YDRF Brings YCC to Baltimore

National News Service Covers YDRF Work in Baltimore City
Baltimore program tries to reach dropouts by stressing economic value of a degree

By LEDYARD KING, Gannett News Service

BALTIMORE - Darius Eatmon is smart, confident, and at 16, a high school dropout.

“It wasn't really a challenge for me,” the Baltimore teen said about his decision to quit school last spring during his sophomore year. “I had mostly honors classes and it seemed like it was too easy, so I just stopped coming.”

Many of the hundreds of thousands of students who drop out of high school nationwide every year cite boredom as a chief reason for leaving, but Darius has found a program that engages him, using small class sizes (six to seven students) to teach job skills.

Darius is working toward his General Equivalency Diploma and learning business technology as part of a career academy run by the Mayor's Office of Employment Development in Baltimore. Only about 4 out of every 10 high school students in the city graduates within four years. Large cities with high poverty rates, such as Baltimore, Detroit and New York, have the most acute dropout problems. States are trying a variety of ways to keep students in class, such as revamping the curriculum, assigning adult mentors, and raising the age at which students can legally leave school. There are also programs like the Youth Development and Research Fund, whose organizers urge teens to understand the economic folly of their decision to leave school. The program shows teens how much "future economic opportunity" they will squander if they don't get a high school degree.

Program founder Edward DeJesus works to connect with a small group of teens so they in turn will convince their peers that school and gainful employment are the keys to a better life. On a recent October Friday, DeJesus told Darius and other teens in plain terms the importance of not being lured by the fast money and good times of the street. “Our young people are adopting insidious actions, tools, beliefs, values, and behaviors that they think are helping them survive, but in reality are leading them to death, unemployment, and incarceration,” he said.

Gregory Simmons, 16, another dropout who attended the session, wished he had heard the message before he left school. “There are no real jobs for people out here without a GED, diploma, or college,” he said. “I want to have good things. In order to get those good things, I have to go to school.”

Click here to see short video.

NEW

YDRF Announces The “MAKiN’ iT” Youth Development Workshop Series
Bring this important message to your program or school.
Click here to find out more.