Costco Connection - October 2007

Milliken says give kids the

Five Basics and they will succeed.

What kids need

HARLEE LIT TLE

after school, to help with homework, offer social services or just hang out.

The task ahead

Despite these and other efforts, dropout rates remain at epidemic levels, even as schools are the subject of intense reform efforts—state and federal—through legislation such as No Child Left Behind, curriculum overhauls and private and public efforts to inject innovation into school management.

These are desperately needed steps that address what’s taught to kids and how schools are run, says Milliken. What’s missing is what he calls the “third side of the triangle”: the community component that meets kids’ nonacademic needs.

That’s where the CIS model comes in, but first we all have to realize that the problem is a national one, and it’s critical. “We can put our voice out there and talk about what we do [through CIS], but we have to wake up the country to the fact that we need to start moving the needle on the dropout rate,” says Milliken, who served as CIS national president for 27 years and currently is vice chairman of the organization’s board. “It’s going to take more than CIS.”

In the short term, he supports pursuing two immediate steps at the state and national levels. One is getting funding for a coordinator—a student advocate, of sorts—inside each high school to make sure students’ needs are being met. The coordinator matches up students with available social agencies, from dental programs to gang-intervention services to volunteer networks. Georgia is using such a program, with great results, Milliken says.

The second step is working with Congress to change the way it finances programs to deal holistically with kids. “Money is now given away in a fragmented way,” says Milliken. “The metaphor would be having 26 different keyboards in 26 different rooms with 26 different letters to create a letter. So you have all these agencies out there working and trying to help, but we say you have to integrate them. We’re

hoping that states and Congress adopt legislation that says we’re going to reward you to coordinate and integrate your resources around the schools.”

The impetus must come from the community to create a new safety net, he notes. That includes the business community. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that more than half of adult dropouts are currently not employed.

“In many ways, this is a business deal,” Milliken maintains. “If we fail, you fail, because where is your workforce going to come from? The bottom line for the business community is, where are we going to get our workforce if we’re losing a third of our kids? Our banks, utilities, small stores, little businesses are in communities where we need employees. And if we’re losing a third of our kids, where are they going to come from?”

The last dropout

Will today’s first-graders be the last class to have a dropout? Probably not, acknowledges Milliken. “But we can say this,” he insists. “Young people will stop dropping out when they receive the community support and resources they need to learn, stay in school and graduate prepared for life.”

At the very least, the issue is gaining public awareness, and CIS has garnered support from a wide variety of political and financial corners. It has become the nation’s fifth-largest youth-serving organization. In 2006, major corporations, including Capital One, MetLife, Time Inc. and Costco, donated $9.2 million to CIS. The organization recently named football star Shaun Alexander of the Seattle Seahawks as its national spokesman.

Milliken hopes his book, which focuses on nine principles to keep kids in school, reaches a wide audience of people who can help. He declares, “I feel that we have a moral obligation to get this message out in places where CIS is never going to end up to show them a path on how they can do this.”

C

DOZENS OF PROGRAMS are available to help kids succeed, from school programs to social services. But, overall, kids have five basic needs that must be met before they can learn and grow, according to CIS. Here’s a look.

• A one-on-one relationship with a caring adult. This relationship can be with a parent, relative, coach, church representative or mentor. It all starts with relationships.

• A safe place to learn and grow. If kids are homeless, they can’t learn. Likewise, school must be a safe place. The key is to bring enough responsible adults into school to instill a sense of security. Programs that make schools a true community center, with before- and after-school programs, are successful.

• A healthy start and a healthy future. Kids need to be drug and alcohol free to succeed in school. Other obstacles are less dramatic, such as poor eyesight, asthma, lack of proper nutrition and dental problems. Often, communities have resources that can help out. They have to be made available to kids.

• A marketable skill to be used upon graduation. Goals and a path to a career are critical to success in the classroom, because they give kids a reason to learn reading, writing and math. Getting kids to see that academics offer a way out of poverty is a huge motivating factor.

• A chance to give back to peers and the community. Giving kids a chance to give back through volunteering or mentoring is key to helping them find their own identity and self-worth. It’s a huge boost for a youth to realize that he or she has a valuable gift to offer somebody else.—TT