NYLC Co-Sponsors Statewide Graduation Summit
With Minnesota high schools experiencing increasing drop-out rates, NYLC, in conjunction with the Search Institute, Minnesota Alliance with Youth, State Farm®, and the Department of Education sponsored a two-day Minnesota Metro and Statewide Graduation Summit in St. Paul recently — one of the series of summits being held in every state this year.
The goals of the summit were to bring together school teams of youth and educators with policy-makers so that participants could develop plans of action and take steps toward supportive legislation, armed with first-hand information.
No longer a “silent epidemic,” the dropout rate now means that more than a million students leave school before graduation each year, and one student drops out every 26 seconds across the country, according to America’s Promise Founding Chairman General Colin Powell, whose perspectives were shared in a video shown at the event.
So, “How do we make school the place we want to be?” asked keynote speaker Peter Benson, president of the Minneapolis-based Search Institute of his audience on the first day.
Recent research supports service-learning as one of 15 effective research-based dropout prevention strategies. Many respondents to Benson’s question echoed that sentiment during a community dialogue facilitated by Rose McGee of Achieve Minneapolis.
Their recommendations included providing opportunities for student decision-making and voice; establishing and fostering positive school climates; building student-staff relationships; developing leadership capacity in students and communities; developing afterschool activities in mentoring and tutoring; supporting alternative schools; and creating a system of continuous support for students — all strategies that can be fostered through service-learning.
On the second day of the summit, policy leaders heard from high school student Tyler Hamblin, who kicked off the day by reminding participants that if the goal is to ensure that all students succeed, everyone has a role. “It’s not Quantum science; it’s common sense, or un-common sense, as I sometimes see it,” he said, detailing inter-related roles for families, teachers, policy-makers, administrators, and students.
In discussions facilitated by MN Alliance with Youth AmeriCorps Promise Fellows, participants then discussed the roots of the dropout statistics and examined ways to promote youth engagement in school, aiming to increase graduation rates and continuance in post-secondary education.
Said NYLC Vice President for Programs Wokie Weah, “Service-learning is a very effective strategy for tackling the root causes that lead to students leaving school prematurely, as the young people who spoke today attested.”
The goals of the summit conveners are that the schools’ action plans and policy-makers’ commitments that resulted from this two-day event help reverse this phenomenon in Minnesota, and beyond.
