If you aren’t familiar with City Year, it’s time to get in the know. City Year is a 24-year-old education-focused non-profit that partners young AmeriCorps members with public schools to help keep urban students on track to graduation. Focusing on the ABC’s of attendance, behavior, and course performance, these AmeriCorps members spend their year of full-time service in schools mentoring, operating after school programs, and tutoring.
Justin Cohen, the President of STG, wrote the foreword for a newly-released City Year report called Closing the Implementation Gap. This publication highlights the demand for highly-educated college graduates entering the workforce, and counters this demand with the low high school graduation rate (75.5%) that our country currently experiences. As a result, the report says, we must leverage such partner organizations as AmeriCorps, and supply schools with the capacity to implement education reform no matter their level of performance or SES.
It’s a great thought-provoking read, so look it over this weekend and get some conversations rolling for Monday morning.