Silicon Valley’s great divide
In Silicon Valley, where some of the world’s smartest people live, many of the best young minds are wasting. The dichotomy is as stark as the Route 101 divide – a geographical shorthand for class and race (east, poor; west, rich) – separating them.
- A youth unemployment rate that one workforce nonprofit executive estimates at 35 percent;
- A high school dropout rate of about 27 percent;
- A minuscule number of Hispanic students in a six-county area – 182 out of 13,700 – to pass the CSU Early Assessment Program in math.
For seven hours last week, more than 100 school, business and non-profit leaders in the valley heard leaders’ pleas to reach out to disengaged youths, and discussed how to do so at a conference co-sponsored by Cisco Systems, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, James Irvine Foundation and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Organizers from Harvard approached Cisco and local foundations out of the recognition that disengaged youths and high tech companies – Cisco, Apple, Google, Intel – could be a good match. The former lack opportunities; the latter need workers. One way to bind them , many at the conference agreed, is through internships and mentoring. In the state with the nation’s lowest ratio of high school teachers and counselors to students, more contact with adults is critical.
“The issue is a lack of exposure to new careers and thinking, not a lack of motivation or curiosity” among students, Rosa Perez, chancellor of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District, told conferees.
One model program is Year Up, a 10-year old program with an operation in San Francisco. It takes 18- to 24-year old urban youths and gives them six months of intensive technical IT skills training followed by a paid six month corporate internship. Four-fifths of the San Francisco grads have then found entry-level tech jobs within four months, according to the organization.
But schools should be challenging students before they drop out. They should be helping students see a future beyond their neighborhoods. Partnership academies – small schools within high schools that prepare students for careers and college in such fields as engineering, health and technology – can do that. What makes them successful are four common elements: rigorous academic courses, tied to college admissions; multiple year-long applied courses in career fields; internships and apprenticeships; and extra services that help students with math and reading proficiency and study skills.
Partnership academies break down the false division between preparation for college and careers. As a legislative priority, they’ve expanded in California, despite cutbacks in school funding – except in Silicon Valley, where they remain scarce. The Silicon Valley Education Foundation (my employer) is discussing with the Irvine Foundation, the biggest private funder of these programs, about piloting a middle and high school science and technology academy in East San Jose.
Often, conferees said, it’s adults who set up barriers to engaging students: Teachers who don’t communicate with each other about students they suspect are in trouble. Districts that ignore the difficult transitions between middle school and high school. State and federal school sanctions that require students in failing schools to double up in math and English, to the exclusion of science and art. Students with B’s in high school who end up in remediation courses in college.
Speaking from Washington, where she is now Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter, the former Chancellor of Foothill-DeAnza Community College District, challenged valley companies to create high school apprenticeships in green technology and create a corps of mentors in every school. If South Korea can make online tutoring for K-12 students 24/7, why not Silicon Valley?
The Harvard organizers were hoping that a corporate CEO or community leader in Silicon Valley would step forward to lead a major, multi-year effort, involving schools, nonprofits and companies, to address the dropout crisis. None has emerged yet. But conferees, having identified model programs and barriers to change, at least pledged to keep talking.
Until this year I was volunteering in a program at Oak Grove high school in San Jose to tutor students in math. The program was cancelled because the school no longer had enough money to hire a coordinator to make the program work.
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John, my own take on this is that we need to reach kids earlier – By the time many kids get to high school they are already behind. As for business involvement – partnerships, mentoring etc are great – but what is really needed from the business community is smart leadership that pushes for a stronger k-12 system and provides adequate funding. Business likes to talk a good game about how much they care about education – but then they fight against tax increases that might provide badly needed funding for schools. A 100k school partnership provides some good PR -and is a lot cheaper than increased taxes…
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I agree with you, John, about more funding, but it’s not either/or. it’s important that companies like Cisco, Intel, Synopsys see a role in developing STEM programs, like Cisco Academy and Intel Math, and in freeing up employees to go into schools. They can be a critical resource, and it’s not just PR.
it’s going to take parents and teachers to push for more funding, however, maybe through a split-roll property tax, forcing commercial property owners to ante up. They’ve paid a declining portion of property taxes since Prop 13.
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John, I agree that it is not either or and I agree that the private sector has much to offer – I’m just tired of talking with business types who complain about schools but aren’t willing to go pay for better. Maybe I am just grumpy.
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Questions: How is the youth unemployment rate calculated? That is, who takes stock of which young people WANT to work, and how is that done? Obviously many young people aren’t in the job market at all. As the parent of teens, I just am not getting that concept.
Also, what is the CSU Early Assessment Program in Math? Are you saying that 13,700 Hispanic youths took the program and only 182 passed? I have a 2009 San Francisco high school graduate and a high school sophomore, and I’m not sure what this is. If you’re not saying that 13,700 Hispanic youths took the program, how many did take it (and in that case, this claim is misleading)?
I’m asking these questions as a person who makes a point of questioning doom-and-gloom, all-our-young-people-are-uneducated-losers supposed statistics. Like glowing “it’s a miracle!” claims for charter schools, they often don’t hold up under scrutiny.
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I looked up that CSU early assessment program in math. Just from quickly looking up Santa Clara County, it shows 1,544 Latino students tested in math and 873 testing not ready for college in math, meaning 673 tested ready or “conditionally ready.” Now, that still sucks, but where did you or your sources come up with (extrapolating to six counties) 182 out of 13,700, John? Should the person who did that research be tested for a few academic skills him- or herself?
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