Education
School helps dropouts stay on path to graduate
The Union-Tribune - January 24, 2008
Each student crammed into the office suite on Bay Boulevard in Chula Vista ended up there because something went wrong. They’re all enrolled at what’s called the Bounce Back School, where students who dropped out of school report for three-hour daily sessions. They have two teachers who not only instruct them but also track them down when they’re truant. The Sweetwater Union High School District already had options for students who fall behind at traditional high schools. Each school has a learning center for small-group learning. Alternative campuses are sprinkled throughout Chula Vista. Independent-study programs allow student to progress at their own pace and check in regularly with a classroom teacher. A six-year-old charter school specializes in dropouts. The students at Bounce Back have already tried some of those options, and they didn’t work. So the Sweetwater district opened Bounce Back in August as an additional option for potential drop-ins. Its 105 students attend classes in four shifts. Teachers hover over them to help them absorb lessons or merely to keep them on task. Other adults help. A counselor comes in regularly. Another aide finds jobs for students. There’s the occasional visit from probation officers. Miguel Ruiz, whose job title is “recovery specialist” even makes house calls to recruit new students or to coax truants back in to Bounce Back.
Ohio education program targets at-risk high school freshman
The Plain Dealer – January 24, 2008
The boys – “at-risk,” in education parlance – attend 35 high schools in 13 districts across the state identified with alarmingly low graduation rates. The program is unique because it specifically targets freshmen boys who have at least one of the four risk factors for dropouts: they’re overage; they’ve failed two major courses in eighth grade; they’ve been suspended; or they have a record of low attendance. In Cleveland alone, 1, 800 young men fit that description. Every participating school has a state-funded coordinator in charge of the program. Every student is assigned an adult “personal motivator” who meets with him at least once every two weeks to encourage him to stay in school and earn enough credits to get to the next grade level. Each school also has a “graduation action team” made up of teachers, parents, clergy and people from social services and business. The team talks every two weeks and monitors progress. The program is part of Gov. Ted Strickland’s $20 million initiative to close the achievement gap and raise the graduation rates of students with the highest rates of failure. For the next two years, the state will spend about $1,500 on each of the students involved in the program.
Laptop program aims at dropout rate
Aiken Standard – January 26, 2008
Last week ninth graders at Midland Valley High School were given laptop computers as part of a pilot program to help decrease the number of dropouts. National figures show that in South Carolina as many as half of the students who enter ninth grade do not graduate within four years. The program at Midland Valley intends to keep students in school by making their education more interesting and more interactive. The laptops will allow them to learn in ways now available through the current technology and will allow students and teachers to interact on problems and opportunities that the laptops allow. At Midland Valley, the laptop program is dovetailing with Freshman Academy, a complementary program that pays special attention to the needs of ninth graders and their transition to high school from middle school. The new program with laptops will require time in order to determine if it is successful and could be utilized at other high schools.
Juvenile Justice
When students are suspects, lines blur
St. Petersburg Times - January 20, 2008
Florida police frequently skirt state and federal laws, or violate them outright, when questioning children at school, a St. Petersburg Times investigation has found. Often policy question juvenile suspects first, and leave the Miranda warning for later. In some cases they question kids at school and take t hem to jail without notifying the principal. Or they interrogate them as suspects before trying to notify their parents, in violation of state law. Even when police don’t cut legal corners, experts say the push to station officers in most middle and high schools has brought a raft of unintended consequences: blurred roles, unclear legal authority and a sharp increase in school arrests for minor infractions that could be handled out of court. And children are saddled with criminal records that can follow them for a lifetime.
Teens get judged by peers at new court
The Mercury News – January 21, 2008
Unlike a traditional court, Youth Court offenders, who are known as clients, admit guilt before coming to court. An adult volunteer judge presides, but the jury, defense and prosecuting attorneys are young people. The Youth Court, to be held the first Tuesday night of the month beginning in February, is an adjunct of the juvenile justice system that provides an alternative to the traditional process for teens accused of wrongdoing. Youth Court is intended to steer offenders out of trouble at the start. Participation in the program is voluntary, with referrals coming from school districts and police departments, as well as the Alameda County Probation Department. Youth Court proceedings will start with misdemeanor offenses such as shoplifting, graffiti and theft, said Kathy Coyle, co-director of youth programs. Eventually, the program could tackle more serious cases including minor drug and traffic offenses, but none of the cases will involve violence or weapons. When the program begins, its participants will be of high school age, but that could change; other similar court programs handle children as young as 12, Coyle said.
Foster Care
Expo report on how kids fare finds racial divide
IndyStar.com – January 26, 2008
Black children in Indiana are nearly twice as likely as other Hoosier youths to be identified as victims of abuse and neglect, according to a new report by Indiana Black Expo. The disparity in Indiana is part of a national trend and will be the focus of a new state commission that will meet for the first time Monday. IBE’s report found “black children are overrepresented at every point in the child welfare system, from investigates and out-of-home care to termination of parental rights.” The report, which examined 18 key topics, was released Friday with an analysis of the findings by WTLC radio host Amos Brown. IBE plans to make the report available to those who work with youths across the state so they can better understand the issues and look for opportunities to make positive changes, said spokeswoman Alpha Garrett. The disparity issue is particularly noticeable in the number of Indiana black children placed in out-of-home care: They are nearly four times as likely to be removed from their homes as are white youths, according to a 2004 report by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, which listed Indiana among 16 states with “extreme” black-white disparity rates. Only six states had a greater over-representation in their foster care system.
Wanted: Good homes for older kids
USA Today – January 20, 2008
Michael, 15, is a quiet boy who enjoys board games. He says ideally he would like a mother, father and siblings. Photos with descriptions like these of children looking for a home are showing up on websites, in magazines and at shopping center kiosks, as state child welfare agencies increasingly use marketing techniques to try to find permanent homes for thousands of children in foster or group homes. These marketing campaigns, which in many cases allow people to essentially shop for children, are crucial because older children are often harder to find homes for than newborns, says Erica Zielewski of The Urban Institute, an economic and social policy research group. According to Zielewski, adoptions from state child welfare systems have remained steady at about 50,000 a year since 2000 – leaving another 50,000 each year in foster or group homes. The average stay in foster care before a child is adopted is between three and four years, she says.
Scholarships support program for foster-care youth
WMU News – January 18, 2008
The members of one of the nation’s most underserved college-age populations will get help making their higher education dreams come true, thanks to a new scholarship and support initiative being launched at Western Michigan University this fall. WMU’s Foster Youth and Higher Education Initiative is an effort being launched in coordination with the Michigan Campus Compact and the Michigan Department of Human Services. The pilot program is designed to recruit and offer a support structure and financial aid for young people who have aged out of foster care and who qualify for admission or transfer to WMU. While the intent is to target Michigan’s foster care youth, the program is open to qualified students from any state. The initiative will create a community of scholars among WMU students who grew up in foster care and will attempt to fill the unique support needs that exist for the students who have no adult mentors and no permanent home outside their college residence and who have specialized legal, medical, counseling and financial needs. The goal will be to help foster youth, who age out of care between the ages of 18 and 20, make the transition to adulthood through higher education.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
This Week's News: Youth in Transition
Education
Site To Clue Kids In About College
Hartford Courant – January 18, 2008
A website launched Thursday by a coalition of schools, state agencies and community groups tries to take the mystery out of applying for college and lining up financial aid. The site named KnowHow2Go, was announced at Bellizzi Middle School in Hartford by state Commissioner of Higher Education Valerie Lewis. The website tackles myths such as the perception that extracurricular activities can make up for poor grades and that only students with the very best grades land financial aid and scholarships. The website helps high school students browse Connecticut’s 47 colleges, choose the right college-prep courses to take, learn which entrance exams to take, and prepare for questions they’ll see on college applications. It even gives students a way to ask questions of the commissioner’s office. The website also gives students and parents links to a national website and similar websites in other states to access information about colleges outside Connecticut.
Strategy Aimed at Curbing Dropouts
The Day.com – January 20, 2008
Engaging students – and on a bigger scale, keeping students in school – was the school’s motivation behind introducing offerings like the hip-hop class last semester as alternatives to standard courses such as English 9 or U.S. History. “Those courses have all the same skills. It’s just that the content of those – the reading list, or the writing assignments – are lined to things that are greater interest to them than the (traditional) course,” said Daniel Sullivan, the school’s principal. Sullivan asked teachers to come up with ideas for new classes as part of an effort to reduce the school’s dropout rate, a task he was given when he was hired in July 2006. Sullivan outlined several strategies to combat the dropout problem in a Jan. 10 report to the Board of Education. Strategies include enforcing attendance rules, allowing students to make up credits through an online academy, engaging students through athletics and after-school activities and creating a program specifically to help freshman feel welcome. The strategies have not immediately lowered the number of dropouts, but the principal said they have helped lower the number of failing grades among the student body. A reduction in failing grades is a goal because “if you’re not passing, your odds of dropping out are greatly increased," Sullivan said.
This Bus Is Plugged In
U.S News & World Report – January 10, 2008
For the children of Grapevine, Ark., a rural town 60 miles outside Little Rock, the long, bumpy commute to school on bus No. 46 is anything but ordinary. That’s because they are solving math and science problems with teachers and university professors live via the internet. It’s what Vanderbilt University medicine, biochemistry, and pathology Prof. Billy Hudson describes as a virtual schoolhouse on wheels. The Wi-Fi technology that allows kids on the bus to connect to the internet is similar to the kind used by recreational vehicles. The bus looks no different from the others in the school district fleet, except for a cellular router and rooftop antenna that are secured to the vehicle. The online courses in pre-algebra, algebra 1, and Advanced Placement biology are offered through a private company, Aventa Learning. By making the school in essence longer and offering advanced courses online, the Hudsons hope these rural students arrive at college better prepared. The Husdsons are applying for two federal grants to expand the program to Tennessee and add other amenities to the buses such as individual lighting, power outlets, and projection screens.
Juvenile Justice
GPS technology to help monitor state juveniles
Baltimore Sun – January 12, 2008
Gov. Martin O’Malley announced yesterday a high-tech monitoring system for juvenile offenders based on Global Positioning System technology, which would enable police officers to track the exact movements of 200 of Baltimore’s most troubled youth. The monitoring program would be used to track offenders, who are mostly 13- to 17-years-old and who are on probation or enrolled in aftercare services or the Operation Safe Kids program. It is limited to those offenders who are identified as most at risk of committing violent crimes. The system would feed real-time information to a newly created unit at the juvenile services department on an offender’s whereabouts, altering the unit when he or she is not in school at the appropriate time or when a juvenile enters high-crime areas that are restricted under probation agreements.
Tales From A Trial
Metro Active – January 16, 2008
Karim Noble’s journey through the Santa Clara County courts has shown all the signs of a juvenile justice system in crisis. And with resources stretched to the limit, that crisis is likely to get a lot worse. Juvenile incarceration rates have ballooned in Santa Clara County at unprecedented rates and impacting the system for beyond what it is equipped to deal with. This clogging of the court machinery puts an emphasis on speed that calls into question the guarantee of a fair trial, even with the most well-meaning attorneys.
Foster Care
More than 1,500 foster children find a “forever family”
The Star-Ledger – January 15, 2008
More than 1,500 foster children in New Jersey were adopted last year, setting a state record and exceeding a goal set by a federal monitor, Children and Families Commissioner Kevin Ryan announced yesterday. The record was set after the state essentially re-created specialized adoption teams that were dismantled in the early stages of child welfare reform. That decision, part of the original blueprint for the court-ordered reform, was followed by a decline in the number of adoptions by nearly 15 percent in 2005. After he was appointed by Gov. Jon Corzine in January 2006, Ryan reconstituted the adoption offices and created special teams to help complete the necessary home evaluations and paperwork for the children who had waited the longest. The teams also helped reduce the number of cases per worker. By completing 1,540 adoptions last year, the state topped its previous record, set in 2004, by 122. It’s also 140 more than what the state promised a federal monitor overseeing reforms that settled a lawsuit charging New Jersey was not protecting foster children.
Bill would encourage visits among split-up siblings
Indy Star – January 15, 2008
Some Indiana lawmakers want to change that system to encourage more contact between siblings and to allow children to request visits when possible. Bill sponsor Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, noted that sibling bonds are often the longest-lasting relationships people have. The bill, which has yet to have a hearing in the legislature, would allow children in foster care to request visits if it is in their best interests. If the Department of Children Services denies a visit request, the child or a specially appointed advocate could petition a juvenile court to intervene.
Site To Clue Kids In About College
Hartford Courant – January 18, 2008
A website launched Thursday by a coalition of schools, state agencies and community groups tries to take the mystery out of applying for college and lining up financial aid. The site named KnowHow2Go, was announced at Bellizzi Middle School in Hartford by state Commissioner of Higher Education Valerie Lewis. The website tackles myths such as the perception that extracurricular activities can make up for poor grades and that only students with the very best grades land financial aid and scholarships. The website helps high school students browse Connecticut’s 47 colleges, choose the right college-prep courses to take, learn which entrance exams to take, and prepare for questions they’ll see on college applications. It even gives students a way to ask questions of the commissioner’s office. The website also gives students and parents links to a national website and similar websites in other states to access information about colleges outside Connecticut.
Strategy Aimed at Curbing Dropouts
The Day.com – January 20, 2008
Engaging students – and on a bigger scale, keeping students in school – was the school’s motivation behind introducing offerings like the hip-hop class last semester as alternatives to standard courses such as English 9 or U.S. History. “Those courses have all the same skills. It’s just that the content of those – the reading list, or the writing assignments – are lined to things that are greater interest to them than the (traditional) course,” said Daniel Sullivan, the school’s principal. Sullivan asked teachers to come up with ideas for new classes as part of an effort to reduce the school’s dropout rate, a task he was given when he was hired in July 2006. Sullivan outlined several strategies to combat the dropout problem in a Jan. 10 report to the Board of Education. Strategies include enforcing attendance rules, allowing students to make up credits through an online academy, engaging students through athletics and after-school activities and creating a program specifically to help freshman feel welcome. The strategies have not immediately lowered the number of dropouts, but the principal said they have helped lower the number of failing grades among the student body. A reduction in failing grades is a goal because “if you’re not passing, your odds of dropping out are greatly increased," Sullivan said.
This Bus Is Plugged In
U.S News & World Report – January 10, 2008
For the children of Grapevine, Ark., a rural town 60 miles outside Little Rock, the long, bumpy commute to school on bus No. 46 is anything but ordinary. That’s because they are solving math and science problems with teachers and university professors live via the internet. It’s what Vanderbilt University medicine, biochemistry, and pathology Prof. Billy Hudson describes as a virtual schoolhouse on wheels. The Wi-Fi technology that allows kids on the bus to connect to the internet is similar to the kind used by recreational vehicles. The bus looks no different from the others in the school district fleet, except for a cellular router and rooftop antenna that are secured to the vehicle. The online courses in pre-algebra, algebra 1, and Advanced Placement biology are offered through a private company, Aventa Learning. By making the school in essence longer and offering advanced courses online, the Hudsons hope these rural students arrive at college better prepared. The Husdsons are applying for two federal grants to expand the program to Tennessee and add other amenities to the buses such as individual lighting, power outlets, and projection screens.
Juvenile Justice
GPS technology to help monitor state juveniles
Baltimore Sun – January 12, 2008
Gov. Martin O’Malley announced yesterday a high-tech monitoring system for juvenile offenders based on Global Positioning System technology, which would enable police officers to track the exact movements of 200 of Baltimore’s most troubled youth. The monitoring program would be used to track offenders, who are mostly 13- to 17-years-old and who are on probation or enrolled in aftercare services or the Operation Safe Kids program. It is limited to those offenders who are identified as most at risk of committing violent crimes. The system would feed real-time information to a newly created unit at the juvenile services department on an offender’s whereabouts, altering the unit when he or she is not in school at the appropriate time or when a juvenile enters high-crime areas that are restricted under probation agreements.
Tales From A Trial
Metro Active – January 16, 2008
Karim Noble’s journey through the Santa Clara County courts has shown all the signs of a juvenile justice system in crisis. And with resources stretched to the limit, that crisis is likely to get a lot worse. Juvenile incarceration rates have ballooned in Santa Clara County at unprecedented rates and impacting the system for beyond what it is equipped to deal with. This clogging of the court machinery puts an emphasis on speed that calls into question the guarantee of a fair trial, even with the most well-meaning attorneys.
Foster Care
More than 1,500 foster children find a “forever family”
The Star-Ledger – January 15, 2008
More than 1,500 foster children in New Jersey were adopted last year, setting a state record and exceeding a goal set by a federal monitor, Children and Families Commissioner Kevin Ryan announced yesterday. The record was set after the state essentially re-created specialized adoption teams that were dismantled in the early stages of child welfare reform. That decision, part of the original blueprint for the court-ordered reform, was followed by a decline in the number of adoptions by nearly 15 percent in 2005. After he was appointed by Gov. Jon Corzine in January 2006, Ryan reconstituted the adoption offices and created special teams to help complete the necessary home evaluations and paperwork for the children who had waited the longest. The teams also helped reduce the number of cases per worker. By completing 1,540 adoptions last year, the state topped its previous record, set in 2004, by 122. It’s also 140 more than what the state promised a federal monitor overseeing reforms that settled a lawsuit charging New Jersey was not protecting foster children.
Bill would encourage visits among split-up siblings
Indy Star – January 15, 2008
Some Indiana lawmakers want to change that system to encourage more contact between siblings and to allow children to request visits when possible. Bill sponsor Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, noted that sibling bonds are often the longest-lasting relationships people have. The bill, which has yet to have a hearing in the legislature, would allow children in foster care to request visits if it is in their best interests. If the Department of Children Services denies a visit request, the child or a specially appointed advocate could petition a juvenile court to intervene.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
This Week's News: Youth in Transition
Education
Court Revives Lawsuit Against No Child Left Behind Law
The New York Times – January 8, 2008
A federal appeals court on Monday revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind education law, saying that school districts have been justified in complaining that the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money. The 2-to-1 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, gave new life to a 2005 lawsuit and appeared to be a setback to the Bush administration. School districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont joined with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, in their 2005 lawsuit. In it, they argued that Ms. Spellings had violated the United States Constitution in enacting the law by requiring states and school districts to spend local money to administer standardized tests and to meet other federal requirements. The suit was built in part around a paragraph in the law that says no state or district can be forced to spend its money on expenses the federal government has not covered.
Set bar higher on dropout rates
The Virginian-Pilot – January 12, 2008
Virginia has taken a lonely stand in the struggle to reduce high school dropouts, establishing an acceptable graduation rate as a condition of accreditation. Few states have dared embrace such high-stakes measures, making Virginia a national pioneer in the field of school accountability. The aim of all of this is to identify students most in danger of dropping out in early grades, and to give extra attention needed to keep them moving ahead in life, instead of falling behind. The Board of Education will spend the next several months dissecting and seeking public comments on a target of all high schools to achieve an 80 percent graduation rate.
Juvenile Justice
Fight against youth violence gets 2nd front
StarTribune.com – January 7, 2008
Minneapolis’s campaign against youth violence is about to his a higher gear. While police are finding success with their innovative strategy to reduce juvenile violence, a diverse committee is rolling out a plan to prevent the cycle from repeating. Today, Mayor R.T. Rybak will unveil the group’s 34 recommendations to the City Council. They range from developing more mentoring programs to conducting “bold door-to-door” street outreach. Some of the ideas could have an immediate impact, such as the creation of a hot line to give young people a confidential way to report trouble or seek help. The blueprint targets those ages 8 to 17 who face factors that place them at higher risk to commit a crime or be a victim. They include people bought to the juvenile center for curfew or truancy violations, gang members or those in an unstable family situation.
Neighborhood Accountability Boards offer a second chance
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – January 10, 2008
St. Louis – The girl anxiously tapped her bright pink fingernails on the folding table that separated the 15-year-old from her fate. She had stolen seven t-shirts from a Wal-Mart in August. But because she was a first-time offender, she was offered a chance to stay out of the court system and keep her record clean. To do so, she had to appear in the fellowship hall of Friendship Baptist Church, where a group of neighbors would determine her punishment. But first, they wanted an explanation. Shortly after the shoplifting, the girl’s mother was told about neighborhood boards, an initiative the juvenile division of St. Louis City Family Court started four years ago. The purpose is to provide a grass-roots alternative to juvenile detention. So far, the results are encouraging. From November 2003 to last June, the neighborhood boards have considered 212 juvenile cases. Of those, 14 percent of the offenders got into trouble again, compared with 30 percent who go through the court system.
Foster Care
Foster kids ill-prepared for adulthood
Miami Herald – January 5, 2008
In southern Sarasota, nearly one in four former foster kids is homeless. In St. Augustine, fewer than one in 10 foster children age 17 is performing at grade level. And in Miami, Tampa and Daytona Beach, fewer than one in four 17-year-old foster kids passed Florida’s high-stakes standardized assessment test. These are some of the findings of a recent survey of children age 13 to 23 in state care designed to gauge Florida’s success in preparing older foster children were interviewed during the survey, which also included a review of state records. Child welfare administrators and children’s advocates who have seen the report say it confirms long-standing fears that Florida has done a poor job of preparing foster children for the demands of adulthood and independence.
New York Life Foundation Grants $748,000 to Child Welfare League of America
PNN Online – January 11, 1008
The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) announced today that it was awarded a three-year, $748,000 grant from the New York Life Foundation to expand its mentoring program, Fostering Healthy Connections, to eight CWLA member agencies nationally. The curriculum of the mentoring program is the only one developed specifically to involve former foster youth as mentors for those who are currently in the foster care system. The curriculum was created in collaboration with FosterClub, a nonprofit organization with expertise working with foster care youth as a result of New York Life Foundation’s 2005 grant to CWLA. The program is expanding to eight agencies located in Schenectady and Stony Brook, New York; Des Moines, Iwoa; Peoria, Illinois; Melbourne, Florida; Holmes, Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; and East Providence, Rhode Island.
Court Revives Lawsuit Against No Child Left Behind Law
The New York Times – January 8, 2008
A federal appeals court on Monday revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind education law, saying that school districts have been justified in complaining that the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money. The 2-to-1 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, gave new life to a 2005 lawsuit and appeared to be a setback to the Bush administration. School districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont joined with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, in their 2005 lawsuit. In it, they argued that Ms. Spellings had violated the United States Constitution in enacting the law by requiring states and school districts to spend local money to administer standardized tests and to meet other federal requirements. The suit was built in part around a paragraph in the law that says no state or district can be forced to spend its money on expenses the federal government has not covered.
Set bar higher on dropout rates
The Virginian-Pilot – January 12, 2008
Virginia has taken a lonely stand in the struggle to reduce high school dropouts, establishing an acceptable graduation rate as a condition of accreditation. Few states have dared embrace such high-stakes measures, making Virginia a national pioneer in the field of school accountability. The aim of all of this is to identify students most in danger of dropping out in early grades, and to give extra attention needed to keep them moving ahead in life, instead of falling behind. The Board of Education will spend the next several months dissecting and seeking public comments on a target of all high schools to achieve an 80 percent graduation rate.
Juvenile Justice
Fight against youth violence gets 2nd front
StarTribune.com – January 7, 2008
Minneapolis’s campaign against youth violence is about to his a higher gear. While police are finding success with their innovative strategy to reduce juvenile violence, a diverse committee is rolling out a plan to prevent the cycle from repeating. Today, Mayor R.T. Rybak will unveil the group’s 34 recommendations to the City Council. They range from developing more mentoring programs to conducting “bold door-to-door” street outreach. Some of the ideas could have an immediate impact, such as the creation of a hot line to give young people a confidential way to report trouble or seek help. The blueprint targets those ages 8 to 17 who face factors that place them at higher risk to commit a crime or be a victim. They include people bought to the juvenile center for curfew or truancy violations, gang members or those in an unstable family situation.
Neighborhood Accountability Boards offer a second chance
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – January 10, 2008
St. Louis – The girl anxiously tapped her bright pink fingernails on the folding table that separated the 15-year-old from her fate. She had stolen seven t-shirts from a Wal-Mart in August. But because she was a first-time offender, she was offered a chance to stay out of the court system and keep her record clean. To do so, she had to appear in the fellowship hall of Friendship Baptist Church, where a group of neighbors would determine her punishment. But first, they wanted an explanation. Shortly after the shoplifting, the girl’s mother was told about neighborhood boards, an initiative the juvenile division of St. Louis City Family Court started four years ago. The purpose is to provide a grass-roots alternative to juvenile detention. So far, the results are encouraging. From November 2003 to last June, the neighborhood boards have considered 212 juvenile cases. Of those, 14 percent of the offenders got into trouble again, compared with 30 percent who go through the court system.
Foster Care
Foster kids ill-prepared for adulthood
Miami Herald – January 5, 2008
In southern Sarasota, nearly one in four former foster kids is homeless. In St. Augustine, fewer than one in 10 foster children age 17 is performing at grade level. And in Miami, Tampa and Daytona Beach, fewer than one in four 17-year-old foster kids passed Florida’s high-stakes standardized assessment test. These are some of the findings of a recent survey of children age 13 to 23 in state care designed to gauge Florida’s success in preparing older foster children were interviewed during the survey, which also included a review of state records. Child welfare administrators and children’s advocates who have seen the report say it confirms long-standing fears that Florida has done a poor job of preparing foster children for the demands of adulthood and independence.
New York Life Foundation Grants $748,000 to Child Welfare League of America
PNN Online – January 11, 1008
The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) announced today that it was awarded a three-year, $748,000 grant from the New York Life Foundation to expand its mentoring program, Fostering Healthy Connections, to eight CWLA member agencies nationally. The curriculum of the mentoring program is the only one developed specifically to involve former foster youth as mentors for those who are currently in the foster care system. The curriculum was created in collaboration with FosterClub, a nonprofit organization with expertise working with foster care youth as a result of New York Life Foundation’s 2005 grant to CWLA. The program is expanding to eight agencies located in Schenectady and Stony Brook, New York; Des Moines, Iwoa; Peoria, Illinois; Melbourne, Florida; Holmes, Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; and East Providence, Rhode Island.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
This Week's News: Youth in Transition
Education
Baltimore’s “innovation schools" yield higher test scores
USA Today – December 19, 2007
The five-year effort to break Baltimore’s big high schools into smaller, more autonomous schools seems to be paying off with better academic results and attendance, offering new evidence backing a reform that has stalled nationwide in recent years. An analysis released this week by the Washington-based Urban Institute finds that scores on required math and English tests in the city’s six “innovation schools” are higher than those of students in larger comprehensive schools, neighborhood schools and other schools, even after controlling the skill levels before entering high school. On average, innovation high school students score 14 to 30 points higher on a scale from 240 to 650. The schools also offer more supportive environments, and innovation school students go to school 16 to 40 days more a year than other students.
Poor neighborhoods hurt students more than low income, study finds
Chicago Tribune – December 19, 2007
The isolation and limitations imposed by a poor neighborhood do more damage to a child’s verbal and cognitive skills than does a family’s low income, according to a new study. Researchers found that children in Chicago who spend most of their lives in segregated, low-income communities posted lower verbal scores than did children who lived in better communities. This was true whether the children’s families were low- or middle-income. And youngsters who moved into these segregated, troubled communities saw their progress slip, suggesting that the neighborhood social problems – violence, segregation and lack of good schools – are the roots of the problem. The study revealed that living in a disadvantaged community for at least two years lowered verbal test scores by about four IQ points, roughly the equivalent of one year of school. The educational landscape is filled with research that shows low-income students perform poorly on academic measures. The new research is one of the first to tie the performance not to poverty, but to the corrosive nature of at-risk communities.
Study ties dropouts to violent crime rate
The Fresno Bee – January 2, 2008
Boosting high school graduation rates could prevent more than 700 assaults and 15 murders in Fresno County each year, a new study contends. Sponsored by a group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, which is made up of 350 California law enforcement officials and thousands more nationwide, the report argues for a connection between dropout rates and crimes. Report authors called the dropout crisis a “silent epidemic” that hasn’t attracted enough attention. High school dropouts across the country are 3 ½ times more likely to be arrested than graduates, and 68% of prison inmates don’t have high school diplomas, the report contended. The report advocated that high schools establish “small learning communities” in which students stay connected to a single teacher and a group of classmates for the duration of the program. Exemplary programs include First Things First and School Transitional Environment Project, which have worked well to combat poor academic performance and student dropouts, the report said.
Juvenile Justice
Mo. tries new approach on teen offenders
Rocky Mountain News – December 29, 2007
This is Missouri, a place where teen offenders are viewed not just as inmates but as works in progress – where troubled kids are rehabilitated in small, homelike settings that stress group therapy and personal development over isolation and punishment. With prisons around the country filled to bursting, and with states desperate for ways to bring down recidivism rates that rise to 70 and 80 percent, some policymakers are taking a fresh look at treatment-oriented approaches like Missouri’s as a way out of America’s juvenile justice crisis. Here, large, prison-style “gladiator schools” have been abandoned in favor of 42 community-based centers spread around the state so that now, even parents of inner-city offenders can easily visit their children and participate in family therapy. Missouri doesn’t set timetables for release; children stay until they demonstrate a fundamental shift in character – a policy that detainees say gives kids an added incentive to take the program seriously. Those who are let out don’t go unwatched: College students or other volunteers who live in the released youths’ community track these youths for three years, helping with job placement, therapy referrals, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment.
Juvenile system tries not to lock ‘em up, toss key
Dayton Daily News – December 30, 2007
Under Juvenile Judges Nick Kuntz and Anthony Capizzi, the philosophy of the Montgomery County juvenile justice system is to identify the underlying issues that cause the behavior problems exhibited by children. The local juvenile court locks up older, more serious youthful offenders when the judges and 14 magistrates think incarceration is appropriate, but many youths are funneled into programs designed to try to turn them around with counseling and other services to the youth and to their families. Much of the work to determine the best path through the system for each individual child is handled by the intervention center, an operation court officials say is one of a kind. The center is the first stop for youths entering the system, and center staffers do rapid assessments of the offenders to outline what combination of punishments and support services are called for. Judge Kuntz said the intervention center allows the court to assess youth offenders quickly and to avoid incarcerating youths who don’t really need to be locked up. Kuntz said the center gains additional efficiency by combining juvenile court, detention and probation operations that had been spread among several buildings.
Foster Care
Aging out of foster care
Minnesota Public Radio – December 12, 2007
Each year 24,000 American teenagers in foster care leave their foster families or group homes and try to make it on their own. It’s called “aging out.” A study released Wednesday shows that foster teens do better if they stay in care until they’re 21. The study says when kids stay in foster care longer, they’re more likely to go to college. They have higher incomes. The young women are less likely to become pregnant. Kids who leave foster care at 18 are more likely to be unemployed or poor. Many will be homeless or become victims of violence. “The most important resource that you have during the transition to adulthood is the family, willing to provide economic support, emotional support, etc,” says Mark Courtney, a professor at the University of Washington. “Many of these young people don’t have that kind of support, or it’s even a threat to them.” “You’re not going to be independent at the age of 18,” Courtney says. “All the sort of major markers of what we associate with the transition to adulthood are happening later in life.” Most young people today depend on their parents well into their 20s. Courtney says the state is acting as a parent for foster kids, and it shouldn’t cut them off when they turn 18.
Foster youths form group to lobby for improvements
Ventura County Star – December 26, 2007
Former and current foster youths in Ventura County have formed an organization to lobby for improvements in the system overseeing children when they are removed from their parents; home because of abuse or neglect. As a newly approved chapter of the California Youth Connection, the group plans to participate in a three-day trip to Sacramento in January. The youths expect to be trained in how to work with legislators and then meet with them and discuss bills they would like to see passed. Raquel Montes, a leader in the local chapter, said one major concern is extending the age at which foster children are expected to live on their own to 21. Currently youths are expected to support themselves at 18, or 19 if they are still in their last year of high school. The state funds programs that provide transitional living housing for a limited number of foster youths, but they serve only a fraction of the teenagers who are emancipated from the system each year.
Baltimore’s “innovation schools" yield higher test scores
USA Today – December 19, 2007
The five-year effort to break Baltimore’s big high schools into smaller, more autonomous schools seems to be paying off with better academic results and attendance, offering new evidence backing a reform that has stalled nationwide in recent years. An analysis released this week by the Washington-based Urban Institute finds that scores on required math and English tests in the city’s six “innovation schools” are higher than those of students in larger comprehensive schools, neighborhood schools and other schools, even after controlling the skill levels before entering high school. On average, innovation high school students score 14 to 30 points higher on a scale from 240 to 650. The schools also offer more supportive environments, and innovation school students go to school 16 to 40 days more a year than other students.
Poor neighborhoods hurt students more than low income, study finds
Chicago Tribune – December 19, 2007
The isolation and limitations imposed by a poor neighborhood do more damage to a child’s verbal and cognitive skills than does a family’s low income, according to a new study. Researchers found that children in Chicago who spend most of their lives in segregated, low-income communities posted lower verbal scores than did children who lived in better communities. This was true whether the children’s families were low- or middle-income. And youngsters who moved into these segregated, troubled communities saw their progress slip, suggesting that the neighborhood social problems – violence, segregation and lack of good schools – are the roots of the problem. The study revealed that living in a disadvantaged community for at least two years lowered verbal test scores by about four IQ points, roughly the equivalent of one year of school. The educational landscape is filled with research that shows low-income students perform poorly on academic measures. The new research is one of the first to tie the performance not to poverty, but to the corrosive nature of at-risk communities.
Study ties dropouts to violent crime rate
The Fresno Bee – January 2, 2008
Boosting high school graduation rates could prevent more than 700 assaults and 15 murders in Fresno County each year, a new study contends. Sponsored by a group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, which is made up of 350 California law enforcement officials and thousands more nationwide, the report argues for a connection between dropout rates and crimes. Report authors called the dropout crisis a “silent epidemic” that hasn’t attracted enough attention. High school dropouts across the country are 3 ½ times more likely to be arrested than graduates, and 68% of prison inmates don’t have high school diplomas, the report contended. The report advocated that high schools establish “small learning communities” in which students stay connected to a single teacher and a group of classmates for the duration of the program. Exemplary programs include First Things First and School Transitional Environment Project, which have worked well to combat poor academic performance and student dropouts, the report said.
Juvenile Justice
Mo. tries new approach on teen offenders
Rocky Mountain News – December 29, 2007
This is Missouri, a place where teen offenders are viewed not just as inmates but as works in progress – where troubled kids are rehabilitated in small, homelike settings that stress group therapy and personal development over isolation and punishment. With prisons around the country filled to bursting, and with states desperate for ways to bring down recidivism rates that rise to 70 and 80 percent, some policymakers are taking a fresh look at treatment-oriented approaches like Missouri’s as a way out of America’s juvenile justice crisis. Here, large, prison-style “gladiator schools” have been abandoned in favor of 42 community-based centers spread around the state so that now, even parents of inner-city offenders can easily visit their children and participate in family therapy. Missouri doesn’t set timetables for release; children stay until they demonstrate a fundamental shift in character – a policy that detainees say gives kids an added incentive to take the program seriously. Those who are let out don’t go unwatched: College students or other volunteers who live in the released youths’ community track these youths for three years, helping with job placement, therapy referrals, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment.
Juvenile system tries not to lock ‘em up, toss key
Dayton Daily News – December 30, 2007
Under Juvenile Judges Nick Kuntz and Anthony Capizzi, the philosophy of the Montgomery County juvenile justice system is to identify the underlying issues that cause the behavior problems exhibited by children. The local juvenile court locks up older, more serious youthful offenders when the judges and 14 magistrates think incarceration is appropriate, but many youths are funneled into programs designed to try to turn them around with counseling and other services to the youth and to their families. Much of the work to determine the best path through the system for each individual child is handled by the intervention center, an operation court officials say is one of a kind. The center is the first stop for youths entering the system, and center staffers do rapid assessments of the offenders to outline what combination of punishments and support services are called for. Judge Kuntz said the intervention center allows the court to assess youth offenders quickly and to avoid incarcerating youths who don’t really need to be locked up. Kuntz said the center gains additional efficiency by combining juvenile court, detention and probation operations that had been spread among several buildings.
Foster Care
Aging out of foster care
Minnesota Public Radio – December 12, 2007
Each year 24,000 American teenagers in foster care leave their foster families or group homes and try to make it on their own. It’s called “aging out.” A study released Wednesday shows that foster teens do better if they stay in care until they’re 21. The study says when kids stay in foster care longer, they’re more likely to go to college. They have higher incomes. The young women are less likely to become pregnant. Kids who leave foster care at 18 are more likely to be unemployed or poor. Many will be homeless or become victims of violence. “The most important resource that you have during the transition to adulthood is the family, willing to provide economic support, emotional support, etc,” says Mark Courtney, a professor at the University of Washington. “Many of these young people don’t have that kind of support, or it’s even a threat to them.” “You’re not going to be independent at the age of 18,” Courtney says. “All the sort of major markers of what we associate with the transition to adulthood are happening later in life.” Most young people today depend on their parents well into their 20s. Courtney says the state is acting as a parent for foster kids, and it shouldn’t cut them off when they turn 18.
Foster youths form group to lobby for improvements
Ventura County Star – December 26, 2007
Former and current foster youths in Ventura County have formed an organization to lobby for improvements in the system overseeing children when they are removed from their parents; home because of abuse or neglect. As a newly approved chapter of the California Youth Connection, the group plans to participate in a three-day trip to Sacramento in January. The youths expect to be trained in how to work with legislators and then meet with them and discuss bills they would like to see passed. Raquel Montes, a leader in the local chapter, said one major concern is extending the age at which foster children are expected to live on their own to 21. Currently youths are expected to support themselves at 18, or 19 if they are still in their last year of high school. The state funds programs that provide transitional living housing for a limited number of foster youths, but they serve only a fraction of the teenagers who are emancipated from the system each year.
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