NYU Silver School of Social Work is accepting applications for all their academic programs. NYU Silver offers a variety of options to a Masters in Social Work including specific part-time curriculum designed for working professionals. The school has longstanding relationships with over 600 agencies in the tristate area including, NYC Department of Education, Children’s Aid Society, Partnership with Children, Educational Alliance, and many more. The deadline for Spring 2016 and Fall 2016 applications are October 2, 2015 and January 8, 2016, respectively. Drop-in on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11:00 am – 2:00 pm, email silver.admissions@nyu.edu, or call (212) 998-5910 to inquire about admissions, tuition reimbursement, and other scholarship options. Follow @NYUSilver.

The College Board has released the Expanding SAT® Fee-Waiver Access: Best Practices for Community-Based Organizations brief. The purpose of the brief is to support CBOs by recommending practices to maximize: distribution of SAT fee waivers to eligible students; student SAT and SAT Subject Test registration; and student test attendance. The tips and strategies are recommendations by active CBOs participating in the College Board’s SAT Fee-Waiver Program who provided feedback through an online survey and follow-up interviews.

A recent Child Trends report, Key Soft Skills that Foster Youth Workforce Success, looks at relationships between soft skills and four workplace outcomes: getting a job or being employed, performance on the job, wages, and entrepreneurial success. According to the report, there is strong evidence that the following five skills increase workforce success among youth ages 15 - 29: social skills; communication; and higher-order thinking skills (including problem solving, critical thinking, and decision-making); supported by the intrapersonal skills of self-control and positive self-concept. Youth who develop these key soft skills will be better able to effectively identify, use, and communicate their strengths, relate to others, make decisions to achieve their own goals, as well as contribute to their workplaces and communities. View the Executive Summary or the full report.

There is a growing body of knowledge about teaching and learning in informal learning environments such as museums, afterschool programs, and home settings. However, most educational research still takes place in classrooms, and much of this research is not easily accessible to educators working in informal settings. The Relating Research to Practice (RR2P) project attempts to make at least some of this large body of knowledge about STEM teaching and learning accessible to informal educators. To review the research, visit the RR2P website.