The Department of Human Services’ Education Support Center: A Public/Private Partnership

Abstract

One of the population groups most at risk of dropping out of high school in Philadelphia—and throughout the country—is children who have been involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. A third of the young people who drop out of school in Philadelphia are or have been involved with the Department of Human Services (DHS) via foster care or delinquent placement. Approximately 70 percent of students who have a substantiated case of abuse or neglect during the high school years and 75 percent who have a foster care placement never finish high school (Neild and Balfanz 2006). Moreover, close to 90 percent of students who have a juvenile justice placement during their high school years ultimately drop out.

Over the past decade, various groups representing the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, the child advocacy community, the philanthropic sector, youth development organizations, and coalitions working to develop and sustain multiple pathways to graduation have developed initiatives and policy proposals to address some of the educational needs of this population. With a new city administration in place in November 2007, and key leadership appointments made by incoming Mayor Michael Nutter, many of these efforts were aligned to support the Mayor’s goal of cutting the city’s high school dropout rate in half and doubling the college graduation rate. Three of the Mayor’s leadership appointments—Chief Education Officer Lori Shorr, DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose, and DHS Deputy Commissioner Cynthia Figueroa—were critical to the inception and development of cross-systems and public/private partnerships that resulted in the implementation of an Education Support Center at DHS.

This ground-breaking public/private effort in Philadelphia to support the educational stability and outcomes of children in DHS care is the first time that the child welfare system, the School District of Philadelphia, Juvenile Court, the child advocacy community, the philanthropic sector and other city systems have joined forces with a clear educational goal: to increase the educational stability and high school and college graduation rates for children involved with DHS. Policy-makers at DHS have agreed for some time that the agency needed an education team to spearhead a massive effort like this one. However, for a variety of reasons that included limited resources, unsuccessful partnership development, and a vacuum in leadership focused on this issue, the effort to start up and operationalize a DHS Education Support Center did not get any traction. Not until recently, under the auspices of Project U-Turn—a citywide campaign to focus public attention on Philadelphia’s dropout crisis and to design strategies and leverage investments to resolve it—did the campaign’s advocacy efforts and committed city leadership align themselves to make a DHS education office a reality.