Contact:
FOUNDATIONS TARGET DROPOUT CRISIS
Five Cities Receive Grants for Innovative Partnerships
January 12, 2005
Three major foundations are putting a total of
$2 million into an initiative to support local efforts to combat
the silent crisis of too many students dropping out of high school.
Various efforts to reform American high schools are revealing
serious leaks in the “pipeline” that should take young
people through school and into economically productive adulthood.
Nationally, more than 30% of students do not complete high school
in a timely way. In some inner-city neighborhoods, the odds of
high school graduation are only fifty-fifty.
In response to this alarming trend, several
funders have come together to support efforts in selected cities
to improve educational options and outcomes for the growing numbers
of struggling and out-of-school youth. The Youth Transition Funders
Group, a group of local, regional, and national philanthropies,
today announced grants to enable five cities to strengthen their
strategies for reducing the numbers of young people who drop out
and reconnecting those who have left school. The initiative also
will address race and class inequities related to this trend within
the grantees’ education systems and gain national visibility
for this important work.
Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland
(OR), and San Jose (CA) will receive grants of $275,000 each from
the Initiative to Support Struggling Students and Out-of-School
Youth. The grants will fund broad-based partnerships that include
educational advocacy groups, public school districts, public care
agencies, service providers, parents, youth, and other stakeholders.
The initiative will also support extensive technical assistance
and cross-site learning activities. Three members of the Youth
Transition Funders Group, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Charles Stewart Mott
Foundation, have provided funding for the new grant program.
“These cities were selected because they
are among the nation’s leaders in their demonstrated commitment
to and capacity for engaging a wide range of partners to serve
at-risk youth,” according to Constancia Warren, Senior Program
Officer and Director of Urban High School Initiatives at Carnegie
Corporation of New York. “While $275,000 for a one-year
planning process is not enough for any city to solve this problem,
it can help local partners jump-start the conversation about changing
how their cities approach the needs of struggling students.”
Each city will devote the bulk of its grant
to supporting strategies and activities that the local partnerships
developed through an extensive community planning process. Each
partnership will be convened by one or two lead organizations
with the capacity to act as project manager and fiscal agent,
as well as a demonstrated ability to collaborate with the school
department. The funds also will be used to help community and
youth groups to participate in local partnerships and to broaden
support for effective programming for underserved and out-of-school
youth.
During the year of funding, starting January
2005, the communities will use the funds
to focus on four critical strategies:
- Improving the capacity to gather, examine,
and use information, including existing resources and levers
for reconnecting youth, to help inform and guide efforts to
improve outcomes for youth at risk;
- Assessing the policy and funding environment
at the local and state level to identify and address policies
that impede systemic reform addressing the needs of youth at
risk;
- Increasing the supply of high-quality
educational options for struggling students and youth at risk;
and
- Building relationships among and mobilizing
support of key partners and stakeholders.
Based on these assessment activities, the local partnerships
will begin 2006 with a set of comprehensive action steps for the
next stage of the work. This assessment will include options for
financing that work through private investments as well as by
reallocating public funds.
“Addressing the needs of dropouts and near-dropouts requires
a multi-pronged, systemic approach, built on collaboration among
school systems, alternative education providers, community-based
organizations, community colleges, and others,” according
to Marlene B. Seltzer, President and CEO of Jobs for the Future,
the national intermediary staffing this initiative and providing
strategic consultation to the city partnerships.
###
The Youth Transition
Funders Group, a group of local, regional, and national
philanthropies, came together in 2002 with the goal of working
in partnership on behalf of at-risk youth and young adults. One
of the YTFG’s three working groups focuses on struggling
students and out-of-school youth. www.youthtransitions.org
Jobs for the Future, a non-profit
research, consulting and advocacy organization, works to strengthen
our society by creating educational and economic opportunity for
those who need it most. www.jff.org
The Coalition of Community
Foundations for Youth is a nonprofit working with national
funders, community foundations, and local communities to improve
outcomes for children, youth and families. CCFY is administrator
of the Youth Transition Funders Group and the Initiative to Support
Struggling Students and Out-of-School Youth. www.ccfy.org
Background information on the dropout crisis and
this initiative is available on the Jobs for the
Future Web site.
|
Click here to go back
