I’ve attended enough career workshops and business panels to know that in order to sell an idea, you have to craft a compelling story—not just about your project, but about yourself. Why do what you’re doing? And why you and not someone else? Yet I’ve also been reminded by people Read more…
My previous post gave an overview of two community centers that cater to at-risk youth, the Next Generation Center and the Academy. I really should have also mentioned The Door, which has welcomed New York City’s youth (ages of 12 to 21) to take advantage of its comprehensive services since Read more…
There are two community centers in New York City specifically designed to help at-risk youth (ages 14 to 24) make the transition to adulthood. One is the Next Generation Center (NGC), founded in 2005 by Lynne Echenberg with the Children’s Aid Society, and the other is The Academy, which opened Read more…
One of New York City’s more innovative educational programs benefiting youth in and emerging from foster care is Multiple Pathways to Graduation, an initiative designed to expand the options and resources available to youth between 16 and 21 (this informational packet says 15 to 21) who have already demonstrated difficulty in completing high school. These are the students whom the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation (OMPG) designates as “overage and undercredited”—those who are at least two years off-track relative to their age and credit accumulation toward a high school diploma. This population includes not only truants, but also students with learning disabilities, English language learners, teen mothers, and of course, foster youth. (The CEO has other programs designed specifically for youth who have fallen into the juvenile justice system.)
Bloomberg’s Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), whose mission it is to reduce poverty in the city (and which also implemented CUNY ASAP), established Multiple Pathways in close partnership with the DOE (then helmed by Joel Klein). The OMPG has discovered that a staggering 48% of incoming freshmen become overage and undercredited during high school. This is alarming, given that even students who come into high school well-prepared, but who run into problems and fall behind, graduate at lower rates. The following statistics are from 2007: “Only 19% of over-age and under-credited students ultimately receive a high school diploma or GED if they stay in high school; 6% of these graduates receive a Regents diploma, while 20% receive a GED.” The OMPG further estimates that there are “nearly 138,000 young adults between the ages of 16 and 21 in New York City who have dropped out of school or are significantly off-track for graduation. […] Of the 138,000 youth that are over-age and under-credited, 70,000 of them are in school, and 68,000 have already dropped out.” (Appendix B, 116)
As the name suggests, Multiple Pathways offers students, in addition to the option of re-enrolling in their high school of origin, a variety of alternative paths toward either a high school diploma or a GED, along with a career preparation component. The path the student ultimately takes depends on his/her age, credits already accumulated, schedule flexibility, and career goals. The options (especially for the GED programs) are a bit confusing, and they also seem to vary depending where you look for information, but I will summarize what I’ve gleaned so far below: (more…)
NYC Family Services Coordinator Maryanne Schretzman champions CUNY ASAP (Accelerated Study in Associate Programs) as one of the innovative programs that boost the educational outcomes of foster care youth by offering them “wraparound services.” Since its inception in the Fall of 2007, CUNY ASAP has already proven its effectiveness by Read more…
A handful of universities including Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago approached the Education Advisory Board with these three questions regarding services provided to foster youth at different colleges and universities:
- How are key support services for foster youth structured?
- What resources are available to help foster youth transition to life at the university (e.g., dedicated advisor, support group, etc.)
- How do other universities assist foster youth in facing specific challenges including applying for financial aid, buying textbooks and other peripherals, and finding a place to live during semester breaks?
The clients requested data from large public universities, but the board also contacted administrators at a community college in California, given the state’s system-wide commitment to foster youth in their community colleges, and also at Seattle University, which has the most comprehensive program nationwide for its attention to foster youth.
One of the teens on the youth panel yesterday mentioned his involvement in the SIMBA Brotherhood as what enabled him to begin having hope in his future and start caring about his education once more. I’ve been researching different youth programs to see what’s available and to whom and also Read more…
I consider the Rites of Passage workshop not only the centerpiece of my Coming of Age program but my entire Minds on Fire project because, intellectually, it was where I started when I first confronted the issue of how we get young people today to think about becoming adults. My Read more…