The Connected by 25 Blog

It's All About Talent

2012-02-01T09:40:00.000-06:00

From Achieve Mission's website

There is a great new resource out there for nonprofits that are aggressively strengthening their organizations. Achieve Mission's Talent Initiative has released a new RFP to help innovative nonprofits address key issues of talent, leadership, diversity, management, training, culture, and strategic human capital. Talent Initiative is focused on high-impact, mid-size ($2–50M) nonprofits that have defined plans for significant organizational growth and/or strategic change, and whose leaders recognize the pivotal role that human capital issues will play in determining the success of those plans.

Past winners include: Admission Possible, Breakthrough Collaborative, BUILD, Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), Corporation for Supportive Housing, GreatSchools, Harlem RBI, Level Playing Field Institute, Peer Health Exchange, Rhode Island Foundation and Root Capital.

There are webinars organized for Feb 2nd from 2-3PM ET and Feb 13th from 1-2PM ET. For additional information, or to RSVP for a webinar, click here.

Proposals are due in about a month on February 29, 2012..so you'll need to get busy.

Educational Diamond in the Bronx

2012-02-01T09:16:00.000-06:00

From CUNY Prep website

Andrew Moore from the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families at the National League of Cities shares his insights from a site visit to CUNY Prep in his post Educational Diamond in the Bronx. He points out that CUNY Prep is a great example of the Back on Track design as outlined by Jobs for the Future: enriched preparation, postsecondary bridging, and supports during the first year in college and beyond

Notably, with a few years’ experience under its belt, CUNY Prep now operates its own variant of the three-phase model. In an initial three-month cycle, students prepare to take the GED in classes taught at a college level. Once they pass the test – often with months to go before the beginning of the semester at one of CUNY’s six community colleges — students enter a College Transition Academy (CTA). CTA provides classes to start earning credits, as well as catch-up classes to eliminate the need for remediation. CTA’s director tells students, “give us six months, and we’ll save you $3,000” – the fees students would otherwise pay, or charge against financial aid, for remedial classes. Upon admission to college, students gain access to the College Success Network, which includes two on-site college success coaches and a job program to support students’ financial needs. Of the first 100 students benefiting from CTA, nearly half have persisted through the first year of college classes.

I visited CUNY prep ages and ages ago...and it was already a beacon, pointing us in the direction that our field had to go. While some alternative schools are still stuck in digital worksheets others are stretching our understanding of what we can do and what our young people can do. There are a handful of schools across the country that are pulling this off...and we need to take a hard look about how to refine policy to support them. They also promise to be the best place to understand how our high schools need to be redesigned around youth development practices, accelerated learning and transitional supports.

JFF has put together a great website with resources to get students ... Back on Track.

New Report: Policing Chicago Public Schools

2012-01-27T11:26:00.000-06:00

[The following post originally appeared January 25, 2012, on Reclaiming Futures. It is another great example of how data is being used effectively to raise the damaging intersection between our education and juvenile justice systems.]

New Report: Policing Chicago Public Schools
by MARIAME KABA

“Our schools have become almost like satellite police stations.” – Steve Drizin (1)

Project NIA is pleased to announce the release of a new report titled “Policing Chicago Public Schools: A Gateway to the School-to-Pipeline.” The report relies on data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to show (for the first time in seven years) the type of offenses and the demographics (gender, age and race) of the juveniles arrested on Chicago Public Schools properties in calendar year 2010. We were limited because CPD reports data by police district rather than by individual school.

In the 2003-2004 academic year, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had about 1,700 security staff, nearly tripling in number in five years (2). We were unable to obtain the current number of security guards in CPS despite repeated requests. We are sure that this number exceeds the 1,700 from the 2003-2004 academic year. The presence of so many security staff and especially police officers in schools means that school discipline issues quickly turn into police records.

In our discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline, we need concrete examples of how the process works. As such, it is important to understand the role that police and security staff play in our schools. Yet reports about police involvement in CPS have unfortunately not been readily available to the public. There is no easily accessible citywide or statewide data that illustrate how many students are arrested in schools each year. The last report that was written about the role of police in Chicago Public Schools was published in 2005 by the Advancement Project. That report, “Education on Lockdown,” found that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) referred over 8,000 students to law enforcement in 2003. Forty percent of these referrals were for simple assault or battery with no serious injuries. Most of these cases were dismissed (3).

Our purpose in writing this report was to ensure that the public is informed about the scope and extent of policing in Chicago Public Schools. We hope that this will galvanize educators, parents, students, policymakers and community members to advocate for a dramatic decrease of CPS’s reliance on law enforcement to address school discipline issues. Instead, we would like to see an increase in the use of restorative justice, which is an effective approach, to respond to student misbehavior in our schools.

In light of a push for budget austerity, limited resources should be re-directed away from policing and into affirming programs and opportunities for students. This, we believe, will improve the overall well-being of all stakeholders in the educational system (most especially students). We also call on our city council to improve data transparency by passing an ordinance requiring CPS and CPD to report quarterly on the numbers of students arrested in the district. Having timely and reliable information will support efforts to hold CPS and CPD accountable. Finally, we believe that student privacy should be protected rather than further eroded. Current reporting practices between schools and law enforcement do not need to be reformed to increase the exchange of student information between these parties.

The key data points in the report are that:

Too many young people are still being arrested on CPS properties. Over 5,500 arrests of young people under 18 years old took place on CPS properties in 2010. If we include those between 18 and 20 years old, the number increases to over 6,100 arrests.
Black youth are disproportionately targeted by these arrests. While they represent 45% of CPS students, black youth account for 74% percent of juvenile school-based arrests. This mirrors the general trend of disproportionate minority contact within the juvenile legal system. For example, while they comprise only 34% of youth ages 5 to 17 in the city of Chicago, African American youth accounted for 76% of citywide juvenile arrests (youth 17 and under) in 2010.
Young men are much more likely to be arrested on CPS properties than are their female counterparts [73% vs. 27%].
Male youth under 21 years old are most often arrested on CPS property for simple battery followed by drug abuse violations and disorderly conduct. Females under 21 are most often arrested for simple battery, disorderly conduct and miscellaneous non-index offenses. Nearly a third (27%) of school-based arrest offenses on CPS property are simple battery. This suggests that a significant number of CPS students are probably being arrested for fighting.
Certain police districts are more likely to arrest youth in schools than others. In particular, the highest aggregate (4) numbers of juvenile school-based arrests are in the 4th, 6th, 8th, 22nd, and 5th police districts. Together these five districts account for 39% of total juvenile school-based arrests on CPS properties.

1. Quote by Steve Drizin, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University http://cwcy.org/resources/396_attach_Taking%20a%20hard%20look%20at%20police%20in%20schools%20by%20Tony%20Mauro%202.9.11.pdf
2. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The schoolhouse to jailhouse track. (Washington, DC:
Advancement Project, 2005). http://www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/education-on-lockdown-the-schoolhouse-to-jailhouse-track
3. Ibid
4. We wish that we could compare arrest rates per district but we cannot access total numbers of youth in each district in order to do those calculations. Arrest rates would tell us more about whether certain districts are disproportionately targeting youth for school-based arrests.

Mariame Kaba is the founding director of Project NIA. She is an educator, organizer, and writer who lives in Chicago. Her work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex and supporting youth leadership development. Mariame was a program officer for education and youth development at the Steans Family Foundation from 2004-2009. She has also been a consultant helping organizations to develop their evaluation capacity. Mariame is a published author, curriculum developer, and has served on numerous nonprofit boards.

Do All Reforms Lead to Learning?

2012-01-26T08:25:00.001-06:00

From Denver Post website

Is trying to do better by our children enough? I was struck by a juxtaposition of two reform ideas that bubbled in the news over the past week.

In Denver, two middle schools will be offering college-level remedial math as a class. If the students pass, their transcripts will show that they have completed the course and can go on to regular math courses. The class is competency-based in that students get more time if they need it to become proficient.
In Taos, NM the math department is asking the school board to approve changes to the curriculum, phasing out algebra 1 and 2 and geometry classes. They want to better prepare their students for life after high school...60% of them go into the workforce. So they want to drop algebra and geometry and replace with statistics, applied math and financial literacy.

In each of these cities, math teachers are trying to do better for their kids, exploring ways to create better opportunities. Yet the Denver approach stands out as a meaningful reform and the Taos strategy seems like it would only lead to lower motivation, lower graduation, and less students having a chance to get the skills they need to get family-wage jobs.

There are lots of places to point your finger at when it comes down to why our education system isn't producing better results, helping more of our children to learn and to graduate. Yet in looking at these two reforms, I don't think finger pointing will help. Bottom line it comes down to four questions:

Do we believe that....

Our children can learn and can graduate?
Our children want to learn and graduate?
Our children should have options upon graduation to mix work and the pursuit of further education and training?
We (adults) can figure out a way to make sure our children, all of them, are career and college ready?

I don't mean these to be rhetorical questions...we all carry doubts or questions inside our heads about what is really viable. We read in the news about how important early childhood development is...does this mean that children who don't get high quality child care will never be smart enough to go to college? Should we spend resources on college-readiness when we know some young people simply won't want to spend another minute in a classroom once they leave high school. Is the structure of school boards ever going to produce the sustained leadership needed to keep a district on the track of reform?

The folks in Taos clearly want to do better by their children. Yet, they aren't acting in a way to help our children be prepared to have choices upon graduation (question #3) to pursue more training or education.

This is why data is so important. Communities will be testing out all sorts of ideas about how to improve education. We need to keep an eye on the data to see if it is helping. If not...we've got to go back to the drawing board.

The Burning Point of Change

2012-01-20T11:34:00.001-06:00

Sometimes like I feel like we are at that moment when the tide starts to turn, big waves coming in crashing in to the tidal forces going out. When you stand at that one point in the water, you get hit by forces coming from both sides, and for a moment you are blinded by water from all sides.

One set of tidal crashes is between between national drive to improve college readiness with the savage rip tide of the youth unemployment crisis that drags teens, communities and our economic strength downwards. I continue to be shocked that many of the advocates for "college for all" fail to grasp the idea that the motivation for college comes directly from the goal to have income. Teens have to have develop an identity around their future in the economy...and that comes from experience and exploration.

We have been very successful in strengthening our effectiveness by working together along a common set of objectives, themes, and reinforcing policy frameworks. Is it time for us to shape a stronger set of positive goals and frameworks to guide local, state and federal policy to keep young people connected to education AND the workforce? Can we figure out a way to flip the policy dialogue from college and career ready to career and college ready in which the role of career development and work experience is front and center as a component of college readiness?

Or should we use the simmering fear of revolts and riots. Dave Jones, a powerful advocate for youth, clearly thinks we need to talk about what might happen if we don't pay attention to punitive policies and practices. He describes the current "stop and frisk" policies in NYC as "inflaming" civil disturbances:

The outlook for improved employment opportunities for black and Latino young men is increasingly bleak for the foreseeable future. Particularly for young men in the South Bronx, Harlem, Bed-Stuy, and Brownsville, without a high school diploma or skills, many will never find full-time work without a significant government investment in training and job development. Now isn't the time to inflame an already desperate condition with police practices that are likely to further embitter those who are facing a possible lifetime without hope.

What do you think? Will raising the possibility of our young people taking to the streets be enough to swing the policy agenda in a positive way. Or does it undermine our work, suggesting that young people are trouble and not worth the investment?

Are we getting close to the tipping point, or perhaps I should say "burning point" which our young people scream out "enough"? If so we need to be ready with a package of messages and policies while we wait for the day when our young people can't bear the pressure, the hopelessness, the fear one minute longer.

Got Re-engagement?

2012-01-17T16:40:00.000-06:00

School District of Philadelphia

National League of Cities, Institute for Youth, Education and Families is sponsoring a webinar "Re-engagement Centers: Key Element in a City Strategy to Recovery Dropouts" on January 31st.

Cities such as Boston, Mass., Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., Omaha, Neb., and Des Moines, Iowa, have established one-stop "re-engagement centers" to connect struggling high school students - including those who have already dropped out - with credit recovery, tutoring, child care, and other services that help them reenroll and graduate from high school or complete an alternative education program leading to a diploma or GED.

On Tues., Jan. 31, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, the YEF Institute will host a free, hour-long webinar on "Reengagement Centers: Key Element in a City Strategy to Recover Dropouts." Listeners will have the opportunity to learn more about this approach by participating in an interactive discussion with municipal leaders and staff who have created reengagement centers in their cities. The YEF Institute has also announced its monthly and webinar schedule for the first half of 2012.

Re-engagement centers are critical to support all of our most vulnerable youth -- young people who are homeless, couch surfing, bumping from foster care placements, transitioning back from detention, returning after having a child or caring for family members, or have to work so much that our rigid school schedules become an impediment to learning. Make sure your community has one. If not, send this blog to the mayor, council leadership, school board and chamber of commerce. Only cities with re-engagement centers are going to be able to be prepared to address the growing youth unemployment crisis. There is no better time than right now to put one in place to help students get back into school, into the workplace, and get they help they need.

Remember, when you are helping young adults it is a two-for-one strategy as it helps address the early childhood needs of our newest generation as well!

Instructions for Registering:

To register, you must have an account on myNLC. Go to the myNLC page and click Create Account. Enter your email address and click Search.

If you are already in our database, an email will be sent to you asking you to set your password. Once you have set your password, hit Go on the login page. Then click Upcoming Events on the top left side of the screen, select the webinar, and click Begin Registration.

If you are not in our database, try searching by city and organization, and if you still do not appear in the system, create a new login account with the appropriate city or organizational affiliation. An email will be sent asking you to set your password. Once you have set your password, hit Go on the login page. Then click Upcoming Events on the top left side of the screen, select the webinar, and click Begin Registration.

On the Event Registration screen, check the box for Member or Nonmember Webinar Registration Fee (don't worry, it's free). Then click Add to Cart at the bottom right.

Click the Check-Out button. Then click the Continue button. Click Submit Order.

You will receive a confirmation email with instructions for how to access the webinar by logging in to myNLC. There will be no dial-in number; you will only need to turn on your computer speakers.
Questions? Michael Karpman (202-626-3072, karpman@nlc.org) and Tim Mudd (202-626-3074, mudd@nlc.org) are standing by to walk you through the registration process step-by-step.

Call for Papers on Disparities in School Discipline

2012-01-13T09:46:00.001-06:00

I just received an email that the Center for Civil Rights Remedies (at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA), in collaboration with the Research-to-Practice Collaborative on Race and Gender Disparities in School Discipline, is seeking research papers that will inform school discipline policies at the district, state, and federal levels.

The Center for Civil Rights Remedies will accept approximately 15 research papers for presentation at a national conference on understanding and addressing race and gender disparities in school discipline, to be held in Washington D.C. in November or December of 2012. The national conference will be followed by a federal briefing for members of Congress and the publication of papers in an edited volume. Previous conference-related books include, “Racial Inequity in Special Education” and “Dropouts in America,” both Harvard Education Press publications. The ultimate goal of the papers is to foster policies and practices that will reduce schools’ reliance on suspension and expulsion to manage student behavior, with special attention to reducing disparities.

You can find the complete description of the project and the detailed call for papers, including submission requirements and honoraria here.

Proposals must be submitted electronically to the Center for Civil Rights Remedies by February 28, 2012. Submit your cover page, abstract and proposal to crp@ucla.edu, with a cc to losendan@gmail.com.

It's Time to Get Our Heads Out of the Sand

2012-01-12T12:01:00.000-06:00

It's not a secret any more.

Students are being pushed out of schoolthrough formal disciplinary policies as well as gentle kicks out the door intoa hodge podge of inadequate educational services. Invisible Students written by Laura McCargar for A Better Way Foundation andConnecticut Pushout Research and Organizing Project documents the dirty secrets of our educationalsystem. For anyone interested in the graduationcrisis, Invisible Studentsis a must read.

The report takes a deep look athow students are quietly being pushed out of school and into a second-classsystem of education. We all know that this has been happening in every districtacross the country. If a student is lucky they'll find one of those gemsof a teacher who will help them get back on track. More often that notthey are going to be falling into the blackhole of education.

McCargardescribes in detail how the secret pipeline operates.

The secret pipeline refers to themechanisms and strategies employed by school districts to remove students whopresent academic and behavioral challenges while circumventing due process andskirting accountability and responsibility for the educational outcomes ofthose students. Once funneled into this secret pipeline, some students neverreturn to school. Those that attempt to finish often find themselves inalternative or adult education programs which are often ill equipped to meetstudents’ needs, yield startlingly low completion rates, and risk acceleratingrather than curbing the flow of young people into the justice system. Gaps andloopholes in data collection and reporting mechanisms sustain the secretpipeline by rendering the experiences and outcomes of these students largelyinvisible.

Alternative education is not inherentlya problem. In fact we need to expand the alternatives for students whohistorically not received a college-ready education. In the effort to create amore customer-friendly education system, we know we need to move away from onesize fits all. Some students need smaller schools, designed to have strongrelationships with the adults, flexibility, and access to other supportservices. There are incredibly powerful high quality alternative schools aroundthe nation. McCargar addresses this by making a clear distinction betweenschools of choice versus placements.

Alternatives of choice” have protocoland processes that clearly established how a student becomes enrolled, as wellas checks and balances to ensure that students enrolled on their own volition.While students attending these schools often had histories of discipline andacademic struggle, they see the alternative program as an opportunity, not apunishment, and the majority of them go on to graduate.

“Placement” or “dumping ground”alternatives, on the other hand, are part of the secret pipeline. Students areplaced at these alternatives through de facto discipline and for many studentsit represents the point at which they exit, rather than complete, high school.

The report documents how students aretransferred to GED or adult education or simply encouraged to leave high schoolearly.

Students are involuntarily placed inalternative schools and programs. Their placement is in part enabled by anambiguous state statute which grant districts authority to “reassign” studentswithout complying with the reporting, procedural and due process protectionsafforded in disciplinary proceedings; these alternative programs often become“black holes” where students are trapped in sub-par educational environmentsand rarely permitted to return to mainstream high schools.

The report also outlines how theConnecticut Department of Education reinforces the secret pipeline.

The State Department of Education (SDE)does not track how many students are enrolled in alternative schools orprograms, nor does it track how those students are faring. The SDE grantsdistricts discretion to designate alternatives as “schools” or “programs,” andbecause programs are exempt from completing mandated state reports likestrategic school profiles, it is impossible for the broader public to isolateand access information specific to the enrollment, growth, and achievements ofalternative education students.

While data about students in AdultEducation is publicly available, it is held in a separate reporting platformand is not integrated with the Public Student Information System, the statewidedatabase that tracks all information pertaining to students enrolled in gradesK-12. Teens that are enrolled in Adult Education are not counted as students“enrolled” in the local district.

Invisible Students describes the secretpipeline as a de facto discipline policy. I disagree. I think what we areseeing in these practices is pure and simple re-establishment of separate andunequal education. The school district needs to be held accountable for graduation rates andthe quality of alternative school quality. We spend so much time trying to makesense of accountability measures for alternative schools, distracting us fromreforming the highest point of leverage – the office of the superintendent.

Thanks to InvisibleStudents, pushoutpractices aren’t a secret any more. Districts and states need to clean up theiract right now before they have to start allocating resources to fighting civilrights legal actions. We have underestimated the operational fine-tuning thatmust take place to implement a full graduation policy in which states anddistricts are responsible for educating all students until they are career andcollege ready. Budgets, human resource policies, transfer policies,information systems, and counseling services will all need to be revised toensure students get access to the schools they need, when they need it. States need to fine-tune their accountability systems as well. The leaders ofthe accountability and transparency efforts such as the Data Quality Campaignare going to need to step it up as well to push state accountability mechanismsto include high quality alternative education.

It's time for all of us to get ourheads out of the sand. We can't continue to ignore the second-classeducation our students are receiving.

Let RWJF Know Your Priorities for Young Men of Color

2012-01-10T08:07:00.000-06:00

From Forward Promise website

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is launching a new initiative - Forward Promise: Promoting Opportunities for the Health and Success of Young Men of Color - to identify and expand education, employment and health policies and programs serving middle and high school aged boys of color.

RWJF is working with CLASP to gather input for Forward Promise. The results from the survey will be used to inform the future direction of the initiative. CLASP is asking your input on two surveys designed to gather data about policies and programming affecting high school age boys of color who are both in school and out of school. Please select a survey to complete based on your area of expertise. Please feel free to complete both surveys, if appropriate. In addition, please forward these surveys widely to your networks.

Survey Links:

High School Young Men of Color

Out-of-School Young Men of Color

It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete each survey. The surveys are completely voluntary, and you may choose not to participate at any time. Your answers are completely confidential, as the data will be aggregated. No personal information will be collected or used in this survey. We will collect survey responses through January 16, 2012.

If you have any questions, please contact Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt Bryant, CLASP Senior Policy Analyst or Ivory Toldson, PhD, Lead Consultant, at survey@clasp.org.

And remember to pass this on -- let's make sure RWJF has the best information they can to make the best decisions in deploying their funds.

Youth Voices Driving State Reform

2012-01-05T09:34:00.000-06:00

From Padres y Jovenes Unidos

Youth Voices Driving State Reform. That's the title for the February 9th donor briefing on Positive School Climate and Discipline hosted by the Just and Fair Schools Fund in NYC.

Even though I think I am up-to-date on changes and trends in organizing, I realized that I hadn't fully understood the giant leap forward that youth organizing has taken over the past five years. We used to expect youth organizers to focus on an issue in one school or a very localized issue. State policy...really? That is a huge step forward and suggests that at least some youth organizing groups should be considered as equal to any other state advocacy efforts (and get the same level of funding!)

Just and Fair Schools Fund is bringing together youth/organizers from Padres y Jóvenes Unidos (Colorado) and Youth United for Change (Pennsylvania) to share insights on the tactical steps they’ve taken to influence state reforms, to be followed by a funders’ discussion on proven and promising strategies to fund similar efforts in further states. These are two healthy organizations that have been consistently active for 15-20 years. The Advancement Project has been a long-time partner for local organizing on these issues. The JFSF, with support from Atlantic Philanthropies, Gill Foundation, and Falk Foundation, is playing a critical role in leveraging the accomplishments of these organizations and others across the nation.

If you are a donor and interested in the briefing, please contact Don Cipriani at JFSF. And everyone can stay informed of great work around the country by signing up for the Just and Fair Schools Fund newsletter.

Learning is a Lifeline for Youth in Foster Care

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-06:00

Lisa McGill recently sent me a publication from the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education funded by Casey Family Programs and the Stuart Foundation. Education is the Lifeline for Youth in Foster Care is a great, overview of the issues children in foster care face in getting an education.

There is loads of data, especially useful for anyone writing a proposal or shaping a strategy. It covers a lot of issues -- student mobility, attendance, rapid re-enrollment, responsiveness to behavioral issues, and support to help students graduate and enter college. There are several examples of how communities are gathering resources to support youth. For example, "some California counties, including Santa Clara and Fresno, are increasingly linking youth in foster care to college preparation programs such as AVID (Advancement Via Individualized Determination), which targets students in the academic middle who are likely to be the first member of their family to attend college." This makes a lot of sense (and great way to leverage resources) to use pre-existing programs that offer a wide range of supports.

Oh, one more thing. If you are interested in learning more about the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education you can contact any of the following organizations:

Schools for the Future Blasts Off in Jacksonville

2011-12-14T04:00:00.000-06:00

From Bridges website

We know we have an innovation challenge. How do we educate students that areover-age and undercredited, especially if they are aging out of the K-12 systemwith 6^th grade skills? It’s mind-blowing to think about how to do this within the current policyenvironment that values college-readiness as the primary outcome.

Yet there are a few people taking up that challenge.Ephraim Weisstein and his colleagues at Schools for the Future (SFF) are heroically designing around youngpeople’s needs rather than expecting them to fit into a traditional schooldesign. In partnership with the Bridge of NortheastFlorida, SFF opened this fall in Jacksonville Florida. Local donors such as Wayne and DeloresBarr Weaver and

The Henry and Lucy Gooding Foundation along with supportfrom Mott, Carnegie and Noyce are providing the financial support. This isphilanthropy at its best -- localand national foundations co-investing in breakthrough models.

The first cohort of 103 students entering in 8^thor 9^th grade has only one student reading at grade level. On averagethey are 2.5 years behind. Theyare already over-age for their grades and not as emotionally mature as otherstudents in their grades. (I’m having a hard time writing this, as I’m awarethat one of the SFF students might read this – and who would want to bedescribed this way. For them to goto SFF means that they value education, possess courage, can persevere in theface of hurdle after hurdle, and are willing to give us a second chance to get it right).

In an interview last month, Ephraim explained the designprinciples of the school:

Accelerate Maturation: We talk about accelerated learning but this was the first time I’veheard the phrase accelerated maturation. Starting with the application and orientation process, SFF communicatesthe expectations for students. Ofthe 150 students participating in the four-day orientation a little more than100 made it through. This isn’t screening or creaming. This is part of theeducational process. SFF simply says come on back when you are ready and tryagain.

The next step is intensive response to behaviors. Students are suspended or expelled.Instead there is individual and group counseling. SFF is seeing tremendous growth of students in 4-5 weekswith the goal of having them managing themselves and their studies by 6months. Bottom line: SFF is payingattention to social-emotional growth as a key to academic success.

Straight Talk: Ephraim described that a key to their schools is taking to studentsabout their past educational experiences. SFF staff helps students understand that they have been caught in aconspiracy in which educators have told them for a long time that they couldn’tdo it. Then they flip theconversation to be straight about where students are and what they are going tohave to do to succeed. Andthey commit to doing everything they can to help the student get to where theywant to go.

Stretch into Middle School: The first SFF in Jacksonville Florida is designed for grades8-12. This creates moreflexibility and more time for students to catch up. Taking into consideration the policy context it also givesSFF more time to help students prepare for the state assessments.

Design for Short-term and Long-term Simultaneously: SFF is focused on helping Jacksonvillestudents prepare for the FCAT in the short term as it is somewhere around 8^th-10^thgrade function while also focused on college prep. They are helping students to fill gaps with tutoring andadaptive software while also engaging them in college prep curriculum. SFFknows that college prep is much more than just the right curriculum. They arehelping students to stretch their horizons.

Providing Students What They Need When They Need It: SFF is pragmatic, keeping students atthe heart of their decision-making. They are collecting a diverse set ofresources to help students. Blended learning, adaptive software, digital tools,8-week, engaging thematic courses using hip-hop, memoirs and other highinterest contexts. SFF is working with the Concord Consortium to integrate STEMinto the curriculum with simulation and probeware for students to do all thosereally cool things. They arecreating the opportunity for students to get A+ certified. With a bit of softmoney they are offering work study right at the school.

It’s not School of One….but the idea of bringing together asmany options for students is at the heart of SFF.

Competency-Based: Students and teachers stay focused on specific competencies. Everything students do is about learning and demonstrating what they have learned. This allows them to accelerate their pace or slow down to really understand more complex tasks.

SFF is just completing its first semester. So we need to bepatient to really learn from their experience. There are plans to open the second school in Detroit nextyear. So stay tuned.

The Adaptable Brain: IQ Increases in Adolescence

2011-12-13T07:00:00.000-06:00

IQ can grow during adolescence. That's what Cathy Price, professor at University College London, found in her study of 33 teens. Equally important she found that young people had variations in their trajectories. According to the article IQ "can change in teenage years" by David Shukman Environment & Science Correspondent for BBC News, one of the young people in the survey was a late bloomer, taking remedial courses in his early teens and now in his early 20's is on the path to a PhD in engineering

This is a profound finding for our thinking about vulnerable young people. It's just the tip of the iceberg. We need to find out what contributes to helping the IQ grow rather than shrink during adolescence. Good food? Exercise? Rigorous classes? Caring relationships? Drugs? Lots of sleep? The article suggests it might be engagement, finding something that is really interesting to the student. Sounds a lot like Big Picture Learning.

We need to pay attention to the progress of neuroscience in understanding brain development in early childhood as well as in late adolescence. When foundations collaborate we can share our intellectual capital and the cost of staying up to date on trends and research. It's going to be important for us over the next decade to find a way to understand the direction of research (or even shape it) and make sure we are taking the new insights into consideration in our programs and policies.

This is a wonderful opportunity for foundations to work together. Neuroscience is going to have implications for each and every public system and organization that serves children and youth. We need to make sure we use this knowledge to benefit those that need the most help making the transition to adulthood.

Chronic Truancy or Chronic Apathy

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-06:00

Although awkward, the phrase over-age and undercredited is powerful as itshifts the blame of our nation's graduation crisis from students to the dynamicinterplay between students and schools. As much as possible I try toavoid the phrase "drop-out" as it places all the responsibility fornot completing high school squarely on the shoulders of students. "Drop-out" allows us to turn our backs to the experience of students we have failed to teach to read. "Drop-out" allows us toclose our ears to the fears of students as they fall farther and fartherbehind. "Drop-out" allows us to close our minds to the institutionalracism that pushes young people out of school and onto the streets or intojail.

Over-age and undercredited is never going to just slip off the tongue. Maybe that's okay. In the seconds it takes to say it we have to pause andrecognize that we need to pay attention to both schools and students if we aregoing to renew our nation's economic strength. Sure students areresponsible if they just give up and walk away from school. But schools areresponsible if they give up on students without creating ways for them to get the help they need to succeed or provide on-ramps to gettheir diplomas. Students and schools both have to commit to finding pathways to success.

I raise this, as there has been increasing attention to attendance andtruancy. I just reviewed a great report by the University of New Mexico'sCenter for Education Policy Research on the landscape of educational outcomesin Albuquerque -- and there were maps with splashes of bright red highlightingneighborhoods with "habitual truancy". I've noticed the phrase "chronic truancy" finding its way into policy conversation. Once again, it feels like students andfamilies are shouldering the blame. Is there some way we can talk about the lost opportunity when students are not in school as a both/and? Is theresome way we can recognize that some students miss the first class because theyhave to take their siblings to school first and need to have greater flexibility about when they start? Can we create the online capacity that was established across the country in face of the H1N1 flu to support students that miss school because their employer insists they fill a gap in the day shift? Can we use suspension and expulsion rates as an early warning system about school culture as much as we use it to indicate that students are disengaging from school?

I've waited in line with students in howling winter winds as they enter theschool through metal detectors. I've been bumped and pushed inovercrowded school halls. I've been in classrooms where the teachers spent theentire day reading from the textbook. I've waited at locked schools for45 minutes with students who were late to school and told to wait outside until2nd period. Yes students should come to school. But in the face of chronicinstitutional apathy, we may simply be creating that Catch-22. Eitherway, they may not get the education they need.

Language can be our friend or our foe. As we push to make sure ourstudents are in school we need to have complementary language. There may bestudents that drop-outs that need drop-in schools. There may be students thatare chronically truant that need "sticky" schools that won't let them slip away.

Let's make sure we aren't chronically apathetic. Let's care enough to find language that empowers schools and students.

Rejoice: The New Regs Are Here

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000-06:00

Whether you work in policy or in programs, there are two policies that are only discussed by acronym -- HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act).

FERPA is a great example of the tension between policies that share a common interest of children's well-being. Designed to protect the privacy of children, FERPA is also a hurdle (not a barrier) to cross-sector collaboration including wrap-around services, community school models, and helping young people get the help they need right when they need it. Sure you can always do work-arounds -- but there are costs, sometimes substantial, to ensuring privacy is maintained.

After a thorough review and lots of public comment, the US Department of Education just released the new FERPA regulations. Among many of the national organizations interpreting the regulations is the Forum for Youth Investment's new report First Look: New FERPA Regulations.

There are some small but powerful changes, thanks to the Department of Education's support of collaboration as a meaningful approach to helping children and youth. According to FYI:

"...State education authorities are now allowed to share data with other government agencies who are not under their direct control, as long as those other agencies are involved in Federal or State-supported education program."

In addition, there is a clarification that "education program" doesn't mean just the traditional school -- and specifically references job training. Perhaps this means we can figure out better and more cost-efficient ways to help students access jobs?

Below is a quick overview of some of the changes in FERPA as outlined by FYI. Or take a look at the Data Quality Campaign briefing that provides a complete overview.