that enrollment through the exchanges would ...

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