Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind

Last week, the House passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (S.1177) by a vote of 369 to 64. This week, the Senate followed suit and passed the bill by a 85-12 vote. Once it is signed into law by the President, this bill will replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 through FY 2020.

The compromise legislation, drawn up in conference from both the House and Senate versions, shows promise of final enactment thanks to bipartisan provisions addressing the key goals of both Republicans and Democrats. The bill appeals to Republicans for its limitations on the role of the federal government and to Democrats for its efforts to protect low-income and minority students. At a time when all things political feel divisive, efforts to collaborate and compromise are refreshing.

Congress approves rewrite of No Child Left Behind via @ajc https://t.co/Oo17PUOiqI #NCLB

— Youth Today (@YouthToday) December 9, 2015

So what does this mean for the state of education nationally; and how will this affect the education landscape of the District? 

Coordinated Entry: Boot Camp and 100-Day Challenge

This week homeless youth advocates went to boot camp.  There wasn’t a lot of yelling and push-ups, but there was sweat-inducing policy planning and some ice breakers that got a little intense.  

On Monday and Tuesday, along with the Interagency Council on Homelessness and Community Solutions, DCAYA co-hosted a DC policy boot camp on coordinated intake and referrals for homeless youth.  Participants came from Office of State Superintendent of Education, DC Public Schools, Department of Behavioral Health, Department of Human Services, Children and Family Services Agency, Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, The Community Partnership, Latin American Youth Center, Sasha Bruce Youthbuild, Wanda Alston House, and Covenant House.  Together, they mapped out a working plan to build a District-wide, coordinated entry system for unaccompanied homeless youth. 

Coordinated entry is a system where a homeless youth can show up at any “front door” government agency or community-based organization, be assessed by a standardized assessment tool, and then be referred in a standardized way to best-fit programs.  It sounds simple, but it is actually really difficult to get all the pieces in place to make this process work.  

Think about it, dozens of government agencies and community-based organizations, each with their own requirements and missions, have to come together to select and hone a standardized assessment tool.  They have to change their current referral protocols and habits to a semi-standardized referral protocol based off the chosen assessment tool.  They have to create and maintain a living database that shows available housing slots and service slots. Then they have to figure out what happens when a youth is assessed and referred, but there are not enough services for them.  And those are just a few of the challenges.

That’s why the boot camp model doesn’t end after the two-day planning period.  Now starts the 100-day challenge to implement the work plan.  DCAYA and its fellow participants have only 100 days to make coordinated entry happen. This is a very rapid timeline, meant to keep the momentum going to bust through the obstacles that have kept coordinated entry from happening in the past.

This 100-challenge is nationally historic.  While this model has been very successful in implementing coordinated entry for adults, this is the very first time it will be attempted for unaccompanied homeless youth.  The unaccompanied homeless youth system presents more challenges than the adult side: stricter privacy laws, mandatory reporting laws, working with the 18-24 age group that is often mis-resourced, etc.  But we know DC is ready for this challenge.  

DCAYA has been chosen as the lead organization for this challenge.  We are slightly daunted by the massive amount of work that we are facing over the next 100 days, but we know it is worth it.  It will be incredibly rewarding to collaborate with hard-working, creative, compassionate people from government agencies and community-based organizations. Our youth deserve a coordinated entry system when they come to us for help, and we are going to make it happen.

Katie Dunn is the youth homelessness and expanded learning policy analyst for DCAYA.  She is listening to Rocky pump-up music to get through this 100-day challenge.

DC is Ripe for the Picking When it Comes to Reconnecting Disconnected Youth

DCAYA is pleased to announce that our report, Ripe for the Picking: Opportunities for Private Investment to Affect Disconnected Youth in Washington, DC, has been enthusiastically received by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. This report reflects the research done to date on this population as well as an overview of the policy and public funding landscape that currently exists for disconnected youth in the District of Columbia. In recognition of its publication we are providing here an overview of what this report is about: disconnected youth in DC.

“Disconnected” simply means youth that are neither in school nor working… NOT connected to school or work. Experts agree youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not doing either of these things are at an extreme risk of not growing into productive members of society. We would like to think that between the ages of 16 and 24 most people are finishing high school, entering college and transitioning into first jobs (likely with a few stints in part-time employment opportunities such as a summer job or working a few hours a week after class). However, this is becoming the road less travelled for large segments of the population, especially economically disadvantaged and system-involved youth. Granted some alternative options have become available to youth who deviate from the “normal” path that, if navigated correctly, re-engage and re-connect young people to education and employment, but as illustrated by the persistence of disconnection in communities across the country these options are not always enough to allow re-connection for large numbers of youth.

Greater Washington Research at the Brookings Institution recently analyzed 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) data and found that a total of 85,000 youth between the ages of 16 and 24 lived in the District. About 28,000 of those youth lived in households with an income less than 200% of the federal poverty level and had not achieved a bachelor’s degree or higher. Of that 28,000, nearly 9,000 were not in school and were unemployed or not in the labor force or looking for work. That means one in 10 youth aged 16 to 24 were neither in school nor working. For low-income youth without a bachelor’s degree that number rose to one in three.[i] To make matters worse, that ACS data was from 2009. The fallout from the recession has continued for the past two years here in the District and young people have been one of the groups most affected by its effects such as high-unemployment and increased rates of poverty.[ii] Although we don’t yet have 2011 ACS data to analyze it is highly likely that the number of out-of-school, out-of-work youth in the District today is even higher than the numbers from 2009.

Long story short: disconnected youth in DC are a major problem.

We know from years of practice and research that young people need proper support to grow into healthy and productive adults, and disconnected youth are no exception to that rule. However, if you read our report (abridged version attached) you’ll notice that at present, supports targeted towards disconnected youth are at a bare minimum. DCAYA along with other organizations and individuals are working to change that situation, but until we can force movement on this critical issue we rely on the devoted followers of our blog to help us disseminate the valuable information in our report.

A copy of the full report is available here.

Please keep in mind this report was developed specifically for funders who were interested in gaining a better understanding of where to dedicate their limited resources. DCAYA’s recommendations at the end of the paper are where we believe an infusion of funding will have the greatest benefit to the current population of disconnected young people and are not exhaustive of all the areas that could benefit disconnected youth.

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[i] Strengthening Educational and Career Pathways for D.C. Youth. p. 5-6.

[ii] For an examination of the historic youth unemployment during recent years, see Sum, Andrew & Joseph McLaughlin. 2011. The Steep Decline in Teen Summer Employment in the U.S., 2000-2010 and the Summer 2011 Teen Job Market Disaster: Another Bummer Summer. Boston, MA: Center for Labor Market Studies.

It's a Cruel, Cruel Summer

Among the many budget casualties in FY’11 was the drastic cut in funds for DCPS Summer School. While some young people spend during the summer months watching TV or hanging out with their friends, many youth depend on Summer School to help improve academic skills or to get ahead in their coursework for the next year. Yet, others rely on Summer School in order to be promoted to the next grade level or to even recover enough credits to graduate on time.

Last year, DCPS maintained open enrollment for all high school students who needed to attend summer school, resulting in an average daily attendance of 3,800 students. However, for Summer 2011, the number of high school spots faces a drastic reduction due to budget constraints. This summer, DCPS will only offer Summer School for high school Seniors who are within three credits of graduation. And unlike in years past, summer classes will only be offered at Ballou, McKinley, Coolidge and Eliot-Hine High Schools.

The lack of academic opportunities offered by DCPS this summer comes as an especially tough blow given the low levels of educational proficiency that exist across the District. DCAYA’s joint report with Critical Exposure and the John Hopkins Everybody Graduates Center revealed that 48% of the nearly 1,000 youth surveyed reported failing one or more of their classes. 22% reported failing between two to four of their classes and nearly 25% of high school students surveyed reported that they had repeated a grade.

Although high school students in the District are largely on par with national trends in their Summer School attendance (about 21%, National Center for Education Statistics), the need in the District for expanded opportunities for ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders is far greater. In 2007, 73.4% of DCPS’ drop-out population came from the ninth grade, 14.6% came from the sophomore population, and 6.5% came from high school juniors. This means that almost 95% of youth who dropped out of school in DC did so before their senior year--- a rate far above the national average of 75.2%.

By limiting District high school students’ ability to regain credit during the summer months, DCPS will severely stymie the ability of thousands of high school students not just to graduate on time, but to graduate at all. Though there is little that can be done to help rectify the situation for Summer 2011, there is still time to ensure that the summer of 2012 does not provide the same bleak landscape of educational opportunity to DC’s high school students.

This is Part 1 of a series of blogs about the effects of the FY'11 Budget Cuts on children and youth in DC. Stay tuned over the next two weeks as we give you the rundown of how cuts have already started to erode progress made in the District in areas like positive youth development programming, education, health and juvenile justice.

If you are interested in guest blogging about a specific issue please contact Anne Abbott, DCAYA's Membership and Communications Coordinator at anne(at)dc-aya.org.

Youth-Friendly Focus Groups

Over the past few days DCAYA has facilitated a number of focus groups with young people who utilize the various programs that our member organizations provide. As a strong coalition of youth service providers, we are incredibly fortunate to be able to draw on the thoughts and opinions of a varied and diverse set of the young people that our members serve.

Our focus groups have ranged in size, but most of them have been somewhere between 15 and 20 teenagers and young adults. For this round of focus groups, DCAYA is seeking youth input on is the issue of disconnected youth in DC. (Disconnected youth are youth that are currently not involved or “connected” to any sort of educational, job training, or employment outlet).

What DCAYA wants to know is what do YOUTH think about the causes of the high-school dropout crisis? Or the reasons behind why so many young people in DC are currently unemployed? How do young people that are connected to education or job training programs find those programs and what keeps them enrolled?

The youth in these focus groups have impressed us, both in their ability to speak openly about some of the dire situations they have faced (and are largely still facing) and in their willingness to come up with creative, yet viable solutions to the issues they navigate on a daily basis.

What we’ve heard in these focus groups is that young people, by and large, believe in the power of effective and positive youth programming in combating the above issues. Many of these youth admitted that they came to their respective organizations, as a sort of last resort, that they either had “nothing better to do” or were referred to their programs by a government system of care (DYRS, CFSA etc.) A number of our focus group respondents reported that they felt like nobody at their schools cared about them. And furthermore they postulated that young people who didn’t have good support systems at home would be even more negatively affected by not having good relationships with their teachers or school’s staff.

This news is probably not surprising and it is certainly not encouraging. However, the youth who are served by these programs are overwhelmingly committed to them and we’ve heard over and over (and over) again that without these programs, DC’s problems of high youth unemployment and low educational attainment would only spiral further out of control. Youth rely on community based programming once they’ve already fallen through the cracks and are at a high risk of having no job skills and/or a limited education. By offering alternative pathways to something like a high school diploma or GED, organizations like Sasha Bruce, LAYC, and Covenant House raise young people back up. They literally catch them when they fall.

Another response we’ve heard across the board is that these programs recruit young people because of an obvious need in their communities, but that youth stay in these programs because of the incredible and dedicated staff that the non-profit community chooses to employ.

High-quality programming is an indispensable tool in the positive youth development toolbox and DCAYA cannot stress enough the need for these programs to stay intact in light of the current budget crisis. Of course, we didn’t need to run focus groups to realize the strength of these programs, but hearing the words straight out of the horse’s mouth is (as always) the most convincing argument you will ever hear.

Milk Friendly City

This morning Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak came out with an article exclaiming that she “just couldn’t swallow the anti-chocolate milk argument.” The “argument” she references is centered on D.C. schools removal of chocolate milk from their lunch menus for SY 2010-2011. Ms. Dvorak writes that “removing the junk from kids’ lunches is smart. We all get that.” Yet she rails on various local school districts that are striving to do just that?

Ms. Dvorak makes a few separate cases in support of her lack of buy-in: 1) There are plenty of other foods that are worse for kids than chocolate- laced dairy products, 2) the chocolate in milk can serve as an inducement for kids that otherwise would not be consuming dairy, and 3) parents should be the ones deciding what their kids eat, not DCPS.

Granted, these points bear some merit, however given the District’s overwhelming problem with childhood obesity these seem moot. To put this in perspective, consider that according to the Healthy School’s Act of 2010 (that Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced last year) more than 55% of District residents are either overweight or obese – this figure includes nearly half of all children in DC and in some wards, the rate of overweight and obese individuals exceeds 70%. Further, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the rate of adolescent obesity in the District is the highest in the nation. Ouch.

So yes, maybe there are worse culprits out there, but getting sugar out of schools has to start somewhere. And the argument that parents should be able to decide if their kids can drink chocolate milk? Parents you CAN decide this by allowing your kids to drink chocolate milk at home. What’s more is at home you get to control the amount of sugary chocolate goodness that goes into their milk. Maybe teach them a little something about different forms of measurement while you are at it and kill two birds with one stone.

The point is schoolchildren do not need the option of having flavored milk. School food should be about providing a baseline nutritional value to school kids so they have the energy they need to make it through their school day. Chocolate milk tastes good; thus it should not be at all surprising that when given the choice most kids prefer it to regular milk. But, at the end of the day, nutritionally it just is not the same.

Any individual that is given the choice between something that tastes relatively bland and something that tastes like chocolate or strawberry is going to pick the flavored version. This is especially true for individuals that do not take things like overall calorie or sugar intake into account. Dvorak writes that chocolate milk is the ‘spoonful of sugar (that) helps the medicine go down,” but what are schools risking by telling their students that extra sugar and calories are fine as long as what they are being added to is healthy?

Chocolate milk is tasty. DCAYA staff (and ESPECIALLY THIS BLOGGER) are not so old that we don’t remember enjoying a nice carton of it during the many milk breaks of years past. However, years past were just that, years past. Fast forward to present day where schoolchildren and youth in the District are living the childhood obesity epidemic and all of a sudden taking away the sweet stuff doesn’t seem like such a terrible option.

For more information on the National School Lunch Program:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/NSLPFactSheet.pdf

For more information on the Healthy Schools Act of 2010:

http://www.marycheh.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&catid=39&Itemid=61

To visit the original article from the Washington Post by Petula Dvorak:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091606463.html?hpid=talkbox1

To watch the video of Jamie Oliver that Dvorak references:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fet-5oYwus0

DCAYA's Budget Advocacy Overview for FY 2011

Read about DCAYA's Budget Advocacy efforts during 2010 here.