What can we learn from the military about students who are struggling in school and life?
A Forum — Friday, September 7, 2007
A forum brief will be posted shortly.
Dr. Hugh Price has long been actively concerned with our national tragedy of large numbers of struggling and rudderless youth. In his many years of distinguished public service, he has initiated and championed practical efforts to help such young people find pathways to success in education, training, employment, family life, and civic engagement.
One hallmark of Dr. Price’s outlook is the observation that the U.S. military has earned a well-deserved reputation for developing troubled youth and for advancing them, including many minorities, into positions of competence and leadership.
Today’s forum features Dr. Price’s working paper, Demilitarizing What the Pentagon Knows About Developing Young People; A New Paradigm for Educating Students Who are Struggling in School and in Life, published by the Brookings Institution, Center on Children & Families. The paper discusses best practices from military and quasi-military programs that could be used to improve educational outcomes for students who are now poorly served.
Dr. Price’s recommendations follow from his observations of National Guard Youth ChalleNGe, Junior ROTC, quasi-military public middle and high schools, education programs for military recruits, and other voluntary efforts to harness the talents and caring concerns of adult military personnel for both students in school and for those who have dropped out. Accordingly, Dr. Price recommends more investments in:
-
Fast-track immersion programs to help low-achievers catch up quickly;
-
Quasi-military public high schools that adhere to a standardized format across and within school districts;
-
Quasi-military public boarding schools for youngsters who need sustained and near total insulation from destructive family or community influences;
-
Residential programs for incarcerated juvenile offenders who earnestly want a second chance; and
-
Purposeful and faithful introduction of these promising practices into regular schools.
Following his presentation, Dr. Karen Pittman will provide commentary from the world of youth development and public education. Please join us for a lively conversation!
Speaker Biographies
Hugh Price is currently a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution after distinguished service as president and CEO of the National Urban League from 1994 until 2003. After graduating from Yale Law School, Dr. Price worked as a legal services lawyer representing low-income clients in New Haven, CT. He then served as executive director of the Black Coalition of New Haven, on the editorial board of The New York Times, and senior vice president of WNET/Thirteen, the nation’s largest public television station. As Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation, he was instrumental in designing and launching the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Corps, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and the Coalition of Community Foundations for Youth. In 1994, he became president of the National Urban League, helped to triple its endowment, defined a new mission and strategic plan, and launched the Campaign for African-American Achievement. Dr. Price continues to devote his many talents to strengthening American education, particularly for struggling youth in low-income communities.
Karen Pittman, Executive Director of the Forum for Youth Investment, is an internationally recognized leader in youth development. At the Urban Institute, she conducted major studies on social services for children and families. At the Children’s Defense Fund, she launched its adolescent pregnancy prevention initiatives and helped create an adolescent policy agenda. In 1990, she became Vice President at the Academy for Educational Development where she founded the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research. In 1995, she joined the White House as director of the (unfortunately short-lived) President’s Crime Prevention Council. Alongside 13 cabinet secretaries, she developed a coordinated prevention agenda. Dr. Pittman led the executive team of the International Youth Foundation to strengthen its program content and evaluation strategy. In 1998, she worked with General Colin Powell to create America’s Promise. She is the recipient of the National Commission for African American Education’s Augustus F. Hawkins Service Award and the American Youth Policy Forum Decade of Service Award for Sustained Visionary Leadership in Advancing Youth Policy.
Resources
Atlantic Monthly articles:
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policy leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels.
AYPF’s events and policy reports are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, C.S. Mott Foundation, and others.