Blog

Decoration

Stay up-to-date with the latest social-capital expert analysis, interviews, and insights grounded in current events and real-time fieldwork.

internships

Don’t just pay interns, help them build networks

Summer internships are a proven gateway to jobs. But that gateway is not equally open to students from different backgrounds. Low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students’ internship participation rates lag behind those of their wealthier, white peers. Moreover, access to paid internships, which are associated with long-term wage premiums, remains uneven along lines of race and class. Any organization with an internship program […]

Connection over content: A new era for education technology

The pandemic cast education technology (edtech) into a starring — and some might argue above-its-paygrade — role in education. For many students and overwhelmed parents, virtual learning became synonymous with isolation. Algorithms and Zoom rooms were meager surrogates for authentic connection. Students’ relationships with faculty and friends in the classroom, not to mention chance encounters […]

school data

Why better data on students’ networks can start the school year off right

Back to school means back to building relationships. Across high school campuses this fall, the first weeks of class will be marked by new rosters, ice breakers, hopes and dreams conferences, and the like as teachers set out to get to know their students and to help students get to know one another. But before schools set […]

economic mobility

Schools that aren’t measuring students’ relationships are leaving their economic mobility to chance

Measuring students’ access to networks of support can inform data-driven strategies for opening doors to economic mobility.

Do you know who your students know? Here’s why you should.

Students exist in an ecology of relationships far beyond the four walls of their school

Invigorating the youthforce: Mentorship, social capital, and work-based learning

This virtual ASU+GSV session makes transparent the importance of students’ social capital and what it will take to scale relationships.

Taking “navigation and guidance” to church

Supporting students to and through college equitably amounts to more than a checklist of short-term fixes and nudges.

student wellbeing

No, the kids aren’t okay. Here are four social supports that can make a difference.

Research lays out four social support considerations educators can leverage toward students’ wellbeing.

What will it take for education’s most promising innovations to scale?

Scaling education innovations requires access to peer data and democratizing access to evidence

edtech connections

Edtech’s lasting value as the pandemic continues

Edtech can supplement face-to-face connections with other relationships otherwise out of reach for students.

3 lessons from parent surveys over 3 years that should guide family engagement in 2022

Parent surveys reveal notable shifts and lessons to guide family engagement in schools

college dreams

The pandemic has dashed and deferred too many college dreams

Amid the pandemic, an unprecedented number of high school grads are putting their college dreams on hold—a troubling trend that could have long-term consequences.

2022 trends

5 education innovation trends worth watching in 2022

Even amidst the exhausting toll the pandemic has taken on the education system, a host of innovative approaches to teaching, learning, and launching students into good careers could blossom as 2022 trends.

inclusive family engagement

Why schools can’t talk about family engagement without talking about race

For inclusive family engagement, schools need to create structures that deliberately leverage and involve all families.

summer

Don’t cancel summer, reinvent it

How programs are reimagining summer as a critical chance to put equitable access and family agency front and center during social distancing.

Don’t stop with broadband—build an infrastructure for supporting students

Wi-Fi is but one of many out-of-school factors that shape academic success.

work programs

As cities axe summer youth work programs, here are alternatives to consider

Even in an era of social distancing and dwindling coffers, young people can—and should—still get the chance to participate in the world of work.

How workforce programs can fight isolation—even amidst social distancing and layoffs

If workforce programs start focusing on social capital today, young people can emerge from quarantine with opportunities in hand.

Social connections matter now more than ever. Here’s how schools can prioritize them.

Education systems need to triage a social crisis, not just an academic one.

urban street Cityblock Health

Don’t discount the power of students’ acquaintances to expand supports and horizons

Research shows why the ‘strength of weak ties’ in students’ lives should not go ignored.