Communities In Schools Board Chairman Elaine Wynn with students from Communities In Schools of Jacksonville's"Jump Start Strings" program. "Jump Start Strings" enables students to explore and enjoy music after school.
Education Week: Youth who spend time in juvenile detention centers often find themselves behind in school when they return to the real world, and the fight to catch up pushes many to drop out. Education Week examined what happens to juvenile offenders when they try to become re-acclimated to school life. A lack of state and local regulation often leaves these students to strike out on their own with little support or guidance. They feel stigmatized, struggle to catch up in coursework and often cannot transfer credit from courses they took at a juvenile detention center—forcing them to have to re-take classes. Communities In Schools can help ensure that kids re-entering mainstream life have a true second chance. For instance, Communities In Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., formed a partnership with the County Sheriff’s Department and local schools to provide counseling and resources to juvenile offenders, with the goal of helping them transition successfully back into school or another educational setting.
Associated Press: Graduation season is right around the corner, but for this year’s college grads, the ceremony is bound to be a bittersweet one. An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press shows bleak career prospects for 2012’s crop of graduates.Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs, such as waiter, bartender or retail clerk— and that’s confounding their hopes that a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans. Yet having a college degree is still better than having no degree at all. People with a bachelor’s degree are estimated to earn more than a million dollars more over the course of their lifetimes than people with just a high school education.
Washington Post: Can music and art turn the beat around for America’s low-performing schools? In an effort to transform America’s worst schools, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, working with the Department of Education, announced an unusual experiment to infuse art, music, dance, theater and other forms of creative expression into eight schools over a two-year period. The arts can help students achieve success in subjects, such as math and science. Yet a recent survey by the Department of Education showed that children in high-poverty schools have less access to artistic programs. More than 1.3 million students in elementary school and 800,000 secondary students receive no music education.
