Monday, December 31, 2012

This Week's News: Youth in Transition

Education

Some changes are helping high school students prepare for work
The Inquirer, Vineland, NJ – December 31, 2012
The phone rang at 3 a.m., an unnerving noise at a bad news hour.  It wasn't life and death, but it was an emergency just the same. A 22-year-old man enrolled in a Vineland, N.J., program where dropouts can earn high school diplomas while receiving vocational training had a question:  Should he move out of his parents' house and move in with his girlfriend?  Sam Mercado, who helps run a local version of YouthBuild, a nationally lauded program helping dropouts get diplomas and find jobs, spent 90 minutes on the line with the caller.

Increasing Graduation Rate Involves All Ages
Patch, Easley, SC – December 29, 2012
District officials are looking at a variety of ways to keep students in school.  The school board has challenged the district to achieve an 80 percent graduation rate, according to Superintendent Dr. Kelly Pew.  “Obviously we would like 100 percent of our kids to graduate from high school, but the reality is not all of our kids who are going through school are diploma-tracked,” Pew said during a recent meeting between district officials and the Pickens County Legislative Delegation.  “It is a system issue,” she said. “It is a K-12 issue.”

Orfalea Foundation’s REACH Program Recruiting New Students
Santa Barbara Independent, California – December 31, 2012
REACH, which stands for Resilience, Education, Adventure, Community, and Health, works to empower students for lives of purposeful action, continuous learning, and the courageous pursuit of opportunity.  The program welcomes each new group of students with a 25-day wilderness expedition during the summer between their sophomore and junior year.

Juvenile Justice

State sees decrease in incarcerated youth
 Amarillo Globe-News, Texas – December 28, 2012
How times have changed for the Texas juvenile justice system. Five years ago, the number of youths locked up in state-run detention centers was about 4,700. Since then, the number has steadily dropped, and now it is less than 1,500 — more than a two-thirds reduction.  “We’ve come a long way,” said Benet Magnuson, policy attorney at the advocacy group Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. “Thanks to a series of reforms, we’ve taken many kids out of state-run facilities and kept them closer to their homes where they are helped or rehabilitated.”

Foster Care

Copley teen helping youths moving from foster care
West Side Leader, Copley, OH – December 27, 2012
Local Girl Scout Kristin Osborne knows she is fortunate to be in a family with two parents who make sure she has what she needs.  Now, for her Gold Award project, Kristin, 16, is trying to help youths not much older than she is who are faced with starting their adult lives without the support of their parents.

Teen Pregnancy

Reading trouble linked to teen pregnancy in new study
ABC 7, Chicago, IL – December 28, 2012
Teenage girls who have trouble reading may have a higher risk of getting pregnant.  Researchers in Philadelphia evaluated reading scores of more than 12,000 7th grade girls and tracked them over a course of six years. During that time 1,600 of those girls had a baby.  The team found that two-thirds of the girls scoring below average were more likely to become pregnant than average scoring girls.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

This Week's News: Youth in Transition

Education

Teens learning to make difference
The Advocate, Washington, D.C. – December 25, 2012
Civics and U.S. history students at Mentorship Academy have spent months studying and delivering action plans aimed at solving high school dropout rates, poverty and homelessness in their communities.  They plan to deliver their message of civic and social responsibility to state and national leaders while they attend the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21.

In Fixing Schools, Bay Area City Looks to Harlem Model
New American Media, Hayward, CA – December 24, 2012
Gerardo Ramirez wants to be a forensic crime scene investigator. An avid fan of TV dramas like Criminal Minds and CSI, the 16-year-old is bussed every day from Tennyson High School in Hayward, Calif. to a regional occupation program (ROP), where he studies criminal justice in exchange for high school credit.


Juvenile Justice

Durbin chairs first hearing on school to prison pipeline
Daily Herald, Illinois – December 12, 2012
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin Wednesday chaired the first federal hearing looking at the relationship between schools and the criminal justice system. The hearing follows a recent change in Illinois law prompted by an attack on an Elgin teacher and subsequent Daily Herald investigation.

Juvenile Justice Changes On Tap
Peach Pundit, Georgia – December 20, 2012
During the 2012 Session of the Georgia General Assembly, laws were changed to relax sentences on some crimes to help deal with Georgia’s growing prison population and save the related expenses of incarcerating so many of our fellow citizens.  Key to the debate was not only the direct costs to the state, but the indirect costs of lost future income of those with felonies on their “permanent record”, leaving them with fewer if any stable job opportunities – and opportunities to pay taxes – after their prison sentence ended.

Foster Care

Grace of Giving: Kids in foster care get assistance with life skills
My San Antonio, Texas – December 23, 2012
As children in foster care grow older and closer to independent living, options for their future often are uncertain.  “Essentially, an 18- or 19-year-old is a child,” said Mary Fuentes Valdez, vice president and secretary of Youth Transitioning Into Adulthood, an organization that provides life-skills training to teens and young adults in foster care. “We realized there's a big need for bridging the gap for youth leaving foster care,” she said.

Dana’s House nearing independent living program for older youth
Suttgart Daily Leader, DeWitt, AK – December 20, 2012
Dana’s House is nearing its goal for an independent living program for those who age out of foster care.  Administrator Jennifer Poston said the non-profit shelter is in the process of purchasing the former Westside Elementary School, which is about a block from Dana’s House in DeWitt. The purchase is set to close at the beginning of 2013.

Teen Pregnancy

Partial funding restored, county program aims to aid more teens
Ventura County Star, California – December 25, 2012
After Michell Manriquez gave birth to her daughter at 16, there were plenty of times she wanted to drop out of Hueneme High School.  But thanks to a state program for pregnant and parenting teens, the Oxnard resident graduated with her class in 2011, and she now plans to attend college.

Gaston County opens teen wellness center
Charlotte Observer, Gastonia, NC – Decmeber 24, 2012
She’s a sexually active 16-year-old looking for birth control advice.  He’s a high school football player in need of a quick sports physical.  Another student needs a round of immunizations.  All these young people could wind up at the new Teen Wellness Center at the Gaston County Health Department.  It’s a place teens can come with almost any kind of medical problem – with or without their parents or guardians.

Monday, December 17, 2012

This Week's News: Youth in Transition

Education   

Fighting High School Dropout Rates
WBNG News, Binghamton, NY – December 15, 2012
Binghamton High School students got a little extra motivation to make sure they graduate.  Students put on the "American Graduate" event to raise awareness on student dropout rates.

Districts start earlier to identify, help students who may drop out
Hattiesburg American, Sumrall, MS – December 15, 2012
Eighteen-year-old Alyx Colson will graduate from Sumrall High School on Dec. 21, but that almost didn’t happen.  That’s when Lamar County School District dropout prevention coordinator Jarrod Bohannon stepped in to help.  “I found out what his real issues were, why he dropped out of school and set up a plan to get him back in school,” he said.  Bohannon and dropout prevention coordinators at school districts around the Pine Belt are working with at-risk students to keep them in school.

UNC Launch Pad startup STENCIL tackles high school dropout rate
WRAL, Chapel Hill, NC – December 11, 2012
Julian Wooten holds degrees in biology and chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill, and nanomedicine from UNC Chapel Hill’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and recently decided to pursue an MBA.  But it was prestigious teaching internships at Philips Exeter Academy and Johns Hopkins University that led him to become an entrepreneur and launch a company called Students and Teachers Employing New Criteria in Learning, or STENCIL.  The company develops software that allows teachers and school administrators to manage data on student attendance, behavior and course performance.

Juvenile Justice

Lucas County awarded $1.3M to aid youths
Toledo Blade, Toledo, OH – December 17, 2012
County officials and treatment providers are hoping a new federal grant, awarded to only three communities across the country, will break the cycle of drugs, alcohol, and crime among juveniles in Toledo.  The four-year grant awarded to the Lucas County juvenile court, provides $1.32 million to provide training to implement a new model of treatment, called Reclaiming Futures, for juveniles who go through the court system.

Foster Care

Orlando Sentinel Family Fund: Faine House to provide hope, opportunity for foster kids
Orlando Sentinel, Florida – December 13, 2012
DeVante Bynoe remembers coming here in 2004. He was only 11 then and had just taken his first steps as a wayward child of the state.  Bynoe, now 19, hopes to live in the Faine House, a project etched in the kindness of a man who understands how fortunate he was not to get caught up in that dysfunctional wave of neglect.

Angel House provides new opportunities for women
The Marietta Daily Journal, Canton, OH – December 16, 2012
Kids in a Candy Store is filling orders for its first holiday season in business.  The business started in February at the Angel House of North Georgia. Through Kids in a Candy Store, young women living in the independent living program at Angel House make candy bouquets for weddings, businesses and gifts.  “They’re aging out of foster care, or community kids who need life skills to get a good start,” Worsley said. The independent living program teaches skills including budgeting and household management while residents work to save money to start life on their own.

Teen Pregnancy

Governor holds summit to ‘Stomp Out Teenage Pregnancy’
The Mississippi Link, Mississippi – December 13, 2012
Gov. Phil Bryant told approximately 350 attendees last week that he has a goal to try and decrease teen pregnancy by 15 percent by 2017. The Governor was the keynote speaker at his Healthy Teens for a Better Mississippi first Teens Pregnancy Prevention Summit, Dec. 6, at the Jackson Convention Complex.

Monday, December 10, 2012

This Week's News: Youth in Transition

Education

Heart of West Michigan United Way sets goal of decreasing dropout rate 50 percent by 2020
MLive.com, Grand Rapids, MI – December 5, 2012
A child who isn't proficient in reading by third grade is four times more likely to drop out of high school than a proficient reader, according to a 2011 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Last year, nearly 2,000 Kent County high school students dropped out before graduating with their class.

Solving Utah's dismal graduation rate: Two schools may have the answer
Deseret News, Utah – December 8, 2012
Utah is the fourth-worst state in the nation for graduating Latino students, with just 57 percent of seniors collecting a diploma each year.  But at least two programs both inside and outside the state of Utah could provide a template for how to increase the number of high school graduates, particularly in the minority communities that lag far behind other states.

Kids Count Youth And Work Report: Number Of Young Adults Out Of School, Work Hits Half-Century High
Huffington Post – December 4, 2012
Nearly 6.5 million U.S. teens and young adults are neither in school nor working, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report warns of a future of chronic unemployment due to a continuing failure to educate and train America's youth in needed skills.

Juvenile Justice

Foundation Strives to Create Legacy for Juvenile Justice Reform
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, Washington, D.C. – December 6, 2012
The nonprofit MacArthur Foundation has spent more than $100 million since 2004 on developing blueprints for reform within the juvenile justice systems of 16 states. Earlier this week, its reform initiative, Models for Change, brought together nearly 400 judges, advocates, probation officers and other juvenile justice professionals for two days of workshops in Washington, D.C.

Putting wayward youth on right road
Orlando Sentinel, Miami-Dade County, Florida – December 7, 2012
While leading Miami-Dade's Juvenile Services Department, Wansley Walters slashed arrests and confinements by de emphasizing detention and focusing on juvenile-offender services.  Turns out that her Miami experience laid the groundwork for the path she intends to take as secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice. She's barnstorming Florida, promoting the Roadmap to System Excellence, the blueprint that emphasizes prevention over detention, with a focus on front-end services.

Foster Care

Eliada School of Trade Arts helps former foster kids
Citizen-Times, Asheville, NC – December 4, 2012
The odds were good that one or all five of the young men in chef’s jackets standing proudly over a luncheon buffet would end up unemployed, homeless or in prison by the time they were 19 or 20.  Instead, the inaugural class of the Eliada School of Trade Arts has been offered an opportunity to turn those odds upside down, learning personal and professional skills that will open doors to futures they could only have dreamed of a year ago.

Teen Pregnancy

TIPS aims to empower, support teen parents
Anson Record, North Carolina – December 6, 2012
With Anson County ranking 12 out of 100 counties for teen pregnancies in 2011, Teen Information and Parenting Services (TIPS) is working to educate teen parents and help prevent future adolescent pregnancies.  TIPS, a service offered by the Anson County Partnership for Children, “serves adolescents who are pregnant or parenting their first child and their children,” according to its website.

Monday, December 03, 2012

This Week's News: Youth in Transition

Education

Gwinnett academies put focus on getting students back on track
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gwinnett County, GA – December 2, 2012
The Gwinnett County school system has a new program targeting a specific category of potential high school dropouts: overage eighth graders.  It’s a group that, statistics show, desperately needs a lifeline. While the district has a 67.6 percent overall high graduation rate, only about 13 percent of its students who enter ninth grade a year or more behind are leaving high school with a diploma.

A place to fit in, and learn: Carleton Project serves potential high school dropouts
The Bangor Daily News, Lincoln, ME – November 29, 2012
Sierrah Davis loves to write and comes across as intelligent, but she says she really dislikes high school.  Davis is back at school now — sort of.  The Lincoln resident is among 17 students enrolled this year in the Carleton Project, RSU 67’s alternative education attempt at keeping students in high school.

Center Aims to Help Recent Graduates, Dropouts
CBS, KLAS TV, Las Vegas, NV – November 29, 2012
A recent report revealed a 62 percent high school graduation rate in Nevada, among the lowest in the nation.  A center in east Las Vegas is trying to change the low graduation rate and help adults with a second chance at a career.

Juvenile Justice

Report urges reforming juvenile justice based on science
NewsWorks – December 2, 2012
"Adult crime -- adult time" has been one of the many battle cries calling for tough sentences for juvenile offenders. A new report commissioned by the federal justice department suggests that this approach doesn't work.

Woodruff releases report to help protect juveniles
New Pittsburgh Courier, Luzerne County, PA – November 28, 2012
Following the revelations that two Luzerne County judges had conspired to sentence juveniles who had committed minor infractions to a private jail for kickbacks, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Dwayne Woodruff was named to the commission empanelled to devise statewide reforms of the juvenile justice system.

Foster Care

Foster kids need opportunities to overcome odds
Mercury News, California – November 30, 2012
Even with the Silicon Valley economy leading the way in California and the nation, unemployment is still an unpleasant fact of life for young people. It's especially tough on kids who are in foster homes or coming out of foster homes and now have to stand on their own as adults. They have been dealt a double dose of bad odds.  Take the case of Antaeus S., who politely sketched out his life to a group of businesspeople the other day. "It isn't easy being a foster kid because of the legality issues," he said. "You are a ward of the court."  And what do foster youths need? Antaeus will tell you it's not a handout or charity. It's simply this: "All we are looking for is opportunity."  The Foster Youth Employment Coalition is working on that: Finding job opportunities for foster kids and other disadvantaged youths.

Teen Pregnancy

After school program offers abstinence lessons
The Chronicle, North Carolina – December 1, 2012
The Goler Institute for Development & Education (GIDE) Youth Education Academy (YEA) is facilitating a series of classes about adolescent sexuality designed to encourage young people to delay sexual activity and reduce risky behavior.

Purdue outreach program helps support teen mothers
The Exponent, Indiana – December 2, 2012
Carrying babies to full-term as a teenage girl is something that should be supported but not glamorized, which is something that Purdue and the state are trying to accomplish.  Teenage pregnancy rates have continually decreased in the past 20 or more years, but many girls still deal with the issue of growing up while raising a child and completing their education simultaneously.