City Year Changes Focus To Improving High School Graduation Rates

Founded in 1988 the charity whose volunteers once built hiking trails, worked in libraries, and did myriad other tasks, has overhauled its service program to focus on a single mission: improving graduation rates in struggling public schools. The transformation was tied to a Johns Hopkins research study worked on by Robert Balfanz, brother of City Year's President  Jim Balfanz.

According to the Johns Hopkins study the high-school dropout crisis is concentrated. Roughly 12 percent of the country’s high schools account for 50 percent of the students who don’t graduate.

Says Robert Balfanz,  “It all sort of clicked in my mind,” he says. “They can give us a team of 10 to 15 corps members who are trained and focused and are in the building 7 to 7.” If each volunteer works with 15 students who show warning signs that they might drop out, he says, “we can now reach 150 to 200 kids a day with that constant nagging and nurturing.”

The math and English tutoring and the volunteers’ work to encourage good attendance are important, says Rashida Tyler, principal of Browne Education Campus. But their ability to do that is based on the relationships they build with students.

Ms. Tyler says that when she thinks about the impact City Year has made in her school, she thinks of the improved confidence of a student who has developed a good relationship with her tutor. Ad when the student meets one of her goals, she gets to wear the corps member’s City Year pin or jacket for the day.

“It reaffirms her self-esteem,” says Ms. Tyler. “Little things like that really go a long way.”

Today, across the country, 2,000 City Year corps members ages 17 to 24 serve full time in 187 struggling public schools in poor neighborhoods.

They tutor students, call their homes to check on them when they’re absent from school, help teachers with classroom activities, and lead projects to improve school buildings and grounds. In return, the volunteers get living stipends and an educational award of $5,550 when they complete their year of service. The organization currently operates in 25 cities across the U.S. They have served over 2 million children and completed over 57 million hours of service.

To learn more and support City Year visit http://www.cityyear.org/