Edited by Sarah Deschenes, Milbrey McLaughlin, Anne Newman
Jossey-Bass/Wiley
136 pages. $23.20. Subscription $85
(1 year, 4 issues).
Recent achievements by community organizations that advocate for and with urban youth are explored in this Spring 2008 issue of New Directions for Youth Development. Seven articles cover advocacy organizations, foundations, and the new trend of school reform by young people themselves.
Two case studies read like adventure stories. Youths in the Hyde Square Task Force in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston transformed their street campaign against sexual harassment into a Boston Public School curriculum and are now reforming civics courses. The Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), which began in the 1980s with peer tutoring, won a $60,000 tutoring contract with Baltimore city schools in 2003. When the program was cut by 20 percent, BAP members organized a rally to insist that the state of Maryland pay $200 million to Baltimore city school as settlement of a 2000 ruling that the state routinely underfunded the jurisdiction. Although the state still hasn’t paid the money, the young campaigners are undaunted. They attempted a citizens’ arrest of the head of the State Department of Education, conducted a “die-in” demonstration equating Baltimore’s low graduation rate with its high incarceration rate of African-American men, and continue their involvement with the struggling school system.
This is a primer for youth advocates and organizers of all kinds. Individual chapters may be read online for a fee. (877) 762-2974, http://www.josseybass.com/go/ndyd.
