To dramatically increase high school graduation and college attendance rates for at-risk and low-income youth, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $40 million to create 70 small high schools. When students finish these schools, they will have a two-year Associate of Arts degree or enough college credits to enter a four-year, liberal arts program as a sophomore or junior. The effort is a partnership of the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Jobs for the Future will receive $5.7 million over the next five years to serve as lead coordinator and policy advocate for the Early College High School initiative. As part of our support for this national effort, we have created the Early College High School Web site.

For more information, please visit the Early College High School Web site: www.earlycolleges.org. JFF has appointed Nancy Hoffman, Senior Lecturer at Brown University, to direct its engagement in the Early College High School initiative. To read about her 30 years of experience as a professor, administrator, and writer in education, click here. 

JFF is providing technical assistance to the Boston Workforce Development Initiative. Launched in March 2002, the initiative brings together local and national funders and other important stakeholders to significantly enhance and expand workforce development in the city.

JFF's contributions to the initiative focus on: 1) identifying excellence in local and national practices that encompass a systems reform agenda; and 2) increasing the ability of the Boston workforce development system to advance low-income job seekers into family-supporting careers.

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The young people whose voices emerge in Learning Outside the Lines are, in the words of one grateful parent, "darn lucky." They all had the good fortune to find learning environments where they encountered the "5 Cs":

• Caring relationships that help them build an attachment to the learning environment and persist through obstacles;
  
  
• Cognitive challenges that engage them intellectually, tap interests, and hone essential skills;
  
  
• A Culture of peer support that pushes them to do their best work;
  
  
• Community membership and voice in a group worth belonging to; and
  
  
• Connections to an expanding network of adults who help them access additional learning and career opportunities.

Whether inside or out of school, voluntary or for credit, the programs profiled in Learning Outside the Lines garner deep engagement and high achievement from young people, helping them find pleasure in the right things. All build upon fundamental needs of adolescents: to improve the world around them, to feel respected and connected, and to construct their own narrative. All help youth become persistent and confident learners.

For printed copies, go to the Kellogg Foundation Web site: www.wkkf.org.

For more voices from students, visit the WHAT KIDS CAN DO Web site. For example, new at WKCD are movingly honest writings by young people whose color or native language sets them apart just when they are searching for their identities. On the political side is commentary by rural youth who seek a greater part in solving the nation's most pressing problems. And there's a fascinating look at what students do differently in the burgeoning small schools movement.

For more information, go to: www.whatkidscando.org.

Can policy keep pace with changing practice in our high schools? This is the topic of "Rigor and Relevance," an Education Week commentary by Adria Steinberg, Program Director of JFF's From the Margins to the Mainstream Initiative, and Michael Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute Program on Education in a Changing Society.

And that question will be the topic of a lunch-time discussion on April 5, sponsored by the American Youth Policy Forum, where Cohen and Steinberg will expand upon ideas presented in their commentary. Cohen is also the author of Transforming the American High School, prepared for From the Margins to the Mainstream and released by JFF and the Aspen Institute this past December.

For more information on the forum and to register, e-mail your name, title, organization, address, phone, and e-mail address to Banu Dole, aypf@aypf.org. Registration deadline is 12:00 p.m., Tuesday, April 2.

To expand its capacity as it develops several new initiatives, Jobs for the Future has created a number of program positions.

For more information, contact Rubin Williams, rwilliams@jff.org.