LEAP News

A Five Step Approach I recently attended two symposia – one on non-profit management at Stanford Business School’s Institute of Social Innovation and the other on urban education put on by the Institute of Urban Education at the University of Chicago. At these talks, there was a lot of discussion around change. How do you effect change when the problems seem so intractable? From these lectures, I can summarize this 5-step process: Name the enemy Find the bright spots – no matter how dismal the statistics,

Important conversations about race and social justice have been happening at LEAP among staff members and with students. While teaching and motivating young people of color to be their best and to dream big and build agency has always been at the core of LEAP programs, we know we need to do more – for both our staff and our students. Because change happens locally, we are committed to do so with very specific actions that will be sustained and continued well beyond the concern and

In LEAP for Education’s College Success Program (CSP), it is one of our goals to support students while leading them towards finding their own autonomy, which is vital in order to succeed as independent adults in college and future careers. It is important to the CSP staff that students are taught the appropriate way to communicate with every professional in their lives. In addition, it is incredibly important that our students see themselves as adults who can solve problems instead of looking for adults around them

In the city of Chicago, for every 100 children entering high school, only 6 will finish college. In Boston, 2/3 of all students who go on to college have not graduated after 7 years. And, while I could not find similar statistics for my smaller urban city, Salem,  we can extrapolate from statewide averages and from the data that is available on drop out rates and high school graduation plans,  to estimate that 30 students out of the original 100 will finish college. When you look

In Part 2 of Career-Education Linkages, I discussed the need for high schools and colleges to teach performance skills in addition to academic core subjects. Across all the growth sectors in our regional economy, the jobs will require more than technical or academic knowledge.  This jobs will require performance skills such as communication and critical thinking and, finally soft skills such as customer service and work ethic. An Intel executive asks one of his managers how his new intern is working out.  Well, the guy says,

I am starting a 3-part blog on linking education with a clear career path. Why?  A large percentage of our students are disengaged from learning.  Nationwide 50% of our kids do not go on to any post-secondary education (38% here in Essex County, MA), there is a growing gender gap showing boys significantly lagging in education, and an alarming percentage of remediation in community colleges and high public college drop out rates. Teen employment is at its all time low.  While the current recession has definitely

Sorry, it has taken me so long to get Part 2 up on the blog.  Running a non-profit program is not easy these days. With a constant hunt for money, planning for growth, assuring quality of programs, recruiting students, staff and volunteers, I don’t seem to have as much time to keep the blog up to date but I promise to try harder. In Part I of  Career-Education linkages, I talked about the forgotten fifty – the 50% of our kids that do not go on

Do incentives work to encourage long-term academic achievement?

CBS features LEAP’s Expanding Horizons middle school summer 2021 program in its Return School News Series, August, 2021

In education, we often hear about the “achievement gap” among different student populations – but what about discrepancies in opportunities? At LEAP for Education, we’re trying to bridge the gap between privileged and underprivileged students by providing all students with access to the educational resources they need to achieve their goals.