3 Ideas That Will Give Every Citizen Access to the American Dream

During last month’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared an end to the nation’s economic downturn. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong,” he said. But for many, the president’s announcement felt premature.
Currently, 45 million Americans live below the poverty line. Income inequality, stagnating wages and job market volatility make the prospects of upward mobility bleak. According to research by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Americans raised at the bottom of the income ladder are likely to remain there as adults. Two-thirds will never make it to the middle class, and 96 percent will be barred from the top bracket, where household income exceeds $81,700.
Erin Currier, director of Pew’s projects on financial security and mobility, studies the factors that limit economic opportunity. Recently named one of the most influential women in Washington under 35, she has utilized the research to establish nonpartisan agreement on the facts that guide policy decisions. (It’s already helped establish a bipartisan caucus.) “We hold this up to be the national ethos of being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” she says, “but it doesn’t happen that often.”
During a conversation with NationSwell, she identified three areas lawmakers from both sides of the aisle need to address if they hope to restore every American’s chance at success.
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7 Reasons Why Community Colleges Are Necessary for America’s Prosperity

In last week’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama laid out a plan to offer a community college education free of charge to every American. These schools, as Obama said back in 2010, are “treated like the stepchild of the higher education system. They’re an afterthought, if they’re thought of at all,” but now he’s hoisted them up as the “centerpiece of [his] education agenda.”
Some question whether his proposal for free tuition is the best use of limited cash, but setting politics aside, there’s no denying that the nation’s 1,130 community colleges play a vital role in higher education. Here’s why they’re essential to our success.
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These Schools Are Opening Their Doors to Struggling Communities

College campuses are expanding, and it’s not due to higher acceptance rates. Rather, it’s because, more and more universities are emphasizing service as a core mission and integrating with the communities around them through service.
Here are a few leading the way in neighborhood engagement.
Penn Alexander School, Philadelphia
In the early 2000s, the University of Pennsylvania started a series of programs targeting the rejuvenation of the nearby Spruce Hill neighborhood. Many of UPenn’s faculty and students live in the area, so the school decided to invest in its stabilization through lighting programs, safety patrols and homebuyer incentives.
Their biggest initiative, however, was the formation of the Penn Alexander elementary school, (previously called the Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander University Penn Partnership School). What started as a simple public school in a struggling neighborhood is now so vibrant with families that school acceptance is determined by lottery.
Creating Community Connections, Boston
Sponsored by MIT, this program started back in 2000 and benefits the residents of Camfield Estates. MIT connects the area with technology through computer training, free laptops and high speed internet connection. Three-quarters of the residents chose to participate in the program when it was first announced. Called “C3,” it has recently been expanded to provide training and equipment to businesses and institutions in the area, as well as a new computer lab available for residents of the Estates and the neighborhood.
Center for Civic Leadership, Rice University, Houston
At Rice University, the administration has created a curriculum dedicated to service through the Center for Civic Leadership. Students and faculty alike participate in community service projects, research and programs benefiting Houston’s Fifth Ward. For students, service isn’t a one- time deal, but a four-year-long commitment. Freshmen start college with a first-year orientation to the surrounding community, and, if passionate, students can even earn an undergrad certificate in civic leadership. Recently, the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars granted up to four $5,000 scholarships to Rice University to participate in the Center’s activities.
To learn more about universities participating in neighborhood engagement, click here.
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How Can a Mayor Enact Change Once He’s Left Office?

One of the most common complaints about politicians is their lack of connectivity with the constituents that they serve. But you certainly can’t say that about R.T. Ryback, the former mayor of Minneapolis.
That’s because he’s teaching a new course at the University of Michigan called “Mayor 101.” Within the classroom walls, students are learning from Rybeck about all of the different components that encompass being a mayor — including how to be a public leader.
Elected mayor back in 2002 R.T. Rybeck served three terms, finishing his last term in January 2014. During his tenure, he handled budget crises, worked to increase interfaith dialogue following Sept. 11 and in 2009, oversaw the opening of a new college football stadium. While his background is in architecture and journalism (having degrees and work experience in both fields), he now using his knowledge and time as mayor to teach students about urban physical development and city policy.
And although he only has political experience in Minneapolis, he encourages all his students to look at the cities around them like Rochester, Duluth and St. Paul. For Rybeck, you can learn just as much, if not more, from another city as you can from your own.
“You most often get the best ideas by getting lost in cities,” Rybeck tells City Lab. “I’ve always studied other cities and I really think that’s the best way to understand these things.”
The class has no midterms or finals, but throughout the course, students are encouraged to go out into the city and practice what they are taught. At the end of the course, students will present their own urban-development proposal.
“I’d like all the energy they would have spent cramming on a final to be spent trying to develop something that can have an impact on a current place being designed,” Rybeck explains to City Lab. “I very much want these students to use the work they’re doing to go out into the workplace. Because we need their perspective now. Not just when they graduate.”
If that change can start now, just imagine what can happen when these students reach public office.
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The Latest Place to Grow Greens

While urban farms are gaining popularity in cities across the country, some metropolitans are taking them to new heights. Literally.
Instead of planting gardens on the ground, some groups are utilizing rooftops to grow food to feed customers, students and the homeless.
One such urban rooftop farm is located at Roberta’s Pizza in New York City. Located in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, the restaurant has two small rooftop greenhouse facilities that produce 20 percent of the ingredients the restaurant uses throughout its multiple locations. And on the west coast, you’ll find Project Open Hand in San Francisco. This nonprofit uses its rooftop greenhouse to produce healthy meals for the sick and elderly. All of the herbs and greens are grown in the city headquarters, prepared by the chefs and then distributed across the city.
Schools are also a popular destination for rooftop farms. At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., a greenhouse sits atop the school’s Exploratory Hall. As part of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, the university’s greenhouse has three rooms — each paralleling a different climate. It has also partnered with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the university’s Potomac Heights’ vegetable garden, which feeds the homeless.
Chicago features a few different schools taking a unique approach to rooftop farming. The University of Chicago’s greenhouse sits atop the Donnelley Biological Science Learning Center.  Boasting 7,500 square feet of growing space, a portion of it is also used for drug research.
There’s also a local high school getting involved in the sky-high action. The Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School in Chicago has a hydroponic greenhouse on its roof. Since the school bases its curriculum on social transformation, it views social ecology and urban agriculture as vital components. So, the school uses its greenhouse to grow food for the students, as well as it serving as an educational tool.
And so far it’s working. For one student Jaleen Starling, the opportunity to work in the garden was life changing or at least lifestyle changing.
“When we get taught something, it’s never just for us to learn,” she tells New Communities. “It’s something for us to connect to. … Until I came to this school, I didn’t pay attention to food.”
So while these farms may be high up, they’re starting a movement on the ground.
To find more urban rooftop farms growing across the country, click here.
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When High Turnover Threatens Learning, This Unique Program Helps Urban Schools Retain Talented Teachers

The first day of school can be just as nerve-wracking for new teachers as it is for students. Not only is it their first time in the classroom on their own, but gaining the command and respect of children is no easy task.
In the Baltimore school district, hundreds of teachers are hired every year to fill vacant spots. And just as fast as they’re hired, it seems that they’re gone: 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within three years. This cycle continues year after year.
That’s why former Baltimore school administrator Jennifer Green and her colleague decided to do something about it. In 2009, they quit their jobs to form the Urban Teacher Center (UTC), a Baltimore-based organization working to end the fast burnout rate by preparing new teachers for that first year in the classroom.
How do they plan to do this? Well, in exchange for $20,000 from a school’s principal, UTC will send a recent college graduate to spend a year as a resident working alongside an experienced teacher. Over the course of the year, the resident will gain valuable first-hand experience, take graduate classes and have a chance to receive a full-time job offer.
[Other routes] “don’t have the one year of mirroring an effective teacher,” David Wise, a UTC participant tells Governing. “That helps you a lot.”
If hired, the residents can continue to work and earn their masters from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
Currently, UTC has 123 teachers in 35 schools across Baltimore and 200 teachers in 41 schools in Washington. The group plans to expand to Chicago next year and four more cities in the next five years. And it’s not alone, as similar residencies are already established in Boston, Minneapolis and Miami.
It’s obvious that American students are lagging behind students in other countries, and educators are looking towards teachers as both the problem and the solution. Some critics call for stricter and more rigorous application and training processes for new teachers, while others propose evaluating teachers based partly on how their students perform on standardized tests.
UTC falls into the category of the first group. Its process is selective as only 25 percent of the applicants are accepted for the four-year program.
Already, the program is showing results. Although the attrition rate for the first class of UTC residents was the same as the national average, the second class is entering its third year with retention rates improved to 82 percent.
For the school districts, residencies are providing a great, cost-efficient opportunity to find and train new, effective teachers.
“We look for any way we can to get more qualified adults working with students for an extended period of time. The more positive adult interactions kids have, the better they do in school,” Principal Anthony Ruby of Holabird Academy tells Governing. “I can afford four full-time residents for what is still $10,000 less than a teacher.”
With both residents and principals calling it a bargain, this new system may just be the future of education. But the biggest winner? The students.
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This City Gives Dropouts a Realistic Way to Earn Their Diplomas

Over three million students drop out of high school each year, according to Statistic Brain. And although there have been many successful efforts to prevent future dropouts, such as Chicago’s After School Matters, few programs exist that give opportunities to students who have already quit school.
So that’s where Engage Santa Fe comes in. The idea behind it is to entice students to resume course work by enrolling in a program that’s more attractive to them and realistic for their lifestyle.
“[Dropouts] work 8 to 5. They have families. Who’s going to take care of the baby? Some of them are taking care of their brothers and sisters,” explains local resident Korina Nevarez to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Given these challenges, creating just the right program has taken creativity, and getting it approved has taken a lot of perseverance. Luckily, Santa Fe’s educators never gave up, despite working on it for a while.
First approved by the school board this spring, Engage Santa Fe was originally going to be funded by the state and run by a private educational company from Florida — though after criticism from Santa Fe teachers, that company withdrew its bid to run the program. That didn’t stop it from moving forward, though; with a combination of funding from the Department of Labor, the school district, and the Santa Fe Community Foundation, the program is currently kicking off enrollment.
To help bring dropouts into the program, the school district has enlisted none better than the dropout’s own peers to canvass neighborhoods. Valerie Alvarado, 18, a recent graduate of Santa Fe High School, and Udell Calzadillas, 19, a student at University of New Mexico, are both peer recruiters. Their goal is to get at least 75 16- to 21-year-old dropouts to resume their education through Engage Santa Fe.
“I want to graduate,” one candidate for the program told them, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Hopefully, with the continued work of volunteers in Santa Fe, completing their education can be a reality not only the dropouts in the southwest city, but the millions of dropouts across America.
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Meet the Man Who Believes Creativity Knows No Economic Boundaries

It’s the height of summer, and soon, back-to-school commercials will dominate our television screens.
Students won’t be the only ones hitting the books this coming semester, however, as New York University (NYU) just announced a new course load entitled  “Initiative for Creativity and Innovation in Cities.” Created by Richard Florida, it aims to help city leaders make the creative field accessible for all economic classes.
That’s because in New York City, a city prized for its creative industry, 3 million residents don’t have home internet access. And in the Big Apple’s public schools, there is only one computer science teacher for every 11,000 students.
The goal?  To teach city officials, nonprofit leaders and economic development professionals the tools to expand the wealth of the creative class to a greater and more diverse population. Included in this course is a class called “Tools and Techniques for Understanding Urban Economies,” which teaches how to correctly assess community assets.
Students will also have the opportunity to take “Principles of Economic Development,” which is anything but your normal economics class, as it focuses on how “technology, talent, tolerance and territorial assets” are the “strategy for competitiveness in the creative age.”
According to Florida’s interview with Next City, “I thought we could build an educational model that wasn’t so cloistered and was very much broader based” with a goal “to ‘preach the gospel of urbanism’ to a really broad group of people… This initiative is another mechanism for doing this.”
The boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn already experienced their boom, and Florida hopes this course will carry that growth to the people living in the area — from Staten Island to the Bronx. For many people in these communities and in the rest of the city, Florida cites low wages, not high rent as the main cause of economic immobility in NYC.
While the lucrative creative class remains an exclusive group, sending these city leaders back to school may break down those cliquey borders and promote inclusion in this broad city — or at the very least, set the wheels in motion.
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Forget Outsourcing. This Nonprofit Trains Domestic IT Personnel For Free

Most of you probably know what it is like to call for tech assistance and be transferred to a person in another country. Even though the representative on the phone is helpful, the language barrier can be difficult and frustrating.
While jobs in technology are high paying, skill-based and needed by more and more companies, many of them have been outsourced for years — ultimately, making life more difficult for the customer, while drastically cutting costs for the company. However, some businesses are becoming dissatisfied with overseas staff and are beginning to reverse that trend. Jobs are migrating back to the U.S., opening room for domestic staff.
Where there’s a demand, there needs to be a supply, and that’s the mission of the nonprofit Per Scholas. As more and more IT jobs are coming back to the U.S., Per Scholas is offering free IT training for minority and low-income adults.
It all started in New York City in 1995 and has since spread to Dallas, the Washington D.C. area, Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio. The schooling is free and most of the students who take the classes are either unemployed or working part-time, so the promise of a reliable career outweighs the training, which is unpaid.
Students can enroll in one of three main tracks. The first is a 13 week class that sets them on the path to working at a help desk. Upon completion of the course, students will be equipped with industry-ready credentials. A second option is to become a network administrator. Slightly more time consuming, this course spans 18 weeks in length. The shortest of the three is only eight weeks long and prepares students for software testing.
Over the past 19 years, Per Scholas has expanded into areas beyond New York, and helps, on average, about 80 students in each city each year. The company continues to look for areas in which to expand based on three determining factors: (1) the ready availability of IT jobs in the area; (2) if there are already other similar companies in the city; and (3) if there are enough available funds through donations and government grants to function for three years.
This is a big year for Per Scholas, as it will be starting a partnership with Doran Jones, an IT consulting firm. Through it, a new Bronx office will now be training 150 IT testers.
Despite all of this success, Per Scholas is not keeping it all to itself. The company encourages other nonprofits and cities to adopt similar practices and offers three key steps.
1. Form your solutions and practices based on the employers’ hiring and training needs.
2. Involve stakeholders from the non-profit, government, private sector and community organizations in the process. Make sure they are ready to play a part.
3.  Creativity and flexibility are key. Search everywhere and everything to find potential students.
As Per Scholas works to boost American jobs and improve the lives of hundreds, Executive Director Angie Kamath describes their work in the most basic terms to Next City. To her, the organization, “symbolizes the impact of a profitable business model that changes the face of a low-income community and gives low-income individuals access to the middle class.”
Not bad for a small nonprofit competing with the global workforce.
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When Student Loans Didn’t Pan Out, This Teen Turned to Crowdfunding

With skyrocketing tuition costs making it so hard for many families to afford college, dreams of higher education can, at times, feel a little out of reach. Which is why some students have to get more creative and resourceful.
That’s exactly what James Ward realized when he left for college last year. Instead of borrowing money or having a typical work-study job, Ward chose a rather unconventional method — which is perhaps quite fitting for his unusual life. In order for this homeless student to achieve his dreams of higher education, he turned to the internet and more specifically, crowdfunding.
How did he come up with this unique funding option?
A few weeks before he was to head to Washington D.C. to attend Howard University in July 2013, Ward’s Parents Plus loans were rejected, leaving him with no money for school. Thankfully, though, his mentor, Jessica Sutherland – another former homeless child and college graduate — had the idea to turn to crowdsourcing.
Within eight hours after Homeless to Howard was launched, it had already raised $8,000. Ultimately, the campaign raised enough money to send Ward to college, paying for both his tuition and expenses.
Now, Ward has successfully completed his freshman year majoring in physics, making him the first member of his family to go to college.
As Ward told Here and Now’s Jeremy Hobson in an interview, “You have to stay strong and ambitious and determined because there are a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t succeed in life, but all you need is one to get you to where you need to be.”
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