HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Department of Education has been awarded a $540,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to aid the educational needs of young people in the juvenile justice system and other at-risk youth announced Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak.
“Children who are placed in the juvenile justice system are among those at greatest risk of falling behind academically,” said Zahorchak. “If we can find more and better ways to re-engage these children, we can help return them to a path to success that will reap individual and societal benefits.”
The grant was awarded as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Models for Change” initiative, which supports progressive juvenile justice reforms. “Models for Change” promotes concepts of personal and social responsibility and recognizes that children in the juvenile justice system are capable of turning their lives around with the appropriate societal support and investments.
The Department of Education will use the grant over a two-year period to:
• Create a system to track youthful offenders and other disconnected and at-risk youth.
• Draft policy recommendations to address alternative education and correctional facility placements and to improve student educational outcomes during and after these placements.
• Set up a model for the delivery of professional development to administrators and faculty in alternative education and correctional facilities.
• Establish institutional structures within state government to assess and work to improve educational outcomes for disconnected and at-risk youth.
Zahorchak said these goals complement Pennsylvania’s ongoing efforts to better address the quality and availability of alternative education programs and to re-engage at-risk youth who fall out of the education system.
“Ensuring all of our young people stay in school and obtain the skills and knowledge needed for later success is not just a moral issue, it’s an economic one as well,” the secretary said. “The new global economy demands an educated workforce, and we as a society cannot afford to have any of our children enter that workforce without the foundation of a complete and rigorous education.”
Under Gov. Edward G. Rendell, Pennsylvania has launched several education initiatives to better prepare students for life beyond high school. These programs include: Pre-K Counts, which this year will provide high-quality pre-kindergarten education to 11,000 three- and four-year-olds across the state; “Science: It’s Elementary,” which brings science to life in the classroom; the “Project 720” high school reform initiative; and “Classrooms for the Future,” which provides professional development for educators and puts laptop computers and other high-tech tools in Pennsylvania’s high school classrooms.
Although the MacArthur Foundation has awarded “Models for Change” grants in other states, Pennsylvania is the first state to have its education department designated as a grant recipient.