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EDUCATION
A
study led by George Kuh, an
Indiana
University professor,
reports the top 20 colleges that create a campus culture
to foster student success. The study cautions that it is
not a study that ranks colleges, as in the case of those
published by U.S. News & World Report or
Kiplingers.
Instead, it is an effort to highlight the
promising practices of diverse institutions that do a
good job of educating, supporting and engaging their
students, while having above-average graduation rates. A
few years ago, the research for this study received
significant funding from the Lumina Foundation for
Education to help colleges and university use its
findings to spark improvements on campuses. Click here
for a USA
Today article on the findings. For more information
on the Lumina Foundation for Education grant, click
here.
No
Child Left Behind has been the subject of attention and
debate again, especially with state
legislators, civil rights groups, and educators. In April,
Utah
passed a bill that allowed
Utah
schools to ignore the NCLB law if its mandates conflict
with state priorities or require state funds to meet
NCLB requirements.
This decision was followed by the National
Education Association (NEA), with
Texas,
Michigan,
and Vermont
school districts, filing suit against the federal
government with the claim that NCLB is underfunded. Several other
states have similar movements underway. According to a
recent article in Education Week, major civil rights
groups are split over No Child Left Behind. Most agreed with
the goals to close the widening achievement gaps between
white students and students of color, Education Week
reports. However, there is a raging debate about the
accountability provisions, creating tension between
groups accustomed to working together. To read recent
articles about the NCLB debate, see an Education
Week article or additional coverage here. |
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FOSTER CARE
A
new study by the University of Alaska at
Anchorage
reported that state youth who have aged out of foster
care are mostly happy
, despite the
significant challenges they faced in their transitions
to adulthood.
The study found that its participants
lived in an average of 13 places while in public care.
Nearly 38 percent had been homeless since aging out of
foster care, and close to 30% had spent time in jail.
The study also reported that they earned high school
diplomas at the same rate as other Alaskan youth, but
fewer had college degrees. "They were not an embittered,
angry group of people that we talked to," said Beth
Sirles, one of the authors of the study. Recognizing that
their own childhoods were challenging, according to
Sirles, these alumni still looked forward to careers,
marriage and having children. Click
here.
In
August, The Detroit News reported that
Michigan
is making plans to improve its approach to foster care
to include more family input and to minimize disruption
for kids who fall into the system. According to the
MichiganDepartment of Human Services, the
new program, called the Family to Family Initiative,
seeks to keep foster kids rooted in their home
communities as much as possible, place them with family
members or close family friends and involve neutral
facilitators who will work with birth parents and social
workers to decide what's best for the
kids
. Information on
the Initiative is available by clicking
here. |
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JUVENILE
JUSTICE
The
St. Petersburg Times, in
Tampa,
FL, reports the recent trend of
fast-tracking
cases in
juvenile court in response to the growing number of
no-shows of youth appearing in court for trial in
Florida. This
fast-tracking has both its proponents and
critics. The
Office of the
State Attorney promotes it as
one of the few tools available to successfully prosecute
youth,
according to Patti Pieri, chief
of its juvenile division. Critics from the Office
of the Public Defender, however, often worry that
this fast-tracking does not allow enough time for
preparing cases. Click
here.
Following the
well-recognized Missouri Model, the
District
of Columbia
Mayor Anthony Williams announced new plans for
the Oak
Hill
Youth
Center
, the juvenile justice facility that is located
in Maryland. The District has
decided to build a new facility that features a smaller,
more home-like setting for incarcerated youth. It will also
make renovations to an older facility. The
Mayor will announce the budget, facility programming,
and expected launch in the near future. For more
information on the press conference, click
here. For
background information on efforts to restructure the
Oak
Hill
Youth
Center, go to www.justice4dcyouth.org, a
website of Justice 4 DC Youth, an advocacy coalition to
create a fair and effective youth justice
system.
According
to a nation-wide study of the National Legal Aid &
Defender Association, thousands of low-income people go
to jail each year without even having access to a
lawyer.
Findings from this survey suggested that legal
service programs in the
United
States
are often understaffed and they frequently fail to
properly investigate charges against their clients and
hire much-needed experts. Some defendants
have been forced to spend years in jail, just waiting to
go to trial.
USA Today recently reported this crisis in its
headline article on August
29, 2005. Click
here for the full story. For more information on the
challenges of legal defense for the nation’s most
vulnerable youth and adults, see the American Bar
Association study here
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At
the end of the summer, the Florida Institute for Girls
closed its doors, with the last young women leaving the
juvenile detention center. The Center,
which cost $7.9 million to build, was widely seen as a
failure in rehabilitating and keeping young women in the
program safe.
The Institute was first set up to receive violent
youth offenders.
However, judges also sent non-violent offenders
to the program.
Many were youth who had spent some time in the
foster care system. Click
here for coverage on the closing of the
Institute.
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YTFGMatters
At YTFG, we seek to bring
awareness around and encourage dialogue about the
cross-cutting issues that often have an impact on the
lives of our nation's most vulnerable youth. We
have a special interest in encouraging dialogue and action around engaging
youth in their own advocacy, confronting
racial disparities, collaborating across systems, and
highlighting successes in the field.
YOUTHINVOLVEMENTMatters.
In
Denver,
Colorado,
youth from Jovenes
Unidos, a youth advocacy organization, met
with School Superintendent Michael Bennet in late August
to discuss the findings from the widely publicized
report Education
on Lockdown - Ending the School to Jail Track. While meeting with the
youth, Superintendent Bennet agreed to work with
Jovenes Unidos
and other community organizations to
focus on discipline reform within Denver Public
Schools. An upcoming session
organized
by YTFG for the Grantmakers for Children, Youth
& Families (GCYF) Conference in September will feature
the work of Jovenes Unidos,
as well as the promising funding practices around this
issue. Click
here for a summary of Education on
Lockdown. For more
information on youth involved in the meeting, go to http://www.padresunidos.org/index.html. To learn about
the session at the GCYF conference, visit their website
at www.gcyf.org.
Innovations
in Civic Participation recently
released Pathways
to a New Future, a report that examines how service
and conservation corps are successfully engaging at-risk
youth in service projects that address critical needs in
the community. The study reports that civic
participation provides involved youth with education,
life skills development, and career preparation at the
same time.
In
Promises I Can
Keep: Why
Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage,
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas provide a sociological
assessment of why teenage women choose to be parents as
young women, sometimes waiting on or avoiding
marriage.
The study was performed over a five-year period,
and the research included interviews with over 150 young
single mothers in urban cities on the east coast. Recent critics
have suggested that the book may have implications and
serve as a must-read for policymakers attempting to
address teen pregnancies that often contribute to
dropping out of high school and limited access to solid
career opportunities. Click
here for an excerpt.
RACEMatters.
The
Advancement Project recently launched its web log at justdemocracyblog.org. The
blog is designed to give progressive voices an
up-to-the-moment way to share news, exchange views and
stay in touch. Visitors will be kept informed on
latest racial justice issues, including voting rights,
educational opportunities, immigrant rights, criminal
justice, economic justice and policing.
The
Joint
Center
for Political and Economic Studies recently
released A Mixed Record: How the Public Workforce
System Affects Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the
Labor Market
,
a study that examines how three of the
largest federal programs for workforce training and job placement
are affecting racial and ethnic
disparities in today's labor market. The study concludes that
the three programs have a mixed record with their impact on black
and Latino workers in particular. It also provides a set
of recommendations for making these systems work better
for all job seekers. Click
here for more info.
CROSS-SYSTEMMatters. In July, the U.S.
House Subcommittee on Select Education held a
hearing to examine federal youth development programs
that help disadvantaged youth develop skills for
successful adulthood. The hope is that
the hearing will help stimulate dialogue about
improvements to coordination across systems to make
youth-serving programs more efficient. This hearing was
part of recent efforts to launch the Federal Youth
Coordination Act, bipartisan legislation drafted in
partnership with National Collaboration for Youth member
organizations earlier in the year. The Act establishes a
Federal Youth Development Council to improve
communication among federal agencies serving youth,
assess their needs, set goals for helping them, and
expand effective programs. Additionally, it would
provide grants to states to improve coordination of
youth programs. For more information on the hearing and
the Federal Youth Coordination Act, log on to http://www.youthcoordinationact.org/nydic/policy/fyca.htm. |
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SUCCESSMatters.
Youth advocates had some major successes
this summer with the release of best practices report
and coordinated efforts to improve policies affecting
youth at risk of being disconnected from supports.
Here are some highlights:
For the first time in national history, 47
state governors and 12 national organizations
reached a common definition about high school graduation
rates, signing on to Graduation Counts:
A Compact on State High School Graduation Data in
July.
According to a press release from the National
Governors Association, those
who signed on agreed to implement the following
recommendations:
- begin
implementing a standard four-year adjusted cohort
graduation rate;
- lead
efforts to improve state data collection, reporting
and analysis, and link data systems across the entire
education pipeline from preschool through
postsecondary education;
- take
steps to implement additional indicators that provide
richer information and understanding about outcomes
for students and how well the system is serving them;
and
- report
annual progress on the improvement of their state high
school graduation, completion and dropout rate data.
For
more information on the report, go to the News Room at
www.nga.org.
The
RAND Corporation just released a report that
examines the relationship between recent
California initiatives concerning court-involved and
other vulnerable youth and the decrease in incarceration
and offenses. The
implementation of five major state initiatives has been
concomitant with a decrease in juvenile arrests,
juvenile incarcerations, and teen pregnancies. Although the
correlation is not definitive, the study provides an
important analysis of the cause and effect of focused
attention on the needs of vulnerable youth. Click
here for the
report. |
If you are a
funder interested in connecting your grantees to the lessons
learned, new initiatives, and successes of other youth-serving
nonprofits in the field, YTFG encourages you to have your
grantees sign up for the Connect for Kids newsletter by
emailing
jan@connectforkids.org. |
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SPOTLIGHT ON
FUNDERS
The Annie E. Casey
Foundation recently
released the new national Kids Count report in July
2005.
The report
shows national and state-by-state changes in key
indicators of child
well-being. Kids
Count reports that the percent of 16-19-year-olds who
are high school
dropouts, the teen birth rate, and the child death
rate were the only
three indicators of child well-being that showed
improvement
nationwide in the early years of this decade. Read
More>>
Ford Motor
Company Fund, the philanthropic arm of
Ford Motor
Company, is awarding more than $200,000 over two
years to The
University of Texas at
San
Antonio to implement a rigorous, standards-based
high school program.
Read
more>>
The Nevada Community Foundation (NCF), a member
of Coalition of Community Foundations for
Youth, recently helped publish a handbook for
young adults leaving
the foster care system, called
Into the World: A Life Book. Bret Bicoy, President of thefoundation,
said the handbook was one of the ideas of a Foster Care
Youth Task Force
convened by
the foundation to examine
issues foster
youth face as they transition into adulthood. Read
more>>
In
November, Casey Family
Programs, Jim Casey
Youth & Opportunities Initiative and The Annie E.
Casey Foundation will sponsor the It Is My Life
conference in Baltimore , Maryland. The conference
is planned
by and for
foster youth and alumni of foster care,
and is
based on a youth-centered framework that
helps youth
who are transitioning out of foster
care. The conference
is scheduled for November
14 –
15. For
more information, click here.
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YTFG
CALENDAR
Connect for
Kids Tele- Conference discussion on Sept.
14 about Juvenile Justice at 4pm EST. Contact Jan
Richter at jan@connectforkids.org
.
The
William T. Grant Foundation
has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to
support research on how to improve youth-serving
orgs. Deadline: October 17. Read
more>>
Juvenile
Law Center
seeks submissions for a national symposium on how the
law can be used to improve the lives of teens aging out
of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as
well as how developmental and scientific research on
adolescence can, or should, be used to advance policy
and practice with respect to youth in these
systems. The deadline for submitting a proposal
has been extended to Friday,
September 16, 2005.
Read
More>> |
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The YTFG Action Group Convening is
scheduled for November 15 through 17, 2005, in Washington,
D.C. Please contact Lisa McGill at lmcgill@ytfg.org if you
are an action group member and need more
information.
Are you a grantmaker interested in being an
action group member of YTFG? Materials for
prospective members are available upon request.
Contact memberservices@ytfg.org,
or be in touch with members of the YTFG steering
committee and work group
co-chairs. |
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Hurricane Katrina
& Vulnerable Youth
As reported
by the National PTA, Education
Secretary
Margaret Spellings sent a letter
last week
to chief state school officers to inform them
that the department will immediately consider
requests to waive certain No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) requirements as part of the Hurricane
Katrina relief effort. The department will
consider waiving, among others, the requirement
that state
education departments fund education at no less
than 90 percent of the level of the previous
year. The
department will also evaluate what flexibility
is
appropriate for affected states and districts in
meeting the
NCLB highly qualified teacher requirements.
For more
information on what requirements may be waived or
modified, click
here.
Several
organizations with a focus on
adoption
and foster care have posted
information
on their websites in response to
the
number of youth who were displaced by
Hurricane
Katrina.
The National
Resource
Center
for Family Centered Practice and Permanency
Planning (NRCFCPPP) has a useful
clearinghouse
of resources as a first step to help those
interested in helping learn about where to
go in their own communities. Click
here
to go to its website. For a special report
on
children and youth displaced by the Hurricane
Katrina,
the September
19th issue of Newsweek in
its Special Report might be of interest.
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