Street Schools

Never have the statistics been more dire. Or the solutions so within reach.

Recently, a report published in Education Week predicted that roughly 1.23 million students (nearly 30% of the entire year’s class) would fail to graduate with their peers. Dig deeper and you’ll discover that nationwide, only 58% of Hispanics, 55% of African-Americans and 51% of Native Americans are graduating on time.2 What’s worse, in some U.S. cities, barely 30% of kids are receiving their diplomas.

Without an all-important high school diploma, young people are twice as likely to be unemployed, seven times more likely to be on government assistance and three-and-a-half times more likely to get arrested.

And, as if statistics like that aren’t sobering enough from a humanitarian perspective, consider the economic impact: the combined income and tax losses from one year’s worth of 18-year-olds who don’t graduate — aggregated over their lifetime — is about $192 billion. That’s 1.6% of America’s gross domestic product.3 Clearly, when our children drop out, it’s a lose-lose situation.

But there’s hope.

The StreetSchool Network™ has had a dramatic impact in the lives of those in the at-risk population. Member schools have achieved impressive benchmarks including boosting GPAs by more than 67% (over a student’s previous school experience) and demonstrating a college enrollment rate of 73%. What’s more, schools collectively provide students with more than 80,000 hours of literacy intervention annually to improve their reading and writing skills. Plus, StreetSchool Network™ is helping schools achieve accreditation through the Commission for International and Transregional Accreditation. Perhaps most encouraging of all, 85% of StreetSchool Network™ alumni are either attending a college or trade school, are gainfully employed, in the military, or own their own businesses and are successfully contributing to their communities. Yet there’s still so much more work to be done.

2 “Diplomas Count 2008: School to College: Can State P-16 Councils Ease Transition? (executive summary)” 6/4/2008
3 Cecilia Elena Rouse, Economist, Princeton University
“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.”Aristotle