History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
The Latest from IDEA
A newsfeed on the most current research, news, and events at IDEA.
Aug. 17: Status of boys and men of color
IDEA Director John Rogers and graduate student researcher Rhoda Freelon will present information this afternoon before the first hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color (BMOC).
The committee, chaired by Sandré R. Swanson (D-Oakland), will examine key issues affecting the health and well-being of men of color. After a year of hearings throughout the state, recommendations will be made in the key areas of education, health, employment and wealth, violence prevention, youth development and juvenile justice.
IDEA will brief the legislators on the state of education for students of color. Some key findings include:
- Schools that enroll 90 percent students of color are more likely to be "critically overcrowded" and have severe shortages of qualified teachers.
- Male students of color were more likely to be suspended than their female counterparts or white students.
- Students are less likely to enroll in AP courses or take the SAT exam in their senior year. And when they graduate, they're less likely to have completed the necessary A-G courses for enrollment in a UC or Cal State.
BMOC Hearing
When: Wednesday from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Where: California State Capitol, Room 437
Presentation: IDEA PowerPoint on education indicators of boys of color
Council of Youth Research moves beyond school community
The Council of Youth Research will take their research to the streets. Diverging from previous years, the council -- made up of students from Crenshaw, Locke, Manual Arts, Roosevelt and Wilson high schools -- will use the research expertise it has gained in more than a decade of work to enact change in their communities.
Each high school group will partner with an organization for the full year. They will start with a research proposal outlining the problem paced by the community and why it is important to address it. The partnerships will be:
- Crenshaw High with Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
- Locke with Association of Raza Educators
- Manual Arts with Brotherhood Crusade
- Roosevelt with InnerCity Struggle
- Wilson with Wilson People's Garden
The Council will also be sharing their knowledge with the general public by creating a video webinar about their research process. The resource could be used by other youth groups across the country interested in engaging in meaningful research in their communities.
For more information on the Council, visit their blog Young Critical Minds.
Aug. 1: Nonprofits filling gap left by summer school
A recent KPCC story highlighted how lack of access to enriching summer programs can negatively impact students from low-income, working-class families.
Research indicates that the "summer slide"--when children forget some of what they've learned during the idle months--is greater for poor students than it is for their more well-off classmates.
"So many policymakers have strongly recommended that we target summer learning opportunities to high-poverty students," said IDEA Director John Rogers in the KPCC piece.
"California is going in exactly the opposite direction because as we cut back summer school, upper middle-class kids and affluent kids have access to programs that their parents can pay for."
The KPCC piece takes a look at the efforts of Santa Ana Unified School District to curb the slide by partnering with local nonprofits even as the district cut its summer school spending by $1 million.
As funding cuts worsened a few years ago, Santa Ana Unified’s [Michelle] Rodriguez says, the district began to look for options rather than wait for Superman to save them. "The district administration had the foresight to know they needed to make partnerships with other organizations so that our students didn’t suffer due to the financial deficits, so because of that there was never a year where there was a lag."
June 19: NY Times letter urges diversity in field of computer science
Jane Margolis' letter to the editor published
June 24: OC Legislative Summit to discuss education, graduation rates
IDEA research and policy director featured guest of Assemblyman Jose Solorio's legislative summit
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