The organization’s mission is to provide “exposure, inspiration and direction” for New York City students most in need, and to help them develop the skills to become community leaders.

Name: Cary Goodman, Ph.D.
Title: Executive Director, Directions for Our Youth,  New York City
Education: B.A., Social Science, Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.; M.A., Sociology and Education, Teachers College,  Columbia University, New York City; Ph.D., Sociology, Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio

DFOY has worked with over 60,000 students and dozens of schools in 16 years. It runs two community centers in the South Bronx that include summer camps, tutoring, and mentoring, along with arts, health and recreation programs. 

New York City’s k-12 population is 1.1 million, and its high school population is 300,000. Every year, 20,000 students drop out. In communities such as the South Bronx, there are sometimes more dropouts than graduates, Goodman told HotChalk. To fight that dismal reality, DFOY has hosted two Dropout Summits, which have brought the discussion of New York City’s dropout epidemic to the national stage.

Q: How is New York’s school system organized?

A: The mayor has political control of the schools. Other cities do this, too, including Chicago and Cleveland.

Instead of being an independent board of overseers, this represents a whole new idea of centralizing the accountability of public schools.

Q: How serious is the attendance issue overall?

A: A study released by the New School of Social Research showed that there’s a huge attendance problem in New York. One out of every four high school students missed 37 days or more. Think of it, the school year is 180 days. There are lots of reasons, many of them attached to the fact that these are very poor communities.

Q: What’s the South Bronx situation?

A: The South Bronx is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. There are so many different elements to the No Child Left Behind Act that are valuable and important, but none more valuable than the fact that poor kids aren’t having the same education as middle-class and wealthy kids.

In communities like the South Bronx, one out of every two kids doesn’t make it through the public schools and graduate. Oftentimes in these communities, there are more dropouts than graduates.

Q: What’s a specific element of the problem?

A: Lack of adequate health care is one reason. There are tremendous rates of asthma, obesity and diabetes. It’s a big difference, which obviously is going to impact attendance.

It’s always a case of looking at education as it’s woven into the community or city or country.

Q: What are some ways DFOY involves parents?

A: We run radio ads on two stations, one African-American and one Hispanic. These are the communities that suffer the most from the dropout epidemic.

We produce an 8-by-11 glossy calendar for high school parents. Month by month, it shows how you can be involved in your kid’s education.

Q: What’s the purpose of the Dropout Summit?

A: When it comes to the dropout epidemic, it’s the essential first step. The most important thing the summit did was to bring everyone together – the mayor’s office, the state and city education departments, the teachers’ and principals’ unions, nonprofits, researchers, teachers, and students.

Q: What can the South Bronx teach parents and educators?

A: One, parents are the key ingredient in dropout prevention. That’s universal. The world has changed such that parents need to stay involved in their children’s schooling through high school.

Two, you’re not going to make significant changes in education unless you’re making significant changes in the environment that either supports or retards those changes.

Q: Do you foresee hopeful changes in the situation?

A: Our organization and I have an interest in seeing the Graduation Promise Act pass. The idea of this legislation is to address this gap in dropout rates between poor, and middle-class and wealthy communities, and for the first time, provide federal funding on this topic. We’re very optimistic that there will be sufficient support.

Sheila Riley is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist. She is also an experienced online editor and ESL curriculum developer, and teaches ESL at City College of San Francisco.

^{POSTED ON HOTCHALK.COM} 

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