Best Practices

In G.I. Gurdjieff's, "Meetings with Remarkable Men," there is a deeply disturbing scene in which a Transcaucasian boy, taunted by other children, is crying and thrashing about in an attempt to leave the boundaries of a circle painted in the dirt. Gurdjieff, a young man on his way home from school, hears the boy's cries and the children's jeers and asks a bystander why the terrified boy cannot leave the circle. He is told that the boy is a Yezidis. Everyone knows, the bystander says, that if the circle without an opening is painted around a Yezidis, he cannot get out. Knowing this, the cruel children had painted the young Yezidis into a trap. Young Gurdjieff is shocked that the power of this belief could hold the boy captive behind a flat line of paint. Overwhelmed by the boy's shrieks, he runs up to the circle, swipes an opening in it with his shoe and frees the Yezidis from the prison of his belief system.

While this story took place more than 100 years ago in Alexandropol, it bears some resemblance to New England's contemporary struggle to break out of its established, circular precepts of what defines a worthwhile educational intervention program.

We now have extensive experience with academic support programs that provide after school or summer enrichment to help low-income students overcome barriers to college enrollment and success. Through such models as the federal TRIO programs and school-college collaborations, educators and grantmakers have helped increase the number of disadvantaged, first-generation, minority and physically challenged students who enroll in postsecondary education. With every successful effort that increases the number of disadvantaged students who attend college, our belief in serving these student populations is reinforced. This is important and worthwhile work, to be sure, and should remain a central feature of responsive education and philanthropy. But perhaps we too are being confined by our own circle.

Over the past several years, a number of new early intervention and college-access models have been developed and implemented by grassroots and community organizations across the region. At first glance, some of these seem so removed from the mainstream that government, educators and foundations do not break through the circle and thoroughly examine their effectiveness. The delivery mechanism is too new, too nontraditional or too sectarian to get their backing or endorsement. Often, funders require empirical evidence of success, gained through evaluation, before they will take a chance on a new model with no track record and serving a less than typical population.

But as New England's population grows larger and more divers, it's time to academic, government and grantmakers to recognize the importance of these nontraditional programs.

Redefining opportunity
Disadvantaged youth in traditional educational access programs, as well as the newer federal GEAR UP initiative (see sidebar), are generally defined as poor, minority, first-generation, college-bound students who may also be physically or learning disabled. We might think of these students as “first-tier disadvantaged.” Nontraditional access programs move outside the edges of this circle to serve what could be defined as “second-tier disadvantaged” or “third-tier disadvantaged” students: those who are pregnant or parenting, are involved with the courts, have suffered abuse, have severe behavior problems, are recent immigrants, have substance abuse problems, are functionally illiterate, are current or former welfare recipients, are geographically remote, are linguistically isolated, are transient or homeless, or are adult learners in need of a second chance. At the Greater Egelston Community High School in Jamaica Plain, Mass., Project ProPEL has helped pregnant and parenting teens stay in high school and get their diplomas, learn job skills and increase their readiness for postsecondary education. A few years ago, pregnant girls were shunted out of school and into a cycle of intergenerational poverty. Today, programs like ProPEL break the pattern of social dependence for the teens and their children. These young mothers and fathers instead are working as interns while in high school, taking courses at community colleges and learning life skills that will earn them more than just a subsistence wage. A teen mother, Chermion had been in five different high schools and

received little support before she found Project ProPEL. She quickly immersed herself in the ProPEL program, even enrolling for a biology class at a local community college. From there, she participated in an intensive internship at MIT in genetic research, and was later accepted at a private university in New York.

Offering a nonjudgmental, safe, educational environment for young parents eliminates the major obstacles that cause them to drop out, such as day care issues and the stigma of teen pregnancy and parenting, while nurturing their aspirations and helping them develop as responsible adults and parents.

In Burlington, Vt., the College Connections program works with high school dropouts and otherwise low achieving teens to help them complete GEDs and expand their educational horizons. Sometimes described as invisible students, these low-income young people have reached a dead end in high school, and slip away before graduation only to find themselves unemployed, unskilled and on a track to nowhere.

Run by a school-to-career partnership initiative called Linking Learning to Life, College Connections
takes students who have dropped out, are court-involved or otherwise unable to thrive in a traditional high school setting, and places them in a community college setting where they take classes, explore job opportunities and learn skills that enlarge their employment and education options. The program has been successful because it incorporates applied learning strategies and directly connects students’ coursework with career planning and development.

Safe spaces
Other nontraditional programs reach students through trusted faith-based or social service-based
education resource centers which until recently were considered too sectarian to receive funding from the government or private grantmakers. In Brockton, Mass., the Higher Education Resource Center at
Mount Moriah Baptist Church has brought college information within reach of low-income, minority students and their families. “Our church-based center is very comfortable for the students, especially those who really don’t seem to thrive in environments similar to schools or public libraries, which tend to be large and not always able to provide enough one-on-one help,” says program director Ruth Neville. “Religion is important to people of color. Walking into a church to get information about college gives positive feedback to adults and youth because its an environment they know and trust.”

Nontraditional learners who have experienced difficulty or failure in the mainstream educational system may be directed to alternative schools better able to help with their behavioral issues. One such program at Youth Opportunities Upheld (YOU Inc.) in Worcester, Mass., has created unique learning methods and environments that give students a feeling of accomplishment— in some cases, for the first time in their lives. Through adventure-based learning models, students meet physical and environmental challenges that teach them to set and meet goals, trust their peers and teachers, and build a stronger sense of themselves and their abilities to achieve. Students who meet their challenges experience profound change in the way they view their own potential, and they begin to view obstacles as opportunities for growth and success.

While YOU Inc.’s primary goal is to get their teens back into a regular school setting and graduate, for
many students, the experience is a critical stepping stone on the path to college.

In the grantmaking world, middle and high school education programs are frequently assessed by the
college-going rate of students. A high percentage of disadvantaged students going on to college means an easy decision for a grantmaker: fund them. But programs that measure success by keeping a student in high school or helping them remain drug-free or out of the courts—not by grades or SAT scores—are not a high enough standard for many grantmakers. These education programs instead must scramble for very competitive grants from the federal, state and local government and funding from the school system to sustain services for their students. Yet such programs should be called “life-savers” because the intense level of intervention provided is often the only thing keeping the student from falling even further away from an education path that can ultimately lead to postsecondary
education.

Opening the circle
The increasing diversity of New England’s population cries out for a change in the way grantmakers,
educators and public officials view educational intervention and support.

At-risk students who had some type of intervention while in high school, such as participating in “pipeline” programs that supplemented their schoolwork, attended postsecondary education at more than twice the rate of at-risk youth who were not involved in supplementary or alternative programs, according to a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Students in K-12 and higher education systems across New England represent different needs, learning styles, abilities and backgrounds. Yet we have been reluctant to open our belief system to include the kinds of programs that serve second- or third-tier disadvantaged students in addition to programs that represent more traditional models of academic enrichment and precollege preparation. These students too, like the Yezidis boy, deserve our protection and support. Like young Gurdjieff, we can swipe an opening in the circle of neglect and ignorance. We can and we should.

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Blenda J. Wilson is president and CEO of the
Nellie Mae Foundation.