Let's get kids what they need

The ideal path for children born in the U.S. goes something like this:

They are born into a loving, supportive environment. When they get sick, they have access to good care. When it's time for school, they enter a nurturing environment and are challenged to reach their potential.

By the time they graduate from high school, there are a plethora of attractive options waiting.

But for too many children in our state and country, there are significant gaps along this life journey.

By the time many of our most disadvantaged students get to high school, it is a fight to help them graduate let alone pursue college or a rewarding career. As the cycles of poverty keep spinning, the costs are tremendous.

A study by the Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that almost 7,000 students drop out of high school every day - adding up to 1.2 million students nationally every year. These dropouts in turn are likely to earn $9,500 per year less than their graduating peers. According to Cecilia Rouse from Princeton University, dropouts cost the U.S. approximately $260,000 over the course of their lifetimes.

Translated to the state level, only 66 percent of North Carolina's students graduated on time in 2007. Based on calculations by the Alliance for Excellent Education, if these students had graduated on time, their lifetime income would increase by more than $10.6 billion.

Fortunately, there are model efforts under way to provide comprehensive "cradle to career" support systems for our least-advantaged children.

A standout is the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City. Over the past decade, it has woven together a powerful mix of services for children within a 97-block neighborhood. This comprehensive program involves parenting classes with early-childhood education services, partnerships with proven public charter schools, high-quality after-school opportunities, and employment and medical services. The result: Test scores have risen steadily, and increasing numbers of Harlem's children are heading to college.

Though still in its early stages, the Children's Zone's impact has sparked the Obama administration to launch the Promise Neighborhoods initiative, which later this month will award a $500,000 planning grant to up to 20 communities who take a similarly collaborative approach.

A total of 339 communities responded by forming coalitions and raising matching funds - including six in North Carolina.

The potential of this work is awesome.

In Wilmington, for example, an unprecedented coalition of 40 community partners, including schools, government agencies, faith-based groups, and nonprofits, are proposing a "Youth Enrichment Zone" for traditionally disenfranchised families on the north side of town.

In Bertie and Hertford counties in northeastern North Carolina, where poverty rates go as high as 23 percent, a partnership led by nonprofit One Economy is proposing a "Connected Rural Achievement Initiative," with targeted interventions in three schools with a continuum of family services for the communities served by these schools.

In Durham, the East Durham Children's Initiative is focusing on a 120-block area where the median income is $11,000, only 25 percent of the houses are owner occupied, and all of the schools are labeled under-performing. Again, an unprecedented coalition has formed to weave together a support system driven by a few key principles. Among them: ensuring all children are healthy and ready for school, deeply involving parents and community, designing schools for success, and using data to make sure the effort is working.

These approaches may seem obvious. But for too many communities, a lack of coordination and accountability leads to gaps in services, an absence of performance measures and a feeling of hopelessness.

Yet as David Reese, the new executive director for EDCI, says, "There is a new sense of hope [in East Durham], ... a sense of anticipation where we're all working a little harder to ensure that our kids have all the resources they need to compete in the 21st century."

But only 20 of the 339 communities nationally will receive federal funding. Unwisely, the U.S. Senate also just slashed funding by up to 90 percent for follow-on funding once the Promise Neighborhoods planning grants are awarded.

This reinforces the fact that we can't rely on federal funding to keep these projects from moving forward. The stakes are too high, the work is too important not to see this through.

As Reese says, "Too many of our children's lives are in the balance not to have a contingency plan."

We agree. It is past time for hoping - it is time to put these promising plans into action through local commitment and statewide investment.