Why We Need to Think Beyond Summer

Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis declared in a blogpost last week that the country had “turned the corner on youth unemployment.” Her assertion came on the heels of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report on youth employment which showed an increase in the number of employed youth aged 16- to 24-year-olds both from the previous quarter (2.1 million more youth were employed than in April of 2012) and from last year’s second quarter numbers (employment for 16- to 24-year-olds only rose 1.7 million over the same period in 2011). While more employed young people is undoubtedly good news, this assertion by Secretary Solis fails to take into account the full gravity of the employment issues facing youth.

For starters, the July 2012 unemployment rate for youth was still an abysmal 17.1 percent (the rate for all workers is 8.2 percent). Additionally, the unemployment rate tells us just one part of the story. It only accounts for youth actually in the labor force (those who are working or who are actively seeking employment opportunities), and only 60.5 percent of all youth aged 16-24 were “in” the labor force this summer. This is troubling for two reasons; first that is a full 17 percentage points down from youth labor force participation’s peak in 1989. More importantly, it means there are still hundreds of thousands of discouraged young people who are not bothering to seek out employment at all because they know their chances of finding a job are so low. For young people engaged in other activities like summer school, enrichment classes or even unpaid work experiences, the situation may not be catastrophic. However, for many discouraged workers, particularly low-income youth, this lack of connection to the labor force may well depress their earning potential and employment trajectories for the rest of their lives.

 Secondly, this declaration of success is overly focused on summer employment. Summer jobs, despite their ability to provide an introduction to the world of work and  a much needed paycheck, are not a panacea to the nation’s youth unemployment woes. Gaining work experience is certainly an essential part of a young person’s development; however, short-term employment experiences have been shown to have many more benefits (increased graduation rates and higher post-secondary enrollment) to young people particularly when they build off of what an individual does with the rest of his/her year. For instance, summer jobs where students can apply the skills and knowledge they have gained during the school year (in either high school or college) and explore career fields they are interested in based on previous coursework will do more to aide in future decisions than simply working in an entry-level job. That is not to say that there are not important skills and behaviors to be learned through all forms of employment, just that certain types of summer experiences can give young people far more than just a paycheck. This is especially important for low-income teenagers, who often lack exposure to different career fields and links to the labor market, and who are at an especially high risk for not graduating high school.

 Furthermore, while students often relish the opportunity to have a job that starts and stops with their academic schedule, the same is not true for young people who are not connected to educational opportunities. Out-of-school 16-to 24-year-olds benefit little from employment that only lasts a few months. Certainly, a paycheck for three months is favorable to no paycheck at all, but out-of-school youth require self-sustaining wages that are more consistent than seasonal paychecks. This is true for everyone from college graduates to high-school dropouts.

 Youth across the board are fairing terribly in the job market, and this will affect them for years to come. The outlook is especially bleak for the 6.4 million “disconnected” youth who are not connected to education or the workforce. College educated young people are faring better than their non-college educated peers, but they are graduating with mountains of student loan debt and likely limited work experience if they have graduated within the last few years. The SummerJobs+ initiative was a good start to getting young people connected to the world of work, but the nation needs to strategically invest in larger and longer term interventions if we want our population of 16- to 24-year-olds to learn new skills, gain work experience and ultimately expand their presence and success in the labor market. A slight uptick in the number of youth employed in the summer is cause for celebration, but declaring that we have “turned a corner” is premature.

Let's Hear it for the Arts!

A Project Create student shows off her work!

We’ve talked (and written!) a lot this summer on generally why summer programming is such an important component of youth development. This week though, we’re going to focus in on why one particular area of programming is so essential in helping young people become healthy and productive adults. Arts education and enrichment are an essential piece of the summer programming pie, and we think they deserve some time in the spotlight!

For starters, “the arts” is a very broad classification and can involve anything from learning to play a musical instrument to growing an appreciation for the work and creativity that went into all those paintings, sketches, and sculptures that line the walls of the Smithsonians to creating and performing spoken word. 

Arts programming can involve advanced instruction in one specific element or a basic introduction to a range of different fields. Summer provides an especially exciting experience for many young people to get involved in these sorts of activities as often they do not have the opportunity to do so during the school year.Through arts programming, students discover their potential to achieve and unleash their natural talents. 

                                         Students at Sitar Arts Center put on a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!

Activities like staging plays, musicals and dance recitals teach participants valuable skills like respect, accountability, teamwork, and conflict resolution. Visual arts enrichment opportunities, whether they're team based (like creating a mural) or all about self-expression help young people create positive cultural and self-identities and can also help foster of sense of belonging which we know from mountains of research, are essential components of positive youth development.  Furthermore, arts and cultural programming expose young people to caring adult mentors who can not only teach specific artistic skills and methods, but can also serve as role models who demonstrate how to achieve goals. Many of our city’s summer arts programs are as much about building life skills as they are about building artistic skills (just think about all the communication skills you learned after your first group project!) and these are invaluable resources to our city.

A mentor leads youth through a discussion on a piece of his work at Life Pieces to Masterpieces.

Improve the FY'13 Children's Budget!

Our dear friend and local child and youth policy wonk Susie Cambria is compiling information for this year's Children's Budget which is a yearly requirement of the District government after they pass the full budget. The purpose of compiling the Children's Budget is to identify what funding is being proposed in the next fiscal year in support of children and youth and to communicate to the public how the mayor plans to invest in young people across the spectrum of DC agencies.

As many of you may already know, funding for children's and youth programming can often be hard to parse out. We all know agencies like DCPS, OSSE, DYRS and CFSA devote almost all of their respective budgets to serving young people, but other agencies the DC National Guard, the District's Department of the Environment and even the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development include funding for programs and services as well. In fact the combined funding for  services and supports for children, youth, and families comprise HALF of the city’s entire budget? 

The Deputy Mayors for Education and Health and Human Services are engaging District government agencies and stakeholders to identify ways to improve the content, format, and utility of this year's Children’s Budget report.  That’s where you come in.  The Deputy Mayors want to hear from you.

Please take a short survey (http://dmhhs.dc.gov/event/take-children%E2%80%99s-budget-report-improvement-survey) and give us your recommendations on ways to improve the annual Children’s Budget report.  And feel free to share this email with others.

The survey closes September 7, 2012.

Thank you in advance for your participation!   Should you have any questions, please contact Susie via email at Susie.cambria@dc.gov .

Free Summer Meals: More Than A Free Lunch

Hunger doesn’t take a vacation when school lets out! As a result, the summer months are a critical time to provide low-income children, who depend on the free and reduced price breakfast and lunch programs during the school year, with nutritious food.  The D.C.Free Summer Meals program not only fills the nutrition gap for children under eighteen years of age, but also generates significant amount of federal dollars for summer youth education and recreation programs. This summer, the District is on track to provide 1.3 million meals and bring over $3 million dollars in federal funding. 

On top of combating hunger the D.C. Free Summer Meals program also helps to combat obesity. More and more children in the United States and in the District are becoming obese—and overweight children tend to  continue this trend into adulthood. Children gain weight three times faster during the summer months, gaining as much weight during the summer as they do during the entire school year, even though the summertime is three times shorter. This is due in large part to the inactivity many children and youth experience over the summer months, but nutrition contributes to this as well. When kids have limited healthy options at home, they go for the cheap stuff (think chips, sugary drinks, candy bars) and their health is clearly affected.

D.C. Free Summer Meals has been ranked the best summer food  program in the country for seven consecutive years for reaching the highest percentage of low-income children. Despite this fact, many more District children could benefit from the summer meal program. We know that healthy young people are the foundation of engaged young people and this applies as much during the summer as it does during the school year.By creating opportunities to provide children with healthy food, physical activity, and educational enrichment, children can continue to learn and stay safe when school is not in session. There are over 160 “open’ sites throughout the district, meaning children come to the site and receive a free meal without prior registration. This is an invaluable resource in fighting hunger here in the District, but also in supporting the development of young people year round.

Special thanks to Alyia-Smith Parker from DC Hunger Solutions for contributing to this post!

Why DC Needs More Summer Learning

This week DCAYA was featured on the National Summer Learning Association and the Walmart Foundation's "Smarter Summers" blog so this is a cross-posting from NSLA!  You can see the original post here.

What’s your favorite summer memory from childhood? Was it going to the beach? Heading off to sleep away camp? Maybe it was playing on a sports team, or spending some time at the library? Many of us have great memories of summers past when the end of the school year meant no more homework, and the beginning of free time to use however we (or in most cases, our parents) wanted. What many of us might remember less fondly, or not at all, is how hard it was to go back to school in the fall, and remember everything we learned just a few months prior.

That thing that we remember with a lot less nostalgia is something called summer learning loss.

Take an average student in D.C. who is considered low-income: the child will enter school at age 5 (likely already academically behind his middle- and high-income peers), and will lose two months worth of grade level knowledge and skills in both reading and math every year as he progresses through the elementary years. The learning loss that accumulates through elementary school will undoubtedly impact this child’s academic achievement in middle and high school, and can even have an effect on whether this student will earn a diploma and move on into post-secondary opportunities.

So what’s the moral of the story? Stemming the learning loss that occurs over the summer months is imperative if we want to improve academic achievement. This is especially true in cities like D.C. with a high percentage of the low-income students who are less likely to be engaged in the range of cultural, athletic, and social activities (trips to the museum, theater, science camp, and all-star teams) than their middle- and high-income peers.

Engaging students in high-quality summer learning programs that merge experiential learning into core standards and skills, and are complemented by diverse enrichment activities, equips these students with the academic skills and confidence they need to tackle the coming school year. This combination is critical. Students need to be engaged and interested in the learning process, and stimulated by new experiences that give them a vision for their future, but also help them advance academically.

The good news in all of this is that we do have programs that blend enrichment with academics in the District. Programs like KidPower DC andBrainfood teach students the value of nutrition, entrepreneurship, and service learning in the summer on top of their year-round afterschool programming. Other programs like DC Scores, Higher Achievement, and New Community for Children offer exciting summer sports like soccer and football, field trips across the region, and opportunities to expand on the reading, math, and science skills students have acquired during the school year. Urban Alliance andMartha’s Table teach vital career and life skills, and there are numerous other programs in D.C. that provide high quality experiences in the summer, but we can’t list them all!

The return on investment in these types of interventions is vast; particularly in cities like D.C. where anything we can do to even the academic playing field, and improve our graduation rate, reaps lasting benefits in the short, medium, and long term. Sadly, summer school at DCPS will see another budget reduction, receiving only $2,350,000 compared to the $4,596,000 allocated last fiscal year. Our city like many others has faced budget shortfalls, and tough decisions that have resulted in a gradual divestment in high-quality summer programming.

We are literally undoing the gains our students are making during the school year by not providing them with structured learning opportunities year-round. By funding a more robust system of summer education opportunities, D.C. can counter the trend of slumping student achievement. Is it the silver bullet to all of D.C.’s education woes? No, probably not. Nothing is that simple. However, as the research increasingly demonstrates, smart, creative planning, and high-quality summer programming is certainly a great place to start.

Visit the DC Alliance of Youth Advocates website to learn more.