Summary of Meeting on the Release of DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Report, "New Rules, New Roles: Preparing All Young People for a Changing World"

A Forum — January 30, 2001

Over the past eight years, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund has supported six interrelated initiatives that are transforming the quality of education and training for young people in the adolescent years. These programs have demonstrated that schools and training institutions can meet the challenge of helping young people, especially those from low-income communities, make a successful transition to adulthood. The six programs include: High Schools That Work; Benchmark Communities Initiative; Career Academy Support Network; Communities and Schools for Career Success (CS2); YouthBuild; and National Association of Service and Conservation Corps.

Peter Kleinbard, Program Officer, The Wallace Funds, provided a context for the work of the foundation. First, he noted that in the next decade, the number of 20-24 year olds searching for jobs and training opportunities will increase by 21 percent, and the skill levels required for those jobs will be higher than in the past. Shifting trends in our nation’s population suggest that many youth will be ill-equipped to enter postsecondary education and this high skills marketplace, said Kleinbard. "By the year 2005, six out of every ten of the 3.4 million new young adults in our country will be either Hispanic or non-white – groups whose members are typically less well-served by public education."

Based on the experience of the six programs funded by the Wallace Funds, Kleinbard said effective programs:

• Combine rigorous academic work with opportunities for young people to apply what they are learning;
• Recruit and prepare staff members who understand the needs of young people and are committed to their career development;
• Create partnerships among schools, youth-serving organizations, employers, and postsecondary institutions, then link those partnerships to larger state and federal reform efforts; and
• Constantly evaluate progress and use the information to make improvements.

Staff from each of the six programs provided an overview of their program, and described lessons learned as well as implications of their work for policy.

Gene Bottoms, Senior Vice President, Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), gave an overview of High Schools That Work (HSTW), a national initiative for more than 1,100 high schools in 26 states as they upgrade curriculum, instruction and student achievement. HSTW provides a framework of goals and key practices that schools implement in improving what is taught, how it is taught and what is expected of students, particularly career-oriented students. HSTW’s recommended curriculum for high school students includes an upgraded academic core and a concentration in an academic or a career/technical area.

High Schools That Work sites receive technical assistance in developing and carrying out school-improvement plans; staff development for leaders and teachers; assessments of students' progress and their perceptions of high school studies; and special reports, case studies and other publications.

SREB provides information to its network of state educational leaders and policy-makers for use in setting new standards and measuring the results of school improvement. Bottoms said the positive impact of HS7W is due in large part to the fact that SREB - in partnership with states, school districts and schools - has maintained the focus on career-oriented students for 15 years. This continuity has made a difference to schools and students, he said.

Ongoing evaluation plays a key role in the success of HSTW. Every two years, HSTW sites assess the reading, mathematics and science achievement of high school seniors completing a concentration in career/technical studies. The HSTW Assessment is based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). States and schools use the results of the assessment to check their progress and fine-tune their strategies for raising student achievement.

The average scores of students at HSTW sites rose in 2000, and more students said they were taking challenging mathematics and science courses. Between 1994 and 2000, the proportion of HSTW students who met the achievement goals in reading and science increased from about one-third to more than one-half. In mathematics, the proportion increased from about one-third to 61 percent. Female students exceeded the HSTW mathematics goal with an overall 15-point improvement between 1996 and 2000. African-American students improved by 17 points in mathematics in those same years.

Bottoms made three main points based on his experiences in working with high schools:

1. Statewide policies that support higher student achievement do make a difference in schools' reform efforts, students' course-taking patterns and students’ overall performance.
2. Strong leadership at the school level is critical. An uncommitted or uninterested principal can undo positive changes and improvement efforts. In interviewing high school principals to find out how they achieved success, SREB learned that half of these leaders never prepared to be school principals. A greater investment is needed in preparing current and potential school leaders to guide changes in curriculum, instruction and student achievement.
3. States and schools must focus heavily on raising the literacy skills of all students, especially male students. Many high schools fail to offer English courses in grades 11 and 12 that are rigorous enough to provide the reading, writing and communication skills that students need for success in the workplace and further education. As a result, many students - particularly young men - are graduating from high school with weak literacy skills. Bottoms recommends "killing low-level English courses in high school and replacing them with rigorous courses that require students to read, write, speak and think."

Hilary Pennington, CEO, Jobs for the Future, provided an overview of one of their projects, the Benchmark Communities Initiative (BCI). The essential principles of the project are to (1) create smaller and more supportive learning communities, interwoven with career themes in the standard curriculum, integrating new technologies; (2) increase involvement by employers in the education program and provide work-based learning opportunities for students; and (3) create community-wide governance structures that facilitate innovation and maximize the resources available to young people. The BCI provides engaging project- and work-based learning experiences for students, integrates academic and career-related curricula, and helps school systems assess student progress on an ongoing basis. The project originally worked with four urban school districts (Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Louisville, KY, 1994-1999) and has now been expanded to other communities as the Connected Learning Communities project.

Preliminary evidence from Boston and Philadelphia shows that their school-to-career efforts are having a positive impact on students. Students in career pathways had significantly lower dropout rates, higher attendance rates, better grades, and higher promotion rates than their peers. The other two urban sites experienced less forward movement. One district, after a change in superintendents, abandoned its plan to use school-to-work as its major reform engine, and in the other district, the superintendent shifted priorities to focus on literacy.

Pennington mentioned a few lessons learned from JFF’s work with BCI:

• Who participates in the collaboration and coordination efforts, and who "sits at the table" is very important to success of the effort.
• Giving thought to what the incentives are is very important.
• Benign neglect from a district does not work; visible and committed leadership is necessary; and change in leadership can stall good efforts.
• Moving from the reform rhetoric at the district level to reality at the classroom level requires a specific model or structured program with learning goals, and teachers and staff need to see how to implement change on a day-to-day basis.
• Sustained professional development linked to the overall reform effort is critical.
• Ongoing and longitudinal accountability is needed, especially to find out how students are doing 5-6 years after high school graduation.

David Stern, University of California, Berkeley and Jim Kemple, Senior Research Associate, Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC), gave an overview of the career academy movement in the U.S. and current evaluation efforts. Career academies share the following features:

1. They are schools-within-a-school, in which clusters of students share several classes every day and have some or all of the same teachers from year to year. The number of students is usually very small (150-300), and the teachers work as a team and share in decision-making.
2. The curriculum combines and integrates academic and career-related subjects. Academic courses meet high school graduation and college entrance requirements; career-related courses center on a broadly defined career theme such as health, electronics, or travel.
3. Local employers are involved as partners and serve on advisory boards. Employers contribute financial or in-kind support, but more importantly, they become involved in the life of the school by providing speakers, mentors, internships, and other forms of work-based learning.

The Career Academy Support Network assists in the development of career academies and is led by the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. There are now approximately 1500-2000 career academies across the U.S., with the expansion due, in large part, according to Stern, to the School to Work Opportunities Act.

Stern and Kemple discussed a number of the evaluations of career academies, and pointed to data that shows that students in career academies have reduced dropout rates as well as increased attendance, course completion rates, and success in college. Especially important is the ongoing, random-assignment evaluation by MDRC, which avoids the problem of selection bias that plagues most field research in education. The MDRC study confirmed some significant findings from previous evaluations. But neither the MDRC study nor previous evaluations were designed to test the effects of applying career academies school-wide. More and more high schools are now reorganizing themselves into small learning communities, some of which are career academies. Existing evidence suggests that this school-wide strategy may benefit students, and evaluations of this approach are now under way, but results are not yet known. Stern and Kemple ended with a plea to support more educational research, pointing out that the U.S. spends roughly $300 billion a year on K-12 education, but only about one-half of one percent of that amount is spent on finding out what really works.

Ephraim Weisstein, Vice President, Corporation for Business, Work, and Learning said that Communities and Schools for Career Success (CS2) creates partnerships among schools, community organizations, and businesses that strengthen education and career development for middle and high school students. These partnerships provide schools with expertise about the world of work as well as mentoring and other direct support to students. Change agents called "entrepreneurs" are trained by CS2 to assist each partnership to implement their plans. The entrepreneurs train school staff, develop work-based learning experiences, and encourage school reorganization using career themes. They also raise funds and help organizations integrate education and career preparation.

Weisstein stated that CS2 is a strategy, an approach to education reform, not a program. CS2 helps to network middle and high schools and focuses on the integration of programs. It focuses on how to use funding across silos to support an overall mission and to collect data on school performance to help teachers and staff understand and act on the data. Schools that have participated in the CS2 model have shown increases in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, a state-wide test of academic performance. There are also fewer dropouts and more students taking SATs in these high schools. Weisstein ended by saying that the intermediary role is very important to the success of building connections between the middle and high schools and with the community.

Andre Ravanelle, Assistant Superintendent, Barnstable Public Schools, MA, said they are using the CS2 model and that it has helped change the culture of their school. He indicated that the entrepreneurs are key to the success of CS2. Barnstable Public Schools hired three individuals with CS2 funding to help the schools improve student achievement. They were from business and had no education experience, yet they have been successful at building links with the community and between the middle and high school and in increasing parental involvement with the schools. The work done by CS2 entrepreneurs does not make you think of education, said Ravanelle, because it is all about developing partnerships with the community and with businesses to increase opportunities for students.

Dorothy Stoneman, President, YouthBuild USA, said YouthBuild supports the implementation of a career development model for 16-24 year olds in low-income communities throughout the country. YouthBuild participants are young adults who have left school poorly prepared for work or further education. They gain skills by renovating housing in low-income neighborhoods, developing their capacity for leadership and study to attain the next milestone in their education, for most a GED. Stoneman provided the context for the need for programs such as YouthBuild: only 36% of dropouts get a job, most at low wages; in some urban school systems, the dropout rate is as high at 65%; there are 360,000 young people in prison; and while many youth may finish high school, they are unprepared for the world of work and lack job skills.

To participate in the national YouthBuild network, local YouthBuild sites must agree to adopt a set of performance standards designed to assure the quality of the YouthBuild model. The standards set clear and high goals for key program outcomes including student attendance, retention in the program, placement and retention in further education and/or a job, educational achievement, and mastery of construction skills and leadership behavior.

At one YouthBuild location, in St. Louis, Missouri, 90 percent of a recent class of 30 remained in the program for the full 40 weeks, with a 94 percent attendance rate. Of those who finished, 89 percent earned GEDs and the same percentage got full-time jobs or went to college or technical school. Those in jobs earned an average hourly wage of $8.22. Since the St. Louis program began in 1992, it has rehabilitated 365 units of affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods.

Michael Donnelly, YouthBuild USA Young Leaders Council, described the elements that made the program successful for him: a small learning community; strong relationships created with peers and adults; having people proud of you; a combination of school and work; a positive peer group; freedom from peer pressure to admit you want to achieve; a path to jobs; GED preparation; help with entry to college; and an alumni club for life. But what made the most difference, he said, was "I found a family." Youth leadership is a critical piece of YouthBuild and increasingly, the youth determine the shape and design of the program.

Kathleen Selz, Executive Director of the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps (NASCC) said the mission of youth corps programs is to help young people ages 16-24 who have left school without the skills they need to continue their education or obtain jobs. Youth corps are local organizations that provide environmental improvement and other services in their communities, while also offering work experience, education, skills training, and counseling to youth. Currently, about 110 youth corps annually serve more than 20,000 young people, most from low-income communities. Participants in youth corps programs are 60 percent young people of color; 30 percent high school dropouts; 50 percent without a GED; reading and computing skill levels at well below the 7th grade level; and two-thirds male. Funding comes from 16 different agencies and includes fee for service contracts with states and communities.

Knowing that youth corps often operate on a shoestring, both financially and organizationally, NASCC developed the National Youth Corps Training Program to help youth corps apply best practices, increase and diversify their funding, and contract with their communities to provide needed services. One strategy was to develop a cadre of "circuit riders," many of them veteran corps practitioners, to provide specialized on-site help. An evaluation of these training efforts showed that the frequency of staff participation in professional development events increased by 200 percent or more, and the quality of staff developers and information also improved, according to corps directors. More than half of the respondents in the evaluation said they had improved their in-house capacity to meet staff development needs with higher quality materials, more experienced staff, and more rigorous standards for content. They increased the amount of time dedicated to training and offered it to a broader range of staff positions. In some cases, corps directors credited NASCC with helping their programs survive. Training enabled them to implement new components, seek new funding, learn what other corps were doing, and hone their administration skills.

Summary

Throughout the presentations and during the discussion, a number of themes emerged.

• Effective programs require good leadership, strong staff, and ongoing support for the leaders and staff. Additionally, strong leadership is needed at the top to set the vision and to keep the reform or change efforts on track. Without strong leadership at the top, reform efforts are often ineffective.

• Intermediary organizations are vital to the success of career development programs for youth. Whether the programs are housed in schools or in the community in non-school settings, organizations that help to convene the partners, broker services, share information, and keep the focus on the goal of serving the youth are critical. Each program represented on the panel had been involved in some facet of work as an intermediary: brokering with employers or other community groups, providing professional development and technical assistance, focusing on program quality and accountability, or helping to stabilize programs through locating alternative or new sources of funding. This role of intermediary is becoming increasingly important, as we learn that multiple partners and services are key to successful programs. Representatives felt that support for these intermediaries is important and should be recognized by policymakers.

• Partnerships are vital to program success. Each program has multiple partnerships and agreed that their success is due to collaborative efforts with others in the community because that allows a more holistic approach to serving youth. Many of the programs represented felt that it is difficult work to create partnerships but that intermediary organizations were very helpful in creating neutral ground for pulling diverse groups together.

• The funding structure of many programs makes working across agencies difficult. The provision of education, training, and youth development is a discussion that must happen at the community level, across many youth-serving organizations and institutions. Yet current federal practice generally emphasizes one partner, the schools, to the exclusion of almost all others. More flexibility across programs is needed to allow a more responsive use of funds. It is also necessary to look for ways to organize the learning and training opportunities offered outside of the school system, because "there is no superintendent for out-of-school-youth."

• Career development programs engage youth and contribute to positive outcomes, such as better attendance, reduced dropout rates, entry to postsecondary education, and increased attainment of a GED. Programs to create small learning environments and more personalized experiences for students seem to have better results. Program representatives felt, however, that this message still is not understood by the larger education community.

• Focusing on student outcomes and public accountability is very important. Programs would like to be able to conduct more longitudinal follow up of students, to determine the impact of their programs over a longer period of time and to better understand the transitions that youth make, but it is time-consuming and costly to conduct such long-term follow-up. Partnerships between middle and high schools, postsecondary education, community organizations, and employers may help provide better long-term outcome data.

The report, "New Rules, New Roles: Preparing All Young People for A Changing World" is available at www.wallacefunds.org. A limited number of copies are available through the American Youth Policy Forum, 1836 Jefferson Place, NW, Washington, DC, 20036, 202-775-9731, www.aypf.org

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