![]() ![]() "At one level, it's semantics.Being able to use convincing arguments, relevant examples, academic vocabulary, brilliant introduction and a logical conclusion will definitely ensure a high band score in your IELTS Writing Task 2 part. It can be seen as empowering, she says, or condescending. Some don't," Melissa Sawyer, whose Youth Empowerment Project serves this population in New Orleans, says of the "opportunity youth" catchphrase. The Aspen Institute, among others, has funded "opportunity youth" initiatives that seek to bring together schools, community groups, foster care programs, family court and the juvenile justice system to help young people find their way back. ![]() "If you're not compelled by the moral, individual argument, maybe the economic argument will wake you up." "They cost the economy and our society $93 billion every year," he says. ![]() He commissioned economic calculations of the social costs of these young people, as measured in lost wages and increased use of social services. My bottom line was, if they can be hopeful, why can't we?"īridgeland's "opportunity" had a second meaning. They were extremely hopeful, notwithstanding their challenges. They saw the benefits of finishing school and getting a decent job. "I don't like buzz terms or jargon." But in talking with young people in these situations, he says, he saw "Extraordinary untapped potential. "I'm not one to paper over reality or hardship," he says. Bridgeland had previously authored a national survey and report on dropouts, titled "The Silent Epidemic." It was created with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which funds education coverage among other areas at NPR). John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises, a public-policy firm in Washington, D.C., coined the term in a 2012 report. Opportunity youth is a phrase of such recent vintage, it doesn't show up in a Google book search. As the Ngram chart shows, the word never really went away. an insult you can't take back." She points out that, like juvenile, it compares people to animals. "Kids were thought of, and talked about, as children, and not so much as these horrible monsters."īernstein calls the superpredator stereotype "absurd and devastating. When Gina Womack founded Families And Friends Of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, an advocacy group, 17 years ago, she had to contend with the image of the aggressive, incorrigible "superpredator." Gradually, she says, it faded. But the promised boom in youth crime never arrived - in fact, by the '90s, juvenile offenses had begun to level off, and today they are at their lowest rates ever. ![]() In the 1990s, as part of a broader "tough on crime" trend, almost every state passed laws that raised the number of young people being tried as adults. The concept caught on in the media and among politicians. NPR Ed In New Orleans, A Second-Chance School Tries Again According to the Ngram, it seems to have risen in popularity just as "juvenile delinquent" declined. The term "at risk" suggests a focus on prevention and intervention, in the form of social services, tutoring and related programs. The report cautioned that America's way of life was threatened by a "rising tide of mediocrity" within the school system. The term "at-risk youth" gained currency in the wake of the 1983 publication of the policy report A Nation At Risk. It has since rebounded to an all-time high.īut, he says, "I worry about emphasis on this one statistic, because it masks variations that are quite important." He cites a Brookings Institution study that says that to raise your chances of becoming middle class by age 40, it's necessary to avoid jail, avoid becoming pregnant as a teen and pass high school with at least a 2.5 GPA. However, says Russell Rumberger, director of the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, high school graduation rates kept declining, to a modern-day low of 69 percent by 2002. Bush set a a national goal of cutting the dropout rate to 10 percent. "When I did research on homeless youth, there was a strong misconception that they were '60s-style dropouts who had left in pursuit of freedom and because they couldn't do as many drugs at home."īernstein favors also using the term "pushout," which, she says, "opens up the possibility that the onus isn't entirely on the dropout" and "looks at root causes." In our New Orleans reporting we often found people talking about students getting "pushed out" of school.Ĭoncern about dropouts soared again in the 1990s. This image of dropping out as a cultural or social choice has persisted, she says. Bernstein says that in her experience, the rise in use of the term dropout was tied to psychedelic pioneer Timothy Leary's famous slogan, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." ![]()
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