A First-Generation American Became NYC’s Deputy Mayor. Can His Pre-K Push Offer Kids The Same Success?

Richard Buery’s childhood weaved between two very different versions of New York City. The son of Panamanian immigrants — a public school teacher and a lab manager — he was raised in East New York, a section of Brooklyn notorious for its violence and poverty, The local schools have a 13.5 percent dropout rate, and one-third of families live in poverty. “East New York is a community that has not always felt that we had City Hall by our side,” Buery says. Abandoned lots and failing schools were all he knew of Gotham until he was accepted at Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s nine elite magnet schools.

“It was my first experience meeting people and having friends who weren’t black and Hispanic,” he tells The New York Times. “For the most part, it was my first time meeting folks from wealthier communities and wealthier families. And it really made very real to me the truth about educational equality and the difference between what it means to be a child from a place like East New York and a child in a neighborhood like Park Slope or the Upper East Side.”

Buery (rhymes with “jury”) recognized the opportunities within his reach: Stuyvesant led to Harvard and, later, Yale Law School. In his mid-forties, he’s now the deputy mayor managing strategic initiatives for Bill De Blasio, the progressive Democrat elected mayor in 2013. Buery’s largely focused on implementing the mayor’s push for early childhood education in The Big Apple. The second year of free, full-day pre-kindergarten class is right around the corner, and his office is aiming to have it be “universal,” an accomplishment that would mean there’s a spot for all 70,000 New York City children who want one. That’s a “small city” of bouncing four-year-olds who’d otherwise be with babysitters or private classes, the Times’ editorial board notes. In essence, Buery is responsible for adding an entire grade level to what’s already the nation’s largest school system, New York Magazine adds.

“Our job is to make these two New York Cities one,” Buery said on his arrival in office last year. “It’s been my mission in life to help families work their way up the economic ladder. No agency, no community group can do that alone. It takes sustained and far-reaching coordination to drive that kind of change. This administration won’t let bureaucracy or business-as-usual stand in the way of the progress we’re going to make for children and families.”

After racking up two Ivy League degrees, a clerkship for a federal judge and a post as staff attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice, Buery had a revelation. “I knew that I did not want to be a lawyer,” he admits, “but I did not have a career plan after college other than wanting to continue a commitment to social justice.” During an assignment challenging the construction of petrochemical facilities in low-income minority neighborhoods in Louisiana, Buery realized that he identified more with the community organizers’ struggle than any courtroom proceeding. “It occurred to me that I would rather have their jobs than my own,” he says.

“Anxious to build organizations of my own,” Buery returned home to East New York. He established two nonprofits: iMentor, a program that’s guided 13,000 students through the college application process with in-person and online mentoring, and Groundwork, Inc., an organization that worked with families in Brooklyn’s public housing projects. “What he wants for East New York is what every middle class family wants for their children,” one of Buery’s colleagues at Groundworks, Inc., told a blogger. His success in doing so — math and science scores improved 36 and 41 percent, respectively, in the program’s first five years — drew the attention of larger charities, including one of New York City’s oldest and most respected child welfare organizations, the Children’s Aid Society.

In 2009, at age 37, Buery was appointed the first black leader of Children’s Aid Society, and the youngest since its founding in 1853. From his early experience founding nonprofits, the broad-shouldered Buery honed an entrepreneurial impulse. At Children’s Aid Society, he learned how to manage a colossal agency of 1,100 full-time and 700 part-time staff. He brought a data-driven approach to the charity’s programming, tracking young participants to measure their successes.

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Those skills have come in handy in his new post as deputy mayor, where Buery is coordinating a couple dozen agencies, his staff says. Luckily, the city isn’t building a program from the ground up. Two years ago, figures showed 20,000 pre-K spots — about one-third of the total needed. Buery’s expanding on two fronts: half-day programs are being lengthened into full days, and new classrooms are being added wherever they can fit them, often at community-based organizations like Catholic Charities or Union Settlement Association.

There’s plenty of challenges ahead for New York’s universal pre-K expansion. Too many classrooms, reflecting the neighborhood demographics, appear segregated by race and socio-economics — exaggerating the worst patterns in their surroundings, rather than adding diversity. One of the most vocal critics, Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at University of California, Berkeley, has argued the expansion does more to benefit middle-class children than the poorer students it’s aimed at.

And then there’s the bruising fight with Gov. Andrew Cuomo that practically came to blows over mayoral control of city schools. (De Blasio, who fought for permanent control, was prepared to settle for three years; instead, Senate Republicans in Albany gave him just one.)

But with September approaching, Buery can tick off a number of successes. State funding — about $340 million a year — is locked in for the program’s first five years, totaling $1.5 billion. Enrollments have also increased for the second year, close to projected totals. In June, De Blasio announced that 57,000 children had been guaranteed a spot in their top three choices, though another 10,000 youngsters were placed in schools that didn’t even appear on the parent’s list of a dozen choices.

Soon, the visions from Buery’s childhood, of separate and unequal cities, may become a detail of the past. If universal pre-K lives up to its “historic and transformative” promise, it will level the playing field in the New York City’s schools and check inequality in the long run. Fifteen years from now, a kid like Buery from East New York, from South Bronx or Central Harlem might look back on this moment as the first step of his own journey to Harvard.

“To those who think that this mayor is too ambitious or moving forward too quickly, I just want to emphasize that if you say that, you really don’t know this city,” Buery says. “There is nothing that we cannot do when we come together.”

This Urban School District Is Promising Free Meals For Every Child

A bologna sandwich: That’s what students of Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tenn., received for lunch if they forgot to bring the $2 or so to pay for their food.

Nothing: That’s what some impoverished students (80 percent qualify for free lunch) would rather sit with in the cafeteria than be revealed as the “poor kid” to their classmates.

“We see kids every day that don’t go through the lunch line because they don’t want to be identified as that kid who gets a free meal. That stigma is huge,” Tony Geraci, the executive director of Shelby County Schools’ nutrition program, tells The Commercial Appeal.

But come this school year, that will all change. The school system will be serving three meals to every single student in the district — breakfast, lunch and dinner — all for free, regardless of how wealthy their family may be.

It’s due to a federal program that’s changing the way cash reimbursements for school lunches are distributed. Rather than judging individual families in relation to the poverty line, the government is now looking at the economic well-being of entire cities. Known as the “community eligibility provision,” the program kicks in once 40 percent of the school district’s population is considered low-income (largely based on signups for food stamps). Reimbursements in Memphis will now doled out based on how many meals are served in a cafeteria rather than how many poor kids attend a school, creating an incentive to serve additional meals.

Nutritious meals had been (and continue to be) correlated with academic performance. One 2002 study undertaken by a Harvard Medical School professor found that students “at nutritional risk” missed more days of school and expressed more anxiety and aggression — areas that all showed improvement six months later when a free breakfast program was implemented. It may sound simplistic, but a plate of chicken or lasagna could the difference between kids who pay attention to their teacher and the ones who focus on their empty stomach, a divide that largely falls on economic lines.

America’s subsidized school lunch programs date back to World War II, when many young men were rejected from the draft due to the lingering physical consequences of childhood malnutrition. The National School Lunch Act, passed in 1946 as a “measure of national security,” got a major update in 1998 when Congress agreed to start paying for snacks for youngsters in certain after-school extracurriculars. Launched experimentally in 2010, the latest expansion goes even farther, ensuring there’s food on every child’s plate at every meal. It’s part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s signature “Let’s Move!” campaign to end childhood obesity.

Supporters say the latest plan is essential to preventing hunger in classrooms in Memphis and across the country — Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, parts of New York City and elsewhere. Not only does “community eligibility” eliminate stigma for children who’d otherwise qualify for free or reduced lunch, it also ensures that other students — the ones who didn’t file their annual paperwork, others who may be just above the poverty cutoff or some of the growing number of homeless youth — don’t fall through the gap. For several kids, not eating a healthy meal at school means not eating at all.

“Kids won’t be going home and saying, ‘I’m hungry,’ and their mother just says, ‘I don’t have anything for you to eat,’ and not enough money to go to the market maybe,” one student in Baltimore, Adria Johnson, told the local news station when her district qualified. All together, nearly 6.4 million students across 13,800 districts are now being fed by the expanded criteria. In Memphis alone, parents will save $1.8 million they previously forked over for lunch.

“Stigma really overshadows a lot of the great things we do,” Geraci says. “For once, we’ll be able to have a program where we can say, now it’s time to learn, now it’s time to eat, now it’s time to play. That’s huge for this district.”

The Father of Head Start Shares His Thoughts on Shaping the Program for the Future

Head Start, the early childhood development program, has lurched from crisis to crisis, but it’s always found a champion in Edward Zigler, who’s guided the program through every presidential administration since Lyndon Johnson.
Approaching its 50th anniversary, Head Start has been praised for lifting students out of poverty through education and wraparound services for health, nutrition, mental well-being and family cohesion. One longitudinal study of siblings, conducted by a Harvard professor in 2009, showed that enrollees benefited from improved test scores, higher high school and college graduation rates, fewer run-ins with the law and better health as an adult, compared with their brothers and sisters. Other studies, however, have found that educational advantages fade over time, as early as second or third grade, in fact.
In the second half of our interview, NationSwell spoke with Zigler about how Head Start can adapt to better serve its students for the next 50 years.
Q. So many ideas from the War on Poverty have been rolled back. Why has Head Start persisted after all this time?
A. First of all, people like the notion of Head Start. There’s no way to blame a preschool child for the poverty that he or she belongs to. Anything you can do to help that child has great appeal to the American public. Studies also show that it does indeed work. These kids are doing better. All of that kept Head Start in place, even after President Johnson left the White House. People forget that his first job was as a teacher down in the border between Mexico and the United States, so he personally loved Head Start.
The other thing that’s worth noting was that Lady Bird Johnson — LBJ’s wife — she was the honorary chair of Head Start, which gave the program visibility. I can still remember the first that anybody ever heard about Head Start, there was a meeting that Mrs. Johnson chaired in the East Room of the White House. People came to that meeting from all over the country, and she told everyone what Head Start was going to look like. These people went back to their homes, and then applications began pouring in. These people wrote to have a Head Start in their communities.
Q. Have we made progress since then?
A. Yes, I think we know more about poverty and its impact on children, and we know what works. A lot of it is common sense. These kids don’t get good healthcare or good nutrition. When Head Start was put in place, it included healthcare for children and improved nutrition component. We took all that was known by the birth of Head Start 50 years ago and incorporated it into the program. Since then, we’ve learned a lot more, and there’s been more independent money to study poor children.
Q. How do we judge if the program’s been a success?
A. One of the things that bothers me after all this time is that the Congress of the United States, in their latest reauthorization, they made the ultimate goal of Head Start school performance, which is like going back to what the pre-Head Start preschool programs were doing. I’ll probably stay alive long enough [for the next reauthorization]. I usually testify at these reauthorizations, and I will argue that they ought to have two goals for Head Start. The first goal is indeed school performance, but the second improvement is in the parents. Any improvements in the parents will boomerang in the child. That hasn’t happened yet, but Head Start spends so much money and time on parents that we ought to. We should see if they get jobs, get better education, all kinds of parent measures — whether they use corporal punishment on the child even. Are they, or do they talk to the child or explain what they’re doing wrong? There’s many measures so we should make parent performance part of Head Start’s success.
Q. How else can this program adapt for today’s students?
A. That first year, Head Start was only a summer program. Anybody that understands poverty or human development will ask you, “What can you get out of a three-month program?” After the first year, there were still some summer programs but not for very long. Most became full-year programs. Many who write about development will also ask you, “What can you get out of one year?” Many of us argue that to have a really good program for preschool children, you’d begin with Head Start as a two-year program. Then there would be a Head Start component from kindergarten to third grade, a continuation of some time and effort to spur their performance. Several of us have argued for much longer programs. It’s hard enough to keep Head Start alive, but really it should be longer.
By the way, just to show how far we’ve gone, I wrote a book called “A Vision of Universal Preschool Education.” President Barack Obama, about a year and a half ago, said that he wants to get universal preschool education in this country, and that’s a very good idea. One of the things I’d change if I could do Head Start again is that I’d put poor and middle class children together in the same classroom. I like the idea of a preschool education that’s mixed. The evidence is clear. It doesn’t do any harm to middle-class preschool children, and poor children benefit when it’s more than just poor children. That’s going to happen in this country. Obama and certain governors are moving in this direction. Thanks to Head Start, preschool is considered a success. They should be doing it with all children.
Q. Has universal preschool been proposed at the federal level before?
A. There wasn’t enough money. The argument is middle-class parents are putting their children into preschool automatically. If they can pay for it themselves, why should the government pay for it? It’s hard to make that argument we should pay for middle-class children. But we use the evidence, like putting them in can actually help poor children do better and doesn’t hurt middle class children anyway. It’s not a bad idea for middle-class children to at least rub elbows sometimes and understand what a poor child goes through.
And by the way, there are certain things that poor children do better than middle-class kids. They seem to be more creative. If you give them colors, they rub that paint all over the page, everywhere. A middle-class child will very carefully push the paint, a little here and there. It looks like the poor children may be more creative. The most valuable thing the middle-class kids have, though, is an appreciation for education, which many poor kids don’t have. We’re going to get to that vision of universal preschool, because as I say, Obama’s talking about it. I don’t know who’s going to follow him, I don’t know if he’s got time enough to do it now. We’ll see. I’ve heard a lot of promises in my time.
I’ve had an interesting life. I’m an old man now. I started when I was 35 and now I’m 85 years old. That’s my life, and that’s been Head Start.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
READ MORE: The Life-Changing Program Head Start Turns 50: A Conversation with Its Founder

The Life-Changing Program Head Start Turns 50: A Conversation with Its Founder

Dr. Edward Zigler is often referred to as the “Father of Head Start.” For the last half-century, he’s been the driving force behind the early intervention program that aims to curb the detrimental effects of growing up in poverty. Since its inception in the summer of 1965, Head Start has served more than 30 million at-risk children and their families. The comprehensive model Zigler pioneered — focusing on every aspect of a child’s early development, not just math skills or reading ability — has been replicated by the Harlem Children’s Zone and other forward-thinking nonprofits, and it’s taking hold in school districts across the country, at all grade levels, through President Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods.
Zigler’s also contributed a dense volume of research to the field. He founded a child development and social policy center at Yale University that’s now staffed by 40 faculty and 50 fellows. Zigler himself authored or edited more than 40 books and 800 scholarly publications. For his work, he was presented with the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology in 2008, the highest honor given by the American Psychological Association.
At age 85, Zigler is an emeritus professor of psychology at Yale, where he’s taught since 1959. Speaking to NationSwell from his home in New Haven, Conn., he reflected on his experience founding a mainstay of America’s education policy half a century ago.
Q: A White House panel was convened in 1964 to find a way to help low-income kids. How did Head Start develop out of it?
A: The War on Poverty was put in place by President Johnson and Sargent Shriver, and the Office of Economic Opportunity was in charge of that effort. That’s when we had something called Community Action, but it was very much disliked in this country, and it got a lot of critical press and a lot of opposition. People wanted to be aggressive about making things better for poor people, but everybody finds out, if you fight City Hall, City Hall fights back. Sargent Shriver was faced with what to do next, and he decided on Head Start. Nobody can be angry at little children that are three or four years old. As part of Community Action, he created Head Start and people did indeed love it since its inception. But it didn’t mean that they became kind to Community Action.
At that point, though, nobody knew what Head Start was, so we needed a planning committee to establish exactly what it would be. Most of its members were in their 50s and 60s and rather well-established psychiatrists, social workers, pediatricians and child psychologists. As it turned out, I was by far the youngest member of the planning committee, at the age of 34. At the age of 40, I took over Head Start in this country and become responsible for it, so I’ve been intimately involved with Head Start for its 50 years.
Q: What did the original eight-week summer pilot project look like?
A: Actually before Head Start, there were some preschool programs, like Citizen Grace in Nashville and a program in New York, but the problem was that they were only interested in one facet of a child’s development: intelligence or school performance, both of which are highly related. On the planning committee for Head Start, we decided on two things that were different and that are still in place after 50 years. The first is comprehensive services. You wouldn’t just give the child I.Q. raisers and school performances enhancers; instead, you give the kids health services, give the family social work and give them things the child would need to escape poverty.
A second pillar was parent involvement. Head Start doesn’t raise small kids; preschool programs don’t raise children. Parents raise their children. So if you want children to do better, you try to get parents to be better socializers. Head Start is pointed as much as the parents as at the child.
Q: During the Nixon Administration, you developed standards for the program as the first director of the Office of Child Development (now the Administration on Children, Youth and Families). Why was that early work important?
A: At that time, I was the federal official responsible for Head Start. The first thing I did was stop Community Action. They already had their own plan for Head Start, and they had absolutely no use for the planning committee. We were essentially a group of scholars from a lot of different fields, whereas they saw themselves as poverty warriors. They didn’t know a lot about child development, but they’d fight to get a better life for poor people, like building a playground in a poor neighborhood. Well, that’s fine — I wouldn’t be against that — but that’s not the solution to what children need. And that’s where the planning committee came in.
We didn’t have enough money to serve all the children trying to get into Head Start, so instead of teaching people how to mobilize, I stopped that aspect of the program, and all the money went to optimizing poor children’s development, which was the planning committee’s only goal. That didn’t meet the satisfaction of a lot of people — self-proclaimed “poverty warriors,” who were getting paid through the program. They wanted to meet with me to see if they could change my mind. As a public official, I was glad to meet with them. As the meeting went on, the guy who was really the leader of the group at the opposite end of this long conferences table from me, stood up and said, “Dr. Zigler, you just don’t understand us. We are willing to give up a generation of our children in order to do our work.” And I remember at the time, I stood up at my end of the table and said, “Well you might be willing to, but I’m trying to help this generation of your children and to help coming generations of children. And this meeting is over.” And that was that.
Q: In the late 1980s you criticized some centers for not living up to their promise, telling The New York Times in a front-page article that one-third of the centers should be shuttered. Why was that rigorous emphasis on results important for Head Start’s success?
A: Head Start probably started too big. Instead of getting the 35,000 kids that Shriver and Johnson wanted, we put 266,000 into Head Start that first summer. The way it was being funded, we were running a lot of very poor, mediocre programs and hadn’t close any that were poorly functioning. When I came in, I emphasized only two things that would determine the effectiveness of Head Start. One is the quality of the program — are there good teachers in the classroom teaching these children? — and second was its length. The longer the program, the more impact it’s going to have.
Another good thing happened recently. See, for years and years, you didn’t have to reapply. Every five years, you automatically got a new grant. This practice has ended. What is in place now is a monitoring system in which Head Start is evaluated, and if the program is poor, its funding is taken away and somebody else gets it. The improvement in Head Start has taken way too long, but it’s in progress in a pretty satisfactory way now.
Q: You’ve worked with nearly every administration from Johnson through Clinton. Did you have a favorite one to work with?
A: I worked with all of them. After a new administration would come in, I was asked to be a consultant for Head Start. [long pause] Let me tell you a story about President Johnson and what Head Start meant to him. When he left the White House and went back to his ranch in Texas, he discovered a Head Start center nearby. His daughters worked in Head Start, and every day he would go to the center. Now, Johnson was a great, big tall man, and he would fill his side pockets with jelly beans. All the kids got to know him. They’d reach into his pocket and get the jelly beans. After a while, all the kids in the Head Start program were calling him Mr. Jelly Beans. He was so obviously in love with education.
Q: Have there been disappointments along the way?
A: Head Start has gone from crisis to crisis. The worst one happened about one week after I got to Washington, D.C. If you know Washington, you know the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) really runs the place. So during the first week, I was called to this meeting and a guy from OMB was there and he puts a piece of white paper on the table and said, “Here’s the plan. In the first year of Head Start, you will close one-third of the Head Start centers. The second year, you will close another third of the Head Start centers, and the third year you will close the remaining ones.” I was one of the founders of Head Start, but it was going to be gone in three years.
So the same day, I went to the head of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare [now the Department of Health and Human Services], Eliot Richardson’s office, and told his secretary, “I must see the Secretary immediately.” Nobody says that unless they’re pretty damn serious, so she went in and of course he saw me immediately. He and I had hit it off. He was a great boss, a very smart guy. I told him what had just happened at this meeting run by OMB, and he looked at me in amazement. He didn’t know anything about it either — a Cabinet member in the Nixon administration and he didn’t know about it. He told me to go back to my office, do my work and forget that the meeting ever happened. He also said that he’d go to the White House and clear it up, which he did.
One of the things that always helps is that every time the reauthorization comes up, the parents with children in Head Start march in support of it. It’s been a very important factor in keeping the program alive. I don’t know of another children’s program that’s been alive for 50 years. On the adult side, we’ve got Social Security. But a program for kids? Kids don’t vote, but the parental participation helps keep it alive.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
 

Meet the NationSwell All-Stars

We launched NationSwell.com in December 2013 as part of our mission to elevate the greatest solutions to our national challenges. Since then, we’ve told more than 2,000 stories about people across the country who are bridging the opportunity divide, advancing national service, preserving our environment and making government work.
The NationSwell All-Stars are the most inspiring changemakers we featured in our first year. From a Navy SEAL who is using his war wounds to help fellow soldiers, to the founders of GirlTrek and the street doctor who is bringing medical care to the memeless, these are the people offering creative and impactful solutions.
Last month, the All-Stars joined the NationSwell Council, a membership network and events series for professionals committed to service, for “A Celebration of Service” in New York City. Support them by watching the above video and reading these original stories on NationSwell.com, then share your ideas in the comments below or on this story’s call to action.
We’re partnering with NBCUniversal to support the greatest innovators who are tackling some of the nation’s most critical issues. Tell us who you think the next biggest changemaker in America is by nominating them to be a 2015 NationSwell AllStar.
 

The Common Sense Move That Reduced California’s Teen Pregnancy Rate by 60 Percent

In 1991, within the course of a single year, close to 16 out of every 100 teenage girls in California became pregnant — a rate that ranked among the worst in the country (the national average was 6.18 births for every 100 teens) and far exceeded those of other developed countries, sometimes by double digits.
Staggering as those statistics were, there’s been an equally stunning development in the 20 years since. By 2011, the teen pregnancy rate nationwide dropped 37 percent, and by more than half in the Golden State, a decline that’s “one of the nation’s great but unheralded success stories of the past two plus decades,” says Bill Albert, chief program officer for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Despite the drastic drop in teen pregnancies, the fact remains uncelebrated — perhaps because no one can pinpoint exactly how it happened. Researchers haven’t yet explained how so many states’ divergent (and sometimes contradictory) strategies could consistently result in such steep declines.
The simple explanation? A “magic combination of less sex and more contraception,” as Albert puts it. But that only begs the question, What changed about the way teens have sex?
Studies point to a number of cultural factors. Some claim that mandatory sex education in schools after the AIDS crisis increased use of contraception. Others cite welfare reform and the strong economy. One hypothesis holds that MTV’s reality shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” discouraged sex with their gritty looks at the challenges of childbearing at a young age. Another theory says kids saw their parents marrying and having children later in life, so they likewise didn’t experiment until they were older and perhaps more mature.
A hard look at California’s programs, however, may reveal the best practices and a model to adopt nationwide. After all, the state is leading the way in reducing all three key areas — teen pregnancy, births and abortions. It’s “the undisputed heavyweight champion of prevention,” Albert remarks.
The Golden State, as a whole, saw teen birth rates drop by 60 percent from their peak in 1991. That number reflects improvement across all races; Hispanic teens still have the highest rate (4.27 births per 100 female teens), but it’s down 42 percent in the past 10 years.
Many public health officials point to the state’s sex education as an essential element in their multi-pronged approach. State law passed in 2003 requires the education to be “comprehensive, medically accurate and age- and culturally-appropriate.” Within the context of preventing HIV/AIDS, California teaches abstinence, but otherwise says abstinence-only education is “not permitted” in public schools. (It’s the only state in the union that didn’t accept lucrative federal dollars tied to “abstinence-only-until-marriage” programs included in a 1996 welfare reform package, after the state found its own pilot ineffective compared to one that included information on contraceptives.)
From there, the state’s approach focuses on access to healthcare, pioneering an innovative funding model that allows teen patients at hospitals or community clinics to qualify as their own household, making them eligible to receive public assistance for their medical expenses.
Additionally, California takes a more personalized approach to the social issues that surround — and lead to — teen pregnancy by helping local school districts and community healthcare providers tailor their programs to specific geographic areas. There’s vast differences, for example, in urban, affluent San Francisco and the rural farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley, where teen pregnancy rates still double those of the Bay Area.
“The problem isn’t the across-the-board teen birth rate in California, it’s the inequities that are revealed when you look at the rate,” Alison Chopel, senior program manager of the California Adolescent Health Collaborative and champion of the effort, says. “Why are black girls and Latina girls having babies younger than white girls? It’s because of the opportunity landscape that’s available to them.”
For Chopel, the need to customize the programs is very personal. As a teenager, she saw herself becoming another statistic. Raised in a poor household, she struggled with schoolwork, took drugs to cope, failed her classes and barely graduated from high school. College didn’t seem to be in her future, especially not after she had a baby boy. “I didn’t mean to get pregnant,” she says, “but I meant to have him.”
With the help of a Pell Grant, she graduated from college and went on to graduate school to study public health. She came to recognize the wide scope of factors contributing to unintended pregnancies: family structure, education, poverty, access to healthcare, race and culture.
Recently, public health advocates have questioned whether a baby is really the cause of the negative life outcomes — dropping out of school, living in poverty, depending on food stamps — for teen moms or whether they would have been just as likely to end up there because of their upbringing. (Chopel points to new research showing that young mothers from impoverished backgrounds may actually perform better than their peers because they receive family support and are motivated to succeed for their child’s sake.) Poverty, in other words, isn’t a symptom of unwanted teen pregnancies. If anything, it’s the cause.
California’s “innovative” strategies and community-based partnerships worked: they’re “helping young women and men make responsible choices,” says Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the state’s public health department, so the state is focused on continuing to make prevention programs available. “In all communities,” Chapman adds emphatically.
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Community Colleges Have Abysmal Graduation Rates. Here’s How to Change That

Community college improves students’ lives — for those who make it to graduation, that is.
The sad reality for many, however, is that they’ll drop out along the way. Only one out of every five students will receive their associates degree within three years, one year past the expected time. After five years, graduation rates rise only to a paltry 35 percent.
“With graduation rates that low, community colleges can be dead ends rather than gateways for students,” says Susan Dynarski, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “Graduation rates are low in part because community colleges can’t exclude poorly prepared students. Unlike selective schools, they are required to take anyone who walks in the door, and they have to work harder to get those students to graduation.”
A program at the City University of New York (CUNY) is working directly with low-income students to boost their success. Since 2007, Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, or ASAP, has reached more than 6,400 students, providing them streamlined access to all of CUNY’s resources. They’re hooked up with advisors and tutors, have early access to enroll in popular courses and receive funds for a metro pass, textbooks and any additional costs not covered by financial aid.
The costs of the program are steep — $5,400 a year per student, much higher than the $3,300 tuition — but backers say it’s well worth the expense. A randomized study released this year found ASAP nearly doubled graduation rates.
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Suspending Students Isn’t Effective. Here’s What Schools Should Do Instead

A decade ago, 60 percent of students at one South Los Angeles middle school were suspended at some point during the school year. Out of 1,958 sixth, seventh and eight graders, 1,189 were written up for drugs, violence or class disruptions. But this zero-tolerance discipline policy didn’t have the desired effects. Troubled kids isolated themselves, academics lagged and enrollment sharply declined.
Led by a new principal and funded by a federal grant, Audubon Middle School and Gifted Magnet Center, an inner-city junior high school with one of the largest proportions of African-American students in L.A., joined the growing movement of implementing restorative justice in schools: Instead of simply penalizing misbehavior, the strategy involves talking through the reasons why a child is acting out. Prioritizing resolution over retribution, it’s all about keeping kids in school while maintaining the best learning environment. Audubon has taken the idea to a whole new level. Last school year, out of 827 middle school students, only 13 were booted from class — an astonishing 98.9 percent drop from 10 years ago.
In this community, too many African American and Hispanic students fall victim to a life of crime and end up imprisoned, says Kevin Dailey, a behavior intervention specialist with 31 years of experience at Audubon. “People are behind the gray walls because they don’t know how to communicate or because they didn’t have those supportive relationships,” he explains. “We have to do whatever we can to keep them out of that. Knowing how to communicate, how to listen and how to speak from the heart are very important.” In his mind, communication is the difference between being facedown on the ground in handcuffs and enrolled in college.
Restorative justice teaches those skills primarily through something’s known as a “peace circle.” After an incident — whether it be mouthing off in class or shoving a student in the hall — the kids in the classroom talk about what happened over cups of hot chocolate. Rather than referring to “the victim” and “the perpetrator,” which establishes permanent roles for the kids, the circles focus on the action — “the harm” — and how it affects both students. As a small totem is passed around (determining who can speak), all of the participants try to arrive at some consensus for how to address the behavior moving forward.
Sure, there may be consequences, but that’s no longer the focus. Suspensions are now used very selectively because educators don’t want kids to fall behind in their studies. If there is a serious problem, administrators now find it’s better to hold conferences with parents and, if necessary, refer the student to anger management classes or other counseling.
“I don’t know if this is the definitive terminology in the textbooks, but what we see in action is restorative justice means giving kids an opportunity to speak their minds, to listen to them and agree on the next step,” explains Charmaine Young, the school’s principal since 2012. “We’re taking the punitive power of the referral slip and getting to the why of the behavior.”
It’s also why Young encourages teachers to get to know kids outside of the classroom — so they can understand them as young people with personalities and ambitions, rather than just as students who perform well or falter academically. She believes that teachers need to balance academic instruction with social development, like a seesaw. A class can’t be all fun and games, but it also can’t be entirely lessons, Young says. Students are more willing to learn if they feel the teachers actually care about them personally.
That’s where the new policies come into play: if there’s a problem in class, teachers will tailor the response to a student’s unique situation, rather than worrying about getting back to the lesson plan. It’s why administrators no longer issue suspensions for not wearing a uniform, for example, and instead ask if the student’s family has money for the right clothes.
Restorative justice isn’t a new concept, but its adoption is gaining traction, particularly in the Golden State. Last year, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing required all new principals and administrators to receive training on positive school discipline, and in September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation’s first law eliminating suspensions for young children (grades K-3) for minor incidents like talking back or showing up without school materials. Los Angeles Unified School District went one step further and said that no student in any grade should ever be suspended for “willful defiance,” a catch all offense (outside of two dozen specific categories like bullying and possessing drugs) that had been disproportionately targeted at minorities.
We must “change direction, keep all children in all schools and invest in restoring our children’s sense of purpose, despite so many institutions wanting to throw them away,” says Roslyn Broadnax, a core parent leader of CADRE, a group of minority parents with kids in South L.A. schools. “Over the past 10 years, we have begun to chip away at the belief that removing children of color from school for minor behavior, and leaving them vulnerable to harm and disconnected from the classroom, somehow improves our school safety and test scores.”
Recently, one boy in the after-school program at Audubon accidentally hit a fire alarm, disrupting a school site council meeting. A star basketball player, the youngster was worried he wasn’t going to be able to play in the upcoming league games. The very next morning, he arrived at the main office at 6:45 a.m. — more than an hour before the first bell rings at 8 a.m. — and sat in a chair waiting for the principal to arrive. “I just wanna know, Ms. Young, if I can have a cup of hot chocolate and explain what happened?” he asked. “Before you hear it from anyone else,” he added.
“Who does that?” Young wonders aloud. These are the kind of young adults Audubon is nurturing: kids who can own up to their mistakes or ask for help when it’s needed. Either way, the graduates will be students who know how to speak up for themselves.
Young points out a recent example of their success: Last year, the valedictorians at several L.A. high schools were all alums of Audubon.

3 Top Educators Share Their Secrets to Successful School Reform

For education reform to succeed, there’s one thing it must have: buy-in from teachers. No matter how visionary the school overhaul is, it will never reach students without employees’ consent. In light of a recent Gallup survey finding that 70 percent of K-12 teachers aren’t actively engaged, how can the most promising changes build wider support? NationSwell asked three high-profile educators to weigh in. Here’s what they had to say.

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HAVE ADVOCATES OUTSIDE THE SUPERINTENDENT’S OFFICE
Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, said her goal from day one was doing “the job right for the city’s children,” even if it meant she “would upset the status quo.” Which is exactly what she did. Rhee, now chairman of the St. Hope public charter school system, “quickly” (her word) decided to shutter two dozen schools, cut the administrative district office in half, instituted new evaluations, bargained with the union to undo tenure and rewrote the math and reading curriculum. These changes “provoked community outrage” and “caused turmoil in the district” (again, her words), but she says the improved test scores and higher enrollment made the changes worth it.

Today, Rhee (who left the D.C. district five years ago) reflects on how she could have acted differently; she wants the most engaged teachers to be on her side. “Anytime you are working on something that will impact classrooms, reformers need to go to stakeholders,” Rhee tells NationSwell. “Parents will want to understand what the changes mean.… Principals and administrators need to understand the role they will play in managing the instructional program. The community will want to understand how the modifications will result in better schooling for the next generation. But it will always be teachers who will be asked to actually implement the change, making them the most important group,” Rhee says. Engaged teachers will not only incorporate their experience into a program’s development, they will also bring fellow colleagues onboard, which will “ultimately determine the success — or failure — of any initiative,” she adds.

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LISTEN, THEN ADAPT
As superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), Karen Garza oversees a network of 196 schools in the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. One of her biggest issues ahead is managing the budget. “When meeting and talking with employees around the country, and when embarking on my listening tours, I have heard repeatedly how important it is for FCPS to stay competitive in the region with employee salaries,” she says. “Organizations change and evolve, and it was apparent that our needs had changed.” In other words, listening also must translate into meaningful modifications. In January, Garza compiled all she’d heard into a comprehensive $70 million plan to boost employee salaries, while making up the difference in cuts to health insurance, utility costs and employee turnover.
“I understand there is always a little trepidation when a new leader arrives and I am mindful of the tremendous history of excellence that exists in Fairfax,” Garza adds. “However, even with greatest systems, it is necessary to embrace the notion of continuous improvement.”
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NEVER STOP COMMUNICATING
Mike Miles, the superintendent of Dallas Independent School District who’s a fast-rising figure in the education reform movement, sums up his advice succinctly: The “best way to build consensus and buy-in” is to “communicate clearly and often,” he says. “This means you avoid placing an artificial cap on your communication efforts and continually seek avenues to convey your message in a focused and clear manner.” In Dallas, they’ve been doing just that as they roll out the Teacher Excellence Initiative (TEI), a new system of merit compensation that’s replacing the decades-old pay ladders that dole out salaries based on seniority. “Obviously, this major shift takes teachers out of their familiar comfort zone, so communication has been key to creating an understanding of the process,” he says. Miles held staff meetings at every campus, convened a teachers’ task force and shared details with all employees through a website, one-sheet handouts and email newsletter — all before the school board even took a vote to approve the initiative.

Now that the program is underway, Miles continues to ask a panel of expert teachers for their advice on continual improvements, and he’s continuing to share success stories on a news website, The HUB. He believes these two measures “have reduced fears of the program and allowed our teachers to view the initiative favorably,” he says. Overall, “by not placing artificial limits on our communication, we are making TEI a successful project our teachers and community can support.”

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Only 1 in 5 New York City Students Graduates from College. This Nonprofit Is Going to Change That

It’s a sad fact that fewer than one in 10 American kids raised in impoverished neighborhoods will graduate from college. But in two major U.S. cities, one organization successfully has flipped that statistic on its head.
OneGoal, an educational nonprofit geared to low-performing students in low-income Chicago and Houston neighborhoods, has demonstrated its worth: 83 percent of OneGoal fellows have earned or are actively pursuing a college degree.
That’s why the organization’s leadership is ready to take OneGoal’s proven model to New York City, America’s largest school district and the place where education reforms either make it big or fall apart. Once there, they’ll be graded alongside Harlem Children’s Zone, InBloom (which, it should be noted, got an F), Amplify, Knewton and other innovators changing the way classrooms work.
The city has an acute need for OneGoal: 12 years after entering public high school, only one in five New Yorkers will earn a college degree. Plus, a quarter of the city’s high school grads drop out of college during their freshman year.
“We have been in Chicago for the last eight years, and we’ve really proved what’s possible with a set of students. Once we started to see real results, we almost had a moral imperative to work to serve more students,” explains Nikki Thompson, executive director of OneGoal’s New York operation. After the expansion to Houston in 2013, “it became clear that we could replicate it in other cities. And in the world of social justice, there’s no school system like New York.”
OneGoal’s key belief is that students succeed by empowering themselves. The program’s teacher-led model focuses on training educators to boost the lowest achievers by conducting an intervention with the ones who are usually overlooked: OneGoal’s fellows begin with an average GPA of 2.7 (B-) and a 729 SAT score. Half are black, 42 percent are Latino and 90 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch. In contrast, QuestBridge, an organization with a similar mission, tries to pluck out what Thompson calls “the talented tenth,” students most likely to succeed at a selective college.
Pioneering a form of character development, OneGoal’s unique three-year curriculum spans from junior year of high school to freshman year of college and is centered on shattering stereotype disadvantaged students’ carry about themselves so they come to see college as “realistic” and “attainable.” Project directors hone a student’s ability to ace standardized tests, admissions essays and financial aid applications, instilling them with leadership skills of “professionalism, ambition, integrity, resilience and resourcefulness” early — all of which puts them on a path bound for college, and from there, gives them the tools to succeed.
In classes of 25 to 30 kids, “we do actual role-play with the students, not just reading the material,” Thompson says. Analyzing real-world situations, they discuss what actions to take when you and your roommate get into a fight, for instance, or how to manage when there isn’t a teacher saying, “Make sure to bring your homework.” “Once they’re in college,” Thompson says, “it becomes almost muscle memory.”
In New York City, OneGoal is looking to replicate success stories like that of Kewauna Lerma, who was profiled in Paul Tough’s “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.” Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Lerma was barely pulling in a C- average and already had a rap sheet when she became a OneGoal fellow. “I didn’t really have a family. I was scattered all over the place, no father, with my grandma sometimes,” she says in the book. “It was all messed up. Jacked up.” Through the program, she went from being the girl who scored in the bottom percentile on a practice ACT test to having straight A’s on her report card senior year of high school.
Freshman year at Western Illinois University brought Lerma new difficulties, like a tough biology class that seemed far over her head. She didn’t know half the big words her professor used, but she sat in the front row. After class, she always asked him to definitions the words that stumped her. Money was always tight, and Lerma says she once didn’t eat for two days when she had no cash. But she persisted, as OneGoal taught her to do. Her biology grade? A+.
Like Lerma, OneGoal will face many challenges when it makes the move to the Big Apple, particularly in winning support from key political players and making sure they don’t overstep any boundaries with the powerful teachers union. “New York is just so different when you talk about size and scale and competition. There are 100 high schools in Chicago. In New York, there are over 500 high schools. It’s just a different ballgame,” Thomson says. “The challenge is differentiating ourselves.” Additionally, the New York City pilot will need to navigate through a few changes OneGoal is making to its Chicago model, including a fee structure to help fund the nonprofit’s work and a data systems program to help track academic and non-cognitive progress.
But Thompson, a Teach for America alum and chief of staff while Joel Klein served as NYC’s school chancellor, has a network of connections she can draw on. Her efforts so far are showing results. After a roundtable last year, Acorn Community High School in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect Heights signed on to host one of the seven to 10 pilot classes that are anticipated for fall. And the Arbor Brothers, a philanthropic organization that funds social entrepreneurs in the Tri-State area, gave a $60,000 grant to the expansion efforts.
After New York, the group plans to take on five more school districts by 2017. For all their rapid success, OneGoal’s staff has never lost sight of their mission. Whether for seven students or 7,000, the group’s “one goal” remains the same: College graduation. Period.
LISTEN: To This American Life episode, which features former OneGoal Fellow Kewauna Lerma.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that there are 40 or 50 high schools in Chicago. The correct number is 100.
(Homepage photograph: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
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