Sunday, July 29, 2007

This Week’s News: Youth in Transition

Education

Former Governor Jim Hunt Calls Democrats to Debate on Education
Associated Content – July 22, 2007
According to Strong American Schools, former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt has asked all of the Democratic candidates vying for president to stress education during the CNN/Youtube debate that will be held Monday in Charleston, South Carolina. The former governor said that the debate was the perfect forum for discussing the candidates' ideas on education reform and stressing the importance of academic standards in the United States. He said that if schools in the United States fail to keep students in school until graduation and prepare them for further secondary education, then "we deny future generations the chance of success and creating a higher quality of life."

Pennsylvania Youth in Transition Grants Reconnect Youth With Education
PR Newswire – July 24, 2007
HARRISBURG, Pa.-- Governor Edward G. Rendell today announced the investment of $1.2 million to improve access to education for youth who left high school before graduating or are becoming too old for foster care. The Pennsylvania Youth in Transition Project is a cooperative effort being developed by the departments of Labor & Industry, Education and Public Welfare, as well as the Pennsylvania Workforce Investment Board and other workforce development organizations. The money will be used by state and local partners to create community-based approaches that address young people's needs through counseling and training focused on high school completion, postsecondary preparation and career success.

State headed right way with KidsCount report
Jackson Sun – July 29, 2007
Tennessee, and Gov. Phil Bredesen, got some good news Wednesday with the release of the latest KidsCount report, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. According to that report, Tennessee's cumulative ranking in the area of child well-being jumped three places, from 46th last year to 43rd this year. While there is obviously still room for improvement, it is a clear sign that the efforts of Gov. Bredesen and his administration are paying off. We should be especially proud of our improvement in the area of high school drop outs. In the last five years, the governor has dedicated himself to improving education at all levels. He has done that by improving funding for K-12 and higher education. He has done it by working to make access to pre-K education universal in Tennessee. And he has done it by suggesting innovative ideas for improving the state's high school curriculum. Now, that focus and those efforts are starting to pay off.

Juvenile Justice

Juvenile jail makes strides
Indianapolis Star – July 22, 2007
A tour of the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center shows significant improvements to a facility that was the target of allegations of sexual mistreatment of children last year. But as welcomed as those improvements are, much work remains on how our juvenile justice system treats youthful offenders. Chronic overcrowding inside the jail has ceased to be a problem. Alleged offenders are being moved through the system faster – usually within a day – thanks to the creation of a court in which a judge determines whether a child should be charged with a crime. That’s an encouraging trend, and it should be bolstered by a new screening process installed in May.

Boot camp substitute is unpopular
St. Petersburg Times – July 24, 2007
TALLAHASSEE - The sheriff's juvenile justice program that was designed in the wake of the death of Martin Lee Anderson and envisioned as a replacement for boot camps has gone largely unused. After 14-year-old Anderson died in 2006 following a confrontation with guards at a Panama City boot camp for juvenile offenders, lawmakers did away with military-style boot camps. They created a new type of program intended as a replacement, a program similar in its highly structured approach, but with a ban on physical discipline and a focus instead on education, job training, community service and counseling. Lawmakers set aside $10.6-million for the program, known as the STAR program, for Sheriff's Training and Respect. But Polk County is the only place where a sheriff's agency has decided to try the program.

Foster Care

Report: Place more foster kids with kin
Salt Lake Tribune – July 29, 2007
Romero is among the 160 to 200 Utahs who leave foster care each year without a permanent home. No one to call for financial, career or romantic advice. No one to scold them, hold them or just listen. They are the poster children for a national child welfare system that has kept kids safe but has failed to parent them, according to the 2007 Kids Count report, an annual survey of child well-being by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. "In many respects, we succeed at removing children from dangerous environments only to put them in a different kind of harm's way," wrote Douglas W. Nelson, foundation president.

We need to create better futures for foster care youth - Barbara Boxer
Inside Bay Area – July 26, 2007
For many of the 513,000 children and teenagers in our foster care system, having a permanent "home" to grow up in is a dream that will never be realized. The foster care system is often a last resort — offering a safe environment when there is nowhere else to turn, or providing a family for children who have been separated from their own. We have seen many successes through the foster care system — children finding stability and comfort through caring relationships with generous and nurturing families, mentors and volunteers. But for many children, the help stops when they turn 18 and "age out" of the system. We must do more for these young adults who have already been through so much.

Law lets county continue to provide foster care services
Houston Chronicle – July 24, 2007
Harris County officials are breathing easier as a result of a new law that lets them continue to provide services to children in the custody of the state's Child Protective Services despite ongoing privatization efforts. The legislation was signed into law last month after Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that an earlier law calling for the privatization of all foster care would have prevented the county from competing for that business. The county now provides about $5 million in foster care services, including emergency shelter beds, psychological and developmental assessments, and medical and dental care.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

This Week’s News: Youth in Transition

Education

L.A. District Faces Mounting Pressure Over High Schools
Education Week – July 18, 2007
After nearly eight months on the job, Superintendent David L. Brewer III has rolled out his strategy for improving student achievement in the 708,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District. so far, the momentum for improving high schools in the nation’s second-largest district has been coming from outsiders, centering largely on the fate of one troubled campus—Locke Senior High School in Watts. Earlier this week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $7.8 million grant to help one of the city’s most successful charter school operators open small high schools in Watts, which would be alternatives to Locke.

Two schools would be catch-up, 'twilight'
Greensboro News-Record – July 20, 2007
North Carolina students who are too old for middle school but can’t handle ninth-grade-level work could attend a special school in the fall designed to catch them up. Terry Grier, Guilford County Schools superintendent, plans to propose a new alternative school called High School Ahead to the Guilford County Board of Education next week. Grier also plans to propose "twilight schools" for freshmen who have been suspended at least three times but don’t qualify for placement in alternative schools in Greensboro and High Point. Grier said both programs would boost academic performance and reduce drop-outs and discipline problems in high schools.

Much of Learning Gap Blamed on Summer
Education Week – July 16, 2007
It’s been a truism for decades that students’ learning slips during the summer, and that low-income children fall farther behind than their classmates, but no one had connected the longitudinal data dots to show just what the cumulative consequences of the summer slide might be. Until now. A recent study by sociology professor Karl L. Alexander and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore concludes that two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between 9th graders of low and high socioeconomic standing in Baltimore public schools can be traced to what they learned—or failed to learn—over their childhood summers.

Juvenile Justice

Program gives teens in trouble second chance
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – July 19, 2007
Fontez Foree was looking at two years in prison for burglary, and he was just 15 years old with a baby girl on the way. Fontez, who said he had no prior record, could have been sentenced to a juvenile justice center, the equivalent of prison for kids. Instead, he was recommended for a state-funded pilot program called Redeploy Illinois, a project designed to prevent nonviolent juvenile offenders ages 13-17 from committing more crimes. On Wednesday, Illinois Department of Human Services and Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice officials announced that the four-year program was surprisingly productive in its first two years.

Tough’s not enough
Greensboro News-Record – July 22, 2007
A wave of get-tough legislation and police crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere is making those cities' gang problems worse, not better, says the Justice Policy Institute. In a new report, the institute criticizes city leaders for placing far too much emphasis on policing, and far too little on prevention and intervention. It cites as an example dramatically different anti-gang philosophies in New York and Los Angeles – and dramatically different outcomes.

Juvenile-justice worker: Listen to the kids
Orlando Sentinel – July 18, 2007
We cannot fool ourselves into believing that the answer to reducing juvenile violent crime lies in beefed-up law enforcement and more prisons. The right solution must take a holistic approach to combating a much more systemic problem. Poverty, unaddressed mental-health needs and an educational system that is ill equipped to deal with "bad behavior" compounds the issue on a larger scale by limiting their access to resources and opportunities that would help them get ahead.

Foster Care

Foster care, orphanages doing more harm than good for children
Springfield News-Leader – July 15, 2007
Many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they remained with their own families even if those families got only the typical help - which tends to be little help, wrong help, or no help - commonly offered by agencies like the Missouri Children's Division. That's the message from the largest study ever undertaken comparing the impact on children of foster care versus keeping children alleged to be maltreated with their own families.

Youth Advocates Say Oakland a Magnet for Teenage Prostitution
KCBS – July 18, 2007
OAKLAND, Calif. (KCBS) -- The city’s group homes and foster care system are not enough to protect children from sexual exploitation, according to a group dedicated to combating teenage prostitution. Oakland has become a magnet for pimps trying to recruit teenagers for sex work, said Nola Brantley, director of the organization Sexually and Commercially Exploited Youth. “Group homes and the foster care youth are a target, and they're a recruiting ground,” she said Tuesday, at a news conference where the FBI announced a sting that resulted in 131 arrests.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

This Week’s News: Youth in Transition

Education

Public Schools Feed Multitudes in the Summer
New York Times – July 10, 2007
The New York City school system is pushing far beyond the corridors of summer school in delivering free meals, handing out breakfast and lunch for the first time in housing projects, libraries, day camps and church groups to become one of the nation’s largest summer soup kitchens. Education Department officials say they expect to significantly exceed last summer’s totals of 4.4 million lunches and 2 million breakfasts. And last summer’s figure was already more than twice as many meals as Citymeals-on-Wheels provided for homebound elderly residents in a full year, and well beyond the reach of other big-city public school districts like Los Angeles and Chicago.

Public schools grapple with Muslim prayer
Christian Science Monitor – July 12, 2007
Like a growing number of school districts around the country, San Diego's is changing its ways to meet the needs of its Islamic students. Here, a controversy with constitutional overtones erupted: In accommodating Muslim students, is the school unfairly promoting religion? The school's policy "presumes that Christians are less religious and less inspired to worship and praise the Lord and come together," says Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. He is asking the school district to set up special rooms where Christians can pray, too. This outcry, and others like it from conservative commentators and attorneys, suggest that the whole matter may land in court. Potentially at issue is to what extent actions taken by a public school to accommodate special religious needs of some students might require similar allowances for other students.

Juvenile Justice

RI Prosecutes 17-Year-Olds to Save Money
Washington Post – July 13, 2007
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- When state legislators passed a law last month requiring that 17-year-olds be tried as adults, they hoped the reduced cost of providing for adult prisoners rather than juveniles would save the state about $3.6 million. But almost immediately, prison officials said they didn't think the move would save any money, and critics around the country denounced it as shortsighted and wrong.

Juvenile justice: What we know -- and what we need to learn
Orlando Sentinel – July 13, 2007
In the next few months, Gov. Charlie Crist and Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Walter McNeil will convene a "Blueprint Commission" to take an objective look at juvenile justice. The spotlight will certainly be focused on the failings of the current system. Part of what I believe we will learn in Florida (as other states have already learned) is that for juvenile justice to be effective it must incorporate a balanced approach. This includes mechanisms to address public safety (what was described in Tuesday's Orlando Sentinel article, "State's juvenile justice: 'It's a train wreck' ") to ensure that dangerous youth are not allowed back out on the streets to re-offend. But the system must also include opportunities to prevent, intervene, redirect and divert youth from the system altogether. And those who do enter the system in need of treatment and rehabilitation should get what they need to re-enter their communities successfully.

State training schools not working; overhaul imperative
The Clarion-Ledger – July 15, 2007
For several years now, a group of juvenile justice advocates has lobbied to overhaul Mississippi's system of dealing with youth offenders. The reformers, including the Mississippi Youth Justice Project and others, are convinced community treatment centers would be more effective than Oakley and Columbia Training Schools. Multiple issues at these facilities are well documented, including practices that led to last month's suspensions of six workers at Columbia. Still, the state Department of Human Services has discarded input from the Youth Justice Project and the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, including pleas to close the training schools.

Foster Care

Committee OK's foster care bill
Vallejo Time Herald – July 13, 2007
A bill designed to protect disabled foster youth has passed a 4-1 vote of the Senate Human Services Committee and now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee. AB 1331, filed by Assembly member Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, would require county child welfare agencies to screen all foster youth at age 161 2 for mental or physical disabilities and help them apply for federal aid so that it's in place when they reach age 18. The bill also permits foster youth to stay in the system past the age of 18 if they have Supplemental Security Income applications pending.

Members of Congress Honor Foster Youth Interns, Highlight Need for Foster Children to Have Permanent Families
PR Newswire – July 13, 2007
On Capitol Hill today, Members of Congress from both Houses and political parties participated in a briefing about the U.S. foster care system, and honored the accomplishments of 15 former foster youth who have spent the summer as Congressional interns. The briefing, hosted by the nonpartisan, non-profit Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) and titled "Finding Our Place: The Importance of Permanency" featured Members of Congress and former foster youth and emphasized the need for permanent, loving families for our nation's 500,000 foster children.

Law helps abused get green cards
Los Angeles Times – July 8, 2007
Abused children across California and the nation who are undocumented but entitled to green cards are frequently not receiving them -- putting them at risk of deportation and drastically limiting their educational and work opportunities. Under federal law, certain abused, neglected or abandoned dependents of the state are eligible for legal residency, but officials in many counties are unaware of the benefit. As a result, many youths leave foster care as illegal immigrants, social workers and advocates say.

Monday, July 09, 2007

This Week’s News: Youth in Transition

Education

Black drop-out rate a concern in Iowa City district
Iowa Gazette – July 6, 2007
Student attendance and discipline are not major problems in the Iowa City school district, but an uptick in high school fights and a disproportionate drop-out rate for black students are concerns, Superintendent Lane Plugge said. Student attendance at the K-8 level for the 2006-07 school year averaged 95.9 percent, according to a district report released today. The district did not have an overall average for the high schools, but attendance by trimester was between 91 and 94 percent. Though blacks make up 13.5 percent of the district's junior high and high school students, they accounted for 36.8 percent of the drop outs this past school year.

Commentary: TEA thwarts efforts to leave no child behind
Austin American-Statesman – July 7, 2007
The Texas Education Agency's school-wide rating system, based solely on the performance of small sub-populations, labels the GED students in a high school as dropouts even when they are there working with the teacher. Every hour, every day, in every high school, a small number of young folks nominate themselves to be the child left behind. And hourly, daily, hardworking teachers slip into the supply closet or lavatory to strap on their tattered Superman capes or Wonder Women belts. We emerge ready once again to fight for "truth, justice and the American Way." And, honestly, public education is the bedrock for that truth and that justice and that democratic way of life.

Juvenile Justice

Accord struck on teen jailing
Sacramento Bee – July 5, 2007
The Schwarzenegger administration has reached an agreement with legislative budget writers on a plan to stop sending less-serious and nonviolent juvenile criminals to state institutions, beginning this year. If the full Legislature goes along with the plan, the decade-long population decline at the Division of Juvenile Justice would continue, dropping over the next two years from 2,600 currently to 1,500, according to the agency's projections. Instead of being housed in the state's eight juvenile facilities, less-serious juvenile offenders would be retained at the local level.

Teens languish in county lockup: Long-promised reforms lagging
San Jose Mercury News – July 5, 2007
Last month, Santa Clara County's juvenile hall held 354 minors behind its locked doors. It was the highest number in at least three decades. Their average time in custody, 39 days, was significantly longer than their counterparts in Alameda County (25 days) or San Mateo County (15.5 days) or than the state average of 31. What's more, the overwhelming majority - nearly eight out of 10 - were minorities. Taken by themselves, the numbers are disturbing. When compared with the county's lofty reform goals, they hint at a broader failure - one that has taken county officials by surprise and spurred a hunt for solutions.

Age Raised
New Haven Independent – July 9, 2007
Toni Walker's years-long crusade has paid off, with passage of a state law that will stop sending teens under 18 to adult prisons. Anyone who's been following the efforts of Walker, a New Haven state representative, New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp and others knows that Connecticut is one of just three states in the country that incarcerates 16- and 17-year-olds in adult prisons, with adult offenders. But not everyone knows that, according to Walker, the state Department of Corrections has estimated that only 3 percent of these young people are dangerous.

Foster Care

Study: Troubled homes better than foster care
USA Today – July 3, 2007
Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering study. The findings intensify a vigorous debate in child welfare: whether children are better served with their families or away from them. Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults, says the study by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy.

Governor defends foster care system after initial review
Boston Globe – July 3, 2007
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Gov. Don Carcieri on Tuesday defended the state's foster care system, rebutting claims in a new federal lawsuit that children in state custody been abused, neglected and sent back to unsafe homes. The lawsuit, filed last week by the state's child advocate against the governor and the Department of Children, Youth and Families, identifies 10 children who it says were mistreated in foster care.

New law allows Vt. children to stay in foster care past 18
Bennington Banner – July 7, 2007
Vermont officials are hoping a change in state law will help make the road to adulthood less bumpy for teens in foster care. Starting this month, they can remain in foster care until they're 22. Vermont is now one of nine states that now funds foster care past 18, although legislation is pending in other states, said Joyce Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Child Welfare League in Arlington, Va. U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. has introduced legislation that would provide federal funding to states to continue foster care through age 21. "We think it's great, because so many kids are not prepared," said Johnson. "Even kids in families aren't necessarily ready to leave the nest when they turn 18, so we think it's very important," she said, referring to that bill.

Monday, July 02, 2007

This Week’s News: Youth in Transition

Education

"ED in 08" campaign launches in Iowa
Radio Iowa – June 26, 2007
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is putting up half the money for a $60 million campaign to get presidential candidates to focus on the topic of education. Former Colorado Governor Roy Romer is heading up the campaign which is dubbed "ED in 08". Romer and the "ED in 08" group are pushing Iowans to pester the presidential candidates for specific answers, such as what they'd do to impose more uniform standards for the 14,000 public school districts in the country. "We are in a world economy in which we just simply cannot afford to have 1.2 million drop-outs in our high schools a year," Romer says. "...Therefore, the federal government has got an economic and a vested interest to try to say, 'States, we need to address this. We need to address this together...Let's work it out.'"

Business is working for better education
Minneapolis Star-Tribune – July 1, 2007
Thanks to an array of supporters, Minnesota is making progress in getting kids off to a good start in grade school. Minnesota Business for Early Learning. The business community launched the initiative out of concern that only half of the state's new kindergartners are "fully prepared" to learn, according to state assessments conducted annually by kindergarten teachers.Gov. Tim Pawlenty's candid comment about school drop-outs to a Twin Cities business audience summed it up: "Minnesota simply cannot compete with one-third of the people on the bench."

Juvenile Justice

On Pretrial Incarceration for Juveniles
San Francisco Chronicle – June 27, 2007
It is difficult to step back from tragic events and ask hardheaded, data-driven questions. It is much easier to vilify the mayor, the juvenile courts, and the probation department for progressively seeking solutions to seemingly intractable problems when something goes wrong. But if we expect answers to our toughest societal questions, such as juvenile rehabilitation, we must acknowledge that simplistic lock 'em up programs won't work.

Juvenile corrections could be next venue for restorative justice in Texas
Pegasus News – June 27, 2007
The Texas Youth Commission's transformation might be an opportunity for testing restorative justice principles in the Lone Star State. On Sunday night, Dr. Gordon Bazemore of Florida Atlantic University spoke on the topic of restorative justice and youth crime, aiming to go "beyond treatment and punishment for juveniles." He pointed out that in US states where restorative justice initiatives had been tried, they were mostly used in juvenile justice instead of adult corrections settings. With the implosion in Texas juvenile corrections this spring and the "Sunset" review of the Texas Youth Commission that will be performed between now and 2009, Texas has perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent its juvenile justice system to implement some of these alternative models.

Assessments cut juvenile count at jail
Indianapolis Star – June 29, 2007
A new assessment program for youths in trouble with the law means fewer are having extended stays at the Marion County Detention Center. Superior Court officials today announced the average daily population of youths younger than 18 was 98. Last year was the first the average daily population was lower than the juvenile jail’s bed count of 144. The average daily population was 189 in 2004 and 169 in 2005. Chris Ball, juvenile center probation officer, was part of a group who helped implement the new assessment program, called Juvenile Detention Alternatives initiative. "In past years, all detention decisions were based on the offense that the youth was arrested on," Ball said. The program allows officials to look at the risk of a youth being accused of committing another crime or failing to appear for an initial court hearing after his arrest, she said.

Foster Care

More funding for kids out of foster care halted
San Luis Obispo Tribune – June 29, 2007
Republicans in the state Senate stopped the passage of a bill Thursday that would have added $10.5 million to funding for housing programs for youth transitioning out of foster care, including a dozen youths in San Luis Obispo County. AB 845 had already passed the Assembly in a 78-0 vote and had support from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it failed in the Senate to garner the two-thirds majority needed to send it to the governor’s desk. The party-line vote fell short of the two-thirds needed, with 23 Democrats in favor and 13 Republicans against it. Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, abstained. Lee Collins, director of San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services, said he was disappointed that foster children were being used to send a message about fiscal responsibility to the governor.

Foster teens grab reins of plans for their lives
City Limits Weekly – June 25, 2007
Before a standing room only crowd gathered in the stately law library of New York Family Court in Manhattan last Thursday afternoon, a group of teenagers reported that youth in foster care would be better served if they were more involved in the process aimed at finding them a permanent home. The speakers, part of the 15-member Youth Justice Board (YJB), presented a new report on improving the family court system’s permanency planning process to children’s advocates, court personnel and foster care professionals. Called "Step Up, Step Out," the report finds many youth in foster care don’t understand how the family court system works, have little contact with the legal guardians who argue on their behalf in court, and are unaware that they can attend court proceedings or petition the judge who oversees their case.

Utah foster care: Child welfare system reform means end of 14-year lawsuit
Salt Lake Tribune – June 29, 2007
In announcing her decision to dismiss a lawsuit that for 14 years has driven reform of Utah's child welfare system, Judge Tena Campbell - in an unusual show of ceremony - congratulated attorneys, caseworkers and others, inviting them to stand. Dismissal of the lawsuit in 2008 will save Utah taxpayers $300,000 in monitoring expenses. But Duane Betournay, the new DCFS director, describes the watershed event as a beginning, not an end. The national center sued Utah in 1993 over alleged unconstitutional conditions in the foster care system. Among the allegations: child abuse investigations were cursory or never completed; children were languishing - even dying - in foster care and were denied education, basic health care and behavioral therapy; and foster parents and caseworkers weren't well trained. Instead of challenging the suit - known as David C. v. Leavitt - the state settled, agreeing to reforms across the entire system.