Blueprint For Prosperity: Mayor Wharton Works To Reduce Memphis Poverty
July 9, 2015 — Fox Memphis
A Mismatch Between Need and Affluence
July 8, 2015 — The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Tobacco Retail Licensing (TRL) Ordinances Protect the Health of Our Youth
July 8, 2015 — Sonoma County Gazette
Nashville’s Lost Generation Misses Out on Economic Boon
July 6, 2015 — The Tennessean
Reconnecting Youth in America’s Cities
This blog post originally appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on July 2, 2015. You can access the original article here.
For many young people, June is a month replete with excitement and promise. Graduating seniors toss their mortarboards skyward, college kids kick off summer jobs and internships, and newly minted college graduates join the working world in earnest. But for teens and young adults who have dropped out of school or failed to gain a foothold in the labor market, June, like the rest of the year, offers few encouraging opportunities.
These “disconnected youth”—young people between the ages of 16 and 24 years who are neither working nor in school—are unmoored from the jobs, training programs, and academic institutions that anchor and give shape to the lives of their connected counterparts. Absent the experiences and supports that school and work provide, disconnected youth struggle to acquire the skills and credentials they need to live rewarding, freely chosen lives as adults. Youth disconnection stunts human development, with adverse impacts on the affected young people themselves as well as on the economy, social sector, and criminal justice system, and in the political landscape.
According to our recent research, there are 5,527,000 disconnected youth in America today, or nearly 1 in 7 young adults (13.8 percent)—about as many people as live in Minnesota and more than the populations of 30 states.
Though the rate of youth disconnection has fallen since the Great Recession (roughly 280,000 fewer young people are disconnected today than in 2010, the last decade’s peak), the numbers are still higher than pre-2008 levels. And even leaving aside the costs of wasted potential, our society spends billions each year on disconnected youth—a conservative estimate of just some of the direct financial costs tallies $26.8 billion for 2013 alone.
Among the 98 major metro areas we studied—home to two in three Americans—disconnection rates range from less than 8 percent in the Omaha, Nebraska, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, metro areas to more than 20 percent in greater Lakeland, Florida, Bakersfield, California, and Memphis, Tennessee. Nationally, youth disconnection rates for blacks (21.6 percent), Native Americans (20.3 percent), and Latinos (16.3 percent) are markedly higher than rates for Asian Americans (7.9 percent) or whites (11.3 percent). In nine metro areas, at least one in four black youth are disconnected; in 10 metro areas, at least one in five Latino youth are. Clearly, youth disconnection is a complex and highly variable issue. What can we do about it?
First, what won’t work: laying the problem at the feet of disconnected young people themselves and expecting them to solve it on their own. To alter the trajectory of his or her life, a young person needs perseverance, the optimism to envision a better future, and the willingness to work toward it. But disconnected young people face challenges far beyond what they can tackle through sheer willpower. Disconnection is not a spontaneously occurring phenomenon; it is an outcome years in the making. These young men and women tend to come from segregated, historically disadvantaged communities, and their struggles with education and employment too often mirror those of their parents and neighbors.
A meaningful starting point would be for cities to adopt the goal of cutting in half the wide gaps between racial and ethnic groups within their metro areas. In Chicago, for example, 17 percentage points separate the youth disconnection rates for blacks (24.5 percent) and whites (7.5 percent). Halving that black-white gap to 8.5 percentage points within five-to-seven years is an ambitious but achievable goal. Governments, businesses, schools, and nonprofits should join together to establish measurable, time-bound, tailored targets like this one, as well as blueprints for meeting them. Setting customized targets in metro areas across the country and working in concert across sectors to meet them would make the plight of these young people visible at a more local level while also moving the needle on the national problem.
Over the long term, meaningful progress requires preventing disconnection in the first place. A growing body of research suggests several cost-effective preventative investments:
- Helping at-risk parents give their children a good start through programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership
- Prioritizing universal, quality preschool, which imparts the social and emotional skills necessary for success later in life, and is associated with fewer behavioral problems, higher high-school graduation rates, less crime, fewer teen births, and higher wages and rates of homeownership
- Improving K–12 education in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and under-resourced schools, including offering services to address the emotional, health, and financial challenges young people bring with them into the classroom
- Creating diverse pathways to meaningful careers through apprenticeship and mentoring programs like California’s Linked Learning, which provides high-school students with real-world job experience, experiential learning, and connections between high schools, community colleges, and local businesses
- Boosting civic engagement, which research shows cuts the likelihood of disconnection nearly in half
- Addressing residential segregation by race; our research showed that, in highly segregated metro areas, black youth tend to have higher-than-average rates of disconnection
America spends too much time, money, and effort fighting the consequences of youth disconnection—and too little preventing it. Long-term solutions that improve conditions in disconnected, opportunity-scarce communities, knit these communities into the fabric of the larger society, and create meaningful pathways to adulthood within them is the answer to youth disconnection. Easier said than done, we know. But all of our country’s young people deserve a meaningful shot at their own American dreams.
Reconnecting Youth in America’s Cities
July 2, 2015 — Stanford Social Innovation Review
Salvation Army in Los Banos to launch GED program
July 2, 2015 — Merced Sun-Star
Community Action from Shared Understanding: A Case Study in Sonoma County
This blog post originally appeared on Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity on June 30, 2015. You can access the original article here.
Sonoma County is a thriving northern California county known for world-class vineyards and breathtaking vistas as well as rich cultural diversity and the entrepreneurial spirit of its residents.The county is also home to a vibrant web of community organizations dedicated to making it a better place. But Sonoma County residents recognize that their communities – like so many across the nation – face the difficult reality of deep disparities in access to opportunity.
Most Americans see the gap between the rich and the poor as a problem. But reasonable people who are concerned with the growing divides in the United States can, and do, disagree about how best to address them. At Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, we have found that by creating a common frame of reference about the nature, extent, and consequences of inequality, it is possible to mobilize broad coalitions to improve human development outcomes.
Aiming to confront disparities head on and develop a detailed roadmap to address them, the Sonoma County Department of Health Services commissioned Measure of America to produce A Portrait of Sonoma County in late 2013.
The report found that although Sonoma County overall scores well on the American Human Development Index – a composite measure of health, education, and income – outcomes in these areas are highly uneven. In some communities, residents enjoy long lives, very high levels of educational attainment, and earnings more than double the national median; in others, residents struggle to meet their most basic needs.
Crucial to its success was a collaborative process to support the report’s development, dissemination, and implementation. The report concludes with an “Agenda for Action” that outlines concrete recommendations for addressing the county’s greatest challenges and identifies high-priority neighborhoods. Seventy-five organizations and individuals signed a “Pledge of Support” committing “to using A Portrait of Sonoma County to better understand … gaps in opportunities and to partnering with the community to identify the strengths and assets on which to build a comprehensive and inclusive response to this report.”
County leaders agree that, one year after its launch, the Portrait has become the gold standard for data on need and well-being in Sonoma County. Evidence-based attention to racial and ethnic disparities is leading to conversations about the reality of de facto segregation, and the Board of Supervisors’ official acceptance of the report has spurred municipalities and agencies to put human well-being progress on the same level as infrastructureand other priorities. In the words of Alfredo Perez, executive director of First 5 Sonoma , “You can’t go to a meeting in the community without the Portrait of Sonoma being talked about.”
The shared understanding has been instrumental in catalyzing advocacy and policy changes to promote greater equity:
- County agencies have agreed to concentrate and coordinate substantial resources in the five communities identified in the Portrait as having the highest potential to move up the Human Development Index.
- Shortly after the report’s publication, the County Board of Supervisors voted to regulate e-cigarette use, citing the Portrait’ s findings on high teenage tobacco use in the county as an impetus for new limitations.
- The report prompted the formation of a funder’s circle that is coordinating the efforts of community and private foundations, hospitals, and the county government with an eye towards finding projects that they can collectively throw their support behind.
- Following the Portrait ’s recommendation to “make universal preschool a reality,” the Board of Supervisors requested a cost estimate for this program. Policymakers estimated requiring $70 million for instruction and facilities, and the board is exploring financing options for the county’s first-ever universal preschool program.
- A pilot program has begun, with the bottom-ranked census tract on the index as the first site, to create a series of murals aimed at community engagement and healing. The goal is to use public art as a means for improved local law enforcement-community relations and to tap into cultural assets in underserved areas.
How can we take the experience of Sonoma County and replicate it at scale? First and foremost, legitimacy is key: community and government involvement foster legitimacy. Data-driven change also relies on accessibility and transparency. Accessibility means communicating findings in plain language (whether it be English, Spanish, or another language) and ensuring that inequality is defined in a non-contentious way that people can relate to.
Transparency consists of explaining data sources, calculations, and goals—and giving the data used to produce any analysis to the public, free of charge. And social change requires real partnerships across sectors and political divides.
As the Portrait Pledge of Support states, “only by working together as equal partners with a shared vision and common agenda can we hope to achieve our long-term goals of making Sonoma County the healthiest county in the state for our residents to work, live, and play.” The report and its adoption by Sonoma County can serve as a model for other cities, counties, and states looking to improve the wellbeing of their citizens.
Community Action from Shared Understanding: A Case Study in Sonoma County
June 30, 2015 — Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
Neighborhoods: Stepping Stones or Millstones for Kids
June 30, 2015 — Huffington Post