HELPING AT-RISK YOUTH SUCCEED

For decades, public schools have been concerned with high dropout rates and the low achievement of disadvantaged and other at-risk students. Attempts to address these problems at many points yielded striking improvements. In 1940, only 24 percent of students completed high school. By 1965, this percentage had increased to 75 percent but since then has remained constant.

Although we are educating more and more diverse students longer and better than we did in the past, the dropout statistics represent a social failure. A persistent 25 percent dropout rate for more than 20 years should not be tolerated. Most of these students neither reach their full potential nor have the opportunity to become fully functioning members of society. This percentage does not count those who drop out before age 14 and, therefore, are not included in the statistics. It does not reflect the exaggerated impact on minority and disadvantaged students. In New York state, for example, minority students are one-third of the public school enrollment but constitute 46 percent of the state's dropouts. Close to 51 percent of all black students and 56 percent of all Hispanic students in the state drop out of high school. Some inner-city high schools have dropout rates of 50 percent or higher. Yet, for over two decades, public policy has not pursued a mandate that resulted in significantly raising school retention rates. This is often attributed to the fact that an industrial society could absorb¾in fact, needed--low-skilled workers.

Now, however, societal needs have changed so dramatically that, in addition to the moral arguments, there are compelling economic reasons why at-risk youths' special needs cannot be dismissed. The U.S. economy is no longer based primarily on industrial or goods production. Job growth is now concentrated in non-industrial occupations, which require moderate to high levels of education. Industries having the lowest educational requirements are experiencing the greatest decline in job opportunities. Moreover, the major growth in low-skill occupations nationally is outside the urban areas. (William Julius Wilson, 1987.) Because large numbers of the poor and disadvantaged are concentrated in metropolitan areas and their ranks are growing at alarming rates, large numbers of urban youth face unemployment, hopelessness and social estrangement.

The economic transformation taking place requires a labor force much more highly skilled and educated than in the past. At the same time, the labor pool is shrinking and poverty increasing. By the year 2000, only 16 percent of the population will be entering the workforce, although the economy will be twice as large and the job market will have increased by 60 percent. Instead of the 17 workers who paid the benefits of each retiree in 1950, by 1992 this number will have shrunk to three workers for each retiree. One of the three will be a minority. To compound the labor shortage problem, today's child¾tomorrow's worker¾is likely to come from a poverty background. From  1970 to 1980, the poor population in our 50 largest cities rose 12 percent, and those living in poverty increased by more than 20 percent (Wilson, 1987). Today, one child in five under 18 years old lives in poverty. This child is more likely than others to have learning disabilities, fall behind in school and drop out. Symptomatic of their deteriorating social circumstances are "low aspirations, poor education, family instability, illegitimacy, unemployment, crime, drug addiction and alcoholism, frequent illness and early death" (Clark, 1965).

This presents a monumental challenge to the schools and society at large that will be catastrophic if ignored. The public policy choices that we are currently making suggest that we are ignoring the challenge. There are now more people over 65 than youth in their teens--a statistic that will not change during our lifetimes. Although a child under six is six times more likely to be poor than a person over 65, government spending for poor children has declined over the last decade, while support for the elderly has increased (Hodgkinson, 1985). During this time, school facilities and equipment have sadly deteriorated; the need for early childhood education, not to mention day care services, has gone wanting; and education programs for children most in need, meagerly funded to begin with, have been cut back.

Simply shifting funds from one political bloc to another in a floundering economy inevitably results only in further destabilization. Both the economic and social welfare of all citizens is tied to maximizing the potential and skills of all youth--the youth entrusted to perpetuate a healthy economy and society. Unless we invest in the human infrastructure of this country, in children, all the other investments are not going to amount to much.

Of equal importance to improved funding and political support of education is what schools do to assure that all children have the chance to succeed. For some children, the traditional system works. For others, adaptations like magnet schools, alternative work programs and Saturday schools may be sufficient adjustments. Strong evidence exists, however, that, in spite of these adjustments, schools are still failing large numbers of students and will continue to do so unless we examine new approaches to educating students who have very different learning styles; who live in circumstances known to impede educational progress; and who experience great, sometimes insurmountable, difficulty adapting to current school structures.

Supporting these conclusions are many facts. The increasing numbers of disadvantaged youth in the school population represent those students who traditionally experience the least success in school. We know that they can learn, so we must ask why there is such uniform failure. The best dropout programs show positive results with relatively few students compared to the actual number enrolled, let alone the number of at-risk youth in need. What does this say about the effectiveness of our approaches? Gifted and talented students appear repeatedly among the ranks of the dropouts. Why are we losing those identified as being among our brightest students? Recent assessments of reading, writing and reasoning skills by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that only small percentages of children and young adults are adept at reasoning effectively about what they read or write. A substantial proportion of eleventh graders were found not to have the writing skills necessary to perform well at school or work. Does this not portend that many more students are "at risk" than only those who are in danger of dropping out?

These findings indicate that as the needs of the workplace and society become more sophisticated and advanced, the schools as an institution have an obligation to explore the appropriate means of adequately preparing all students to share the opportunity for meaningful careers, satisfying lives and full participation in our democratic society. As the knowledge and skills to do so change, the schools must adapt.

Otherwise, all children will suffer because the nation will suffer. Minorities and the poor and disadvantaged, whose needs traditionally have been least well met by the schools, will reap the severest consequences.

RESOLVED, that the AFT believes that the current dropout and literacy rates are unacceptable and must be addressed by effective policies, practices, support services¾and resources¾that provide all children the opportunity to succeed; and

RESOLVED, that many minority and disadvantaged students and urban youth are at special risk and that because studies of current programs designed to help at-risk youth are pessimistic or dubious, at best, about program results, careful study must be given the policy implications of this research; and

RESOLVED, that although teachers have done and continue to do their best for at-risk youth, it is clear that the problems go beyond the efforts of an individual teacher in the classroom and must be resolved through institutional and political solutions; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT executive council establish a task force on at-risk youth to explore the nature and extent of being at risk and the causes and to make recommendations on how schools and the AFT can act to assure greater opportunities for success; and

RESOLVED, that this task force, among its other activities, convene a conference to provide a forum to address these issues.