Invest in Our Shining Lights

When it comes to the quality of expanded learning programs, DC ranked second in the country according to the Afterschool Alliance in their latest report “America After 3PM.” As a coalition of youth development organizations, DCAYA knows this ranking is well deserved. Our expanded learning partners are passionate about their programs, focus heavily on quality curriculum development, and hire astounding program staff to reach the various needs of young people. It is truly the dedicated work of these hard working individuals that accounts for this high ranking score.

While the full report and data sets paint a picture of the expanded learning landscape in DC, the smiles of young people tell us a story.


Click the picture to view the Photo Slideshow: Slidely Slideshow


Even though DC is ranked number two in the country for having quality afterschool programs, there are still many low-income children not accessing these vital enrichment opportunities. In fact, even when you look at the numbers there are 31,633 at-risk students attending DC public schools, but only 6,935 available expanded learning slots [INFOGRAPHIC]. It is easy to see the severe deficit in programming for young people who need the supports most.

Access to quality programming for students in at-risk communities is a high priority on DCAYA’s advocacy agenda.

We need to #KeepTheLights on afterschool so ALL DC children have access to the amazing expanded learning programs our community has to offer.

Share the blog and photo slideshow with friends & colleagues to advocate for keeping the #LightsOnAfterschool.

Sign-up to our Expanded Learning list serve to receive updates on our advocacy campaigns and policy proposals throughout the year.

City Kids Wilderness

Thank you to all of our members who lent their smiles and cute kids to our advocacy photo slideshow. Together we can "Keep the #LightsOnAfterschool."

For more on youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook,SUBSCRIBE to this blog and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.

Against All Odds

DC Alliance of Youth Advocates will post captivating, moving, and educational testimonies throughout the Performance Oversight and Budget hearing season. To watch the full hearings visit the DC Council website: http://dccouncil.us/videos/archive/.   



 Expanded learning programs provide youth with opportunities to grow outside the classroom. Whether through the arts, sports, science, entrepreneurship, etc., out-of-school time programs allow youth to explore interests not offered during a standard school day.

This is the simple way to explain expanded learning. DCAYA members such as Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Kid Power Inc, BUILD Inc, People Animals Love, Sasha Bruce, Brainfood, FLOC, and many others across the District know that their expanded learning programs do so much more.

The youth our members serve are succeeding in these programs against all odds:





This point is especially important because one major funding stream for DC’s expanded learning programs is through the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp, or the Trust. The Trust was created to ensure that District youth had consistent access to high quality youth development programming. One way the Trust accomplishes this mission is by offering competitive grants to youth-serving Community Based Organizations (CBOs). Last year the Trust budget mark remained consistent at $3 million, but over the course of last year due to an infusion of public investment through the One City Initiative and the Center for Excellence in Youth Development the annual budget ended up being much closer to $8 - $9 million. This is great and puts the budget mark on par with comparable cities such as Baltimore. But last minute funding changes can have some draw backs. Watch Maggie’s full testimony.

As Grant Elliott, the program director of Kid Power Inc, explained in his testimony at the Trust Performance Oversight Hearing, “While greater funding for the Trust would greatly be appreciated, the consistent distribution of funding could certainly be improved upon.” Kid Power Inc was one of the CBOs which benefited from the $3 million infusion through the One City Summer Initiative. However, the funding came so late that Kid Power Inc had just days to plan, hire, recruit youth, and implement a summer camp for 75 young people at Miner Elementary School. Watch Grant Elliott’s full testimony.

Data collection and consistent funding are two necessary aspects to ensuring quality programming for youth who need it most. The Trust has greatly improved upon its data collection efforts, but there needs to be a clear and consistent annual funding level to strengthen the Trust and its grantees' operations. We considered, and still do, consider the $3 million One City Summer Initiative funding a win for our members and the city’s young people. We also realize, however, that time crunched, over-stretched CBOs are extremely limited in providing the best programming possible when their funding levels are in flux.

There are phenomenal programs operating across DC and our youth, who may have had so little in the past, deserve the best. Join us in asking the Mayor to budget $9 million to the Trust on the front end, so programs such as Life Pieces to Master Pieces, Sasha Bruce, and Kid Power Inc can continuing doing what they do best, providing exceptional expanded learning programming to youth who are succeeding against all odds.

DC Alliance of Youth Advocates testifies at all youth related hearings and you can too! If interested and have questions please contact Angela Massino at angela@dc-aya.org. DCAYA will give you the tools you need to make your voice heard by the DC Council! View calendar of hearings here. 

For more on youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook, SUBSCRIBE to this blog and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.

Connecting Youth to Opportunity

On October 22nd, DCAYA, in partnership with Raise DC and with the support of The Community Foundation for The National Capital Region and the United Way of the National Capital Area is releasing the report “Connecting Youth to Opportunity: Better Understanding Disconnected Young People in Washington, DC.” The following "Youth Voices" blog and video series highlights the findings of the report.



Educational attainment and formative employment experiences are crucial to lifelong stability and success. Yet, thousands of youth are struggling each and every day to complete their education and enter the labor market, too often spiraling into complete disconnection from both opportunities.

The ramifications of youth disconnection on the health and well-being of any community are profound. We know that disconnected youth face a future that is filled with risk and missed opportunity. The responsibility to address this issue and successfully reconnect all young people is a shared one.

However, we will never succeed if we operate in a vacuum and fail to acknowledge that the factors leading into disconnection and the strategies to facilitate reconnection are as varied and nuanced as the youth themselves. This makes youth input and participation in the development of solutions critical. Yet, nationally and locally, there has been a noticeable lack of attention paid to the voices of the young people we are aiming to support.





To amend this, DCAYA, in partnership with Raise DC, and with the support of The Community Foundation for The National Capital Region and the United Way of the National Capital Area, executed an extensive survey and qualitative study of currently disconnected and recently reconnected young people here in the District. Using a combination of tactics, we gained valuable insight into how youth experience and overcome barriers to school and work.

In soliciting young peoples' opinions we made a number of useful, although sometimes discouraging, discoveries. We discovered that often times, seemingly small issues like not having money for the bus are powerful barriers to young peoples' success. We confirmed what youth service professionals have known for years, that there are hundreds of potential factors that impact a young person's transition into adulthood. Lastly, we verified that despite not always having a comprehensive understanding of the complex systems that affect them and their peers, young people crave opportunities to better their futures and want to succeed. They just need help navigating the complex path to adulthood.

DCAYA and its partners will release the findings from this study on October 22nd. We invite you to investigate what young people had to say about their disconnection from school and work. We urge you to get involved in solving this citywide issue. The responsibility to facilitate reconnection is a shared one and the opportunity to change the future for thousands of young people is now.

We look forward to sharing the full findings with you on October 22nd and hope you join us in the movement to connect all youth to opportunity.

Anne Abbott is the policy analyst and author of the report “Connecting Youth to Opportunity: Better Understanding Disconnected Young People in Washington, DC.” To read the report on October 22nd, visit the DCAYA website at www.dc-aya.org and make sure to subscribe to the blog to receive updates on postings and videos related to the report.

Please feel free to share and tweet the blog series and videos with the hashtag #YouthVoices

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.

College and Career Readiness Should Be Accessible to All Students

Last week the District announced an exciting new initiative to reinvigorate career and technical education in the city. The nearly $3 million dollar investment comes at a critical time for the District as young people are struggling to gain a toehold in the local economy without the advanced skills and training that programs of study like CTE pathways can offer. Further, CTE coursework that is well aligned to labor market demands, taught by high quality teachers, and well integrated into a school is a proven strategy for curtailing dropout rates, improving school climate and increasing post-secondary success.

As part of this new initiative, the city is partnering with the National Academy Foundation (NAF) a national leader in the career education field. In partnership with NAF, eight of the District’s schools (McKinley Tech will have two academies for a total of nine) will engage in a year of intensive planning to build “career academies” in specific program areas (schools applied for IT, engineering, hospitality or health sciences).

This partnership is especially exciting given the outcomes and evidence base that NAF career academies have achieved nation-wide. According to NAF:

• 52% of NAF graduates earn bachelor’s degrees in four years (compared with 32% nationally).
   
• Of those who go on to post-secondary education, more than 50% are the first in their families to go to college.
   
• 90% of students report that the academies helped them to develop career plans.
   
• 85% of 5 and 10 year alumni are working in a professional field.
   
• Career-academy graduates sustained $16,704 more in total earnings over the 8 years following high school than non-academy group members who were also studied—11% more per year.
   
• Young men from career-academies experienced increased earnings (due to a combination of increased wages, hours worked and employment stability) over 8 years totaling $30,000 – 17% more per year than non-academy group members studied .

These types of outcomes are essential in moving the needle on youth unemployment and post-secondary attainment here in DC and it is our hope that DC’s career academies will be wildly successful at achieving similar or even better outcomes. One consideration that should stay at the forefront of people’s minds as the District roles out these academies though, is that only eight schools received planning grants to implement these programs. Further, career academies are supposed to adhere to very strict standards of practice (to ensure fidelity to the evidenced model) that include small “school within a school” models which drastically limit participation in academic programming. So while the $3 million dollar investment is a good one, there are still thousands more high school students that need better career preparation services and programming that adds real-life applicability to high school.

The city needs to remember the students who will miss out on the opportunity to be enrolled in one of the career academies because of which high school they attend, or because of enrollment caps at a school they do attend as it plans and executes a more comprehensive system of career preparation in the District’s schools. On that note, DCAYA has a few ideas to expand on the current system of career education in the District:

1. Foster more meaningful collaboration between the Department of Employment Services Office of Youth Programs (they run programs like SYEP, the High School Internship Program and the Pathways for Young Adults Partnership with the Community College) and schools so that students can be placed at sites the align with their career interests while in high school or early on in their post-secondary endeavors. This is especially important for students who are enrolled in CTE courses, but may not be in a career academy.
    
2. Ensure existing career preparation programming at high schools (traditional CTE coursework) is high quality and to the extent possible is leading to at least some of the same outcomes that career academies are. This means ensuring there are ample facilities and high-quality staff teaching these programs in all high schools.
    
3. Begin career exploration and career preparation early on in a student’s academic life. The CTE Task Force and the Raise DC College and Credential Completion Network are working on implementing more career exposure and more informed counseling services so that students know what their options are by the time they get to high school. This is exactly the kind of thing the city needs to be doing more and we need to ensure these efforts are implemented in all schools, not just a few.

The city is right to start small and get its house in order before working to expand the NAF model to other high schools, however reform efforts for CTE need to be equitable in the long run. This requires a vision for the creation of a comprehensive system of career preparation at all schools and not just a few.

Anne Abbott is the Policy Analyst for Youth Workforce Development and Educational Pathways. Abbott is currently working on a report on Disconnect Youth in Washington D.C.. You can follow her on Twitter our write her an email at anne@dc-aya.org.

 To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org. 

It's Time for Another Blog Series!

Last week’s community convening with members of the Anti-Bullying Task Force and the DC Office of Human Rights really got us thinking about some important issues that bullying contributes to and BOOM! an idea for a new blog series was born. So, without further adieu we introduce you to our latest blog series on ... SCHOOL CLIMATE!

The American Psychological Association defines school climate as:

"the overall quality and character of school life, including teaching and learning practices, organizational structures, norms and values, and relationships"

Pretty simply put, school climate includes everything that happens in a school, but it's important to recognize school climate IS more than just the sum of its parts. School climate is really all about how the component parts of a school work together to achieve something greater.

As any youth development advocate will tell you this is an extremely important feature of any school or program. This is because everything, even programming options for children and youth, has at least some good component parts. However, these parts don't always combine in a way that we achieve an intended outcome. For instance, sometimes good elements of programming don't outweigh bad ones (having really great curriculum won't necessarily help if good staff aren't in place to utilize it), or good elements just fail to achieve synergy with other good elements of programming and they mute or negate one another. These occurrences shouldn't be especially shocking. Even as individuals, how often do we decide we don't like a bar or restaurant because it has a weird vibe or know we dislike a new person we meet but can't quite put our finger on why? These all have to do with the effect that occurs when various parts come together to form a whole, but sometimes the whole ain't so great.

There is a vast and ever growing body of research on the effect of school climate and negative outcomes for young people and its for that reason that we are dedicating an entire blog series to this subject. Furthermore, we're always excited to highlight and feature the exciting work of the DCAYA membership so expect plenty of guest blogs in the upcoming month about all the different facets of this exciting, but often hard to grasp concept.

We'll be kicking off the series with a guest blog from our friends from DC Lawyers for Youth so stay tuned for some more great information on school climate later this week!

Anne Abbott is a Policy Analyst at DC Alliance of Youth Advocates and is currently writing a report on disconnected youth in the District. 

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.

If you have an interest in guest blogging or contributing to a future blog series or post please contact DCAYA's Communications Associate, Angela Massino.