Youth Today

When something occurs once, it’s a phenomenon; twice, it’s a pattern; three times, a definite trend. Well, three times in as many weeks, I have participated in meetings at which someone has asked “Whatever happened to youth development? You really don’t hear much about it any more.” One of the questioners observed that youth development “used to be sexy” (really?) and another noted wistfully that funders “used to throw money at it” (how did I miss that?). Despite my skepticism about some of these views, I found myself pondering the fundamental question.

Several years ago, when foundations and policymakers discovered the obesity crisis in our country – seemingly overnight – I thought we were witnessing just another fad. I mean, hadn’t we all been aware for quite a while that a lot of people were overweight? So why the sudden alarm bells over what seemed like the status quo?

At a recent dropout prevention conference in New York state, a panel of five teenagers shared their ideas about what it would take to help all students succeed in school. One of these young people stands out most dramatically in my mind, mainly because of the juxtaposition between how he appeared and what he said.

Interest in after-school programs for high schoolers is growing around the country, and in many quarters. Several recent national conferences have focused on the topic, as have a number of reports. While there are several reasons for this emerging attention, the single biggest factor is probably our nation’s collective, dismal record on high school graduation.

A smart person once observed that opportunity resides at the intersection of need and capacity. I thought of this adage recently as I read two seemingly disparate documents: a report prepared by the Next Generation Youth Work Coalition focusing on current work force challenges in the youth development field (“Growing the Next Generation of Youth Professionals: Workforce Opportunities and Challenges”), and a new book by Marc Freedman titled Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.

Conventional wisdom says the quality of youth work programs rests in no small measure on the quality of the program staff. But how do you achieve staff quality with the largely part-time, low-wage work force found in many youth service agencies?

The recently released final report on Mathematica’s study of after-school programs (“When Schools Stay Open Late: The National Evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program”) drew considerably less attention than did its initial report two years earlier, perhaps because it drew essentially the same conclusion: Weak programs produce weak results.

The field of youth development faces major challenges in creating and sustaining our work force. Long treated as a component of our work that was “nice but not necessary,” professional development – the process of attracting, training and supporting youth workers – has undergone important changes over the past 15 years. But those changes have been insufficient.

The recent report entitled “Reading at Risk” revealed that, for the first time in modern history, less than half of the adult population of the United States reads literature – a trend that reflects a decline in other sorts of reading as well. The study, by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), pointed out that these trends don’t merely signify lower profits for Amazon.com.

I have just finished reading a new book about young people that should be required reading for youth workers, teachers and, most especially, policy-makers. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, chronicles the fast-paced and heart-wrenching stories of a group of children and youth from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent the better part of a decade in their South Bronx neighborhood, seeking to understand their joys and struggles. What emerges is a cautionary tale for adults who truly care about leaving no child behind.

When I enrolled in a graduate school of social work many years ago, I found myself to be a distinct outsider – the only person in my class of 200 who had majored in economics as an undergraduate. While I’d been studying macroeconomics in my senior year, my fellow students had been learning about human development as psychology majors, or about social problems as sociology majors.

Many of the young people that youth agencies serve are about to lose a lot of what they’ve spent the past nine months learning. Research indicates that all young people experience significant learning losses during the summer break from school, and that the magnitude of these declines varies by grade level, subject matter and family income.

Here’s a story from the friendly skies. One day last summer, on a flight from Atlanta to New York, I came across the following three newspaper headlines:“Teenage Drug Use at an 8-Year Low.”“Student Privacy Just a Specimen for Profit, Politics.” “Brains of Mice Enlarged.”

Now that the ink is dry on the recently reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), it’s time to examine the implications of this legislation for youth work. Of particular note is the section that covers the 21st Century Community Learning Centers – a program designed to open public schools in the non-school hours, expand learning opportunities, and support partnerships between schools and community resources.