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Q&A
Council Member Stevens questions effectiveness of middle school summer programs and calls for reimagining youth services
4:25:05
·
118 sec
Council Member Althea Stevens questions DYCD Commissioner Keith Howard about the effectiveness of summer programs for middle school students, citing a DOE impact analysis showing no significant academic gains. Stevens emphasizes the need to reconsider and reimagine programming for this age group, highlighting the connection between early intervention and preventing youth involvement in the criminal justice system.
- Stevens expresses concern over the lack of academic improvement in middle school summer program participants
- Howard's response about "enjoying" working with NYC Public Schools on Summer Rising is met with skepticism from Stevens
- Stevens stresses the importance of investing in young people early to prevent future issues, mentioning the current number of youth in secured detention
Althea Stevens
4:25:05
Based on the DOE summarizing impact analyzing released in March, there was no academic gains from middle school students.
4:25:12
Even for middle school school participants who attended summarizing program for twenty days or more, there were no strategic significant impact on math scores.
4:25:22
Furthermore, when compared to other students in the city, school middle school summarizing participants pinned to attended summarizing programming for twenty days actually for worse in reading scores than there are compromising groups.
4:25:35
Based on this analyst, has DYCB considered utilizing a separate summer program model for middle school students?
4:25:41
Why or why not?
Keith Howard
4:25:43
So we enjoy and we work very well with New York City Public School on summer rising.
4:25:48
So at this time, we're just again
Althea Stevens
4:25:50
You said enjoy?
Keith Howard
4:25:51
We do enjoy.
4:25:52
Yeah.
4:25:54
Continuing to
Althea Stevens
4:25:55
work I would say the providers beg to differ.
4:25:57
You
Keith Howard
4:25:59
know, Civil Rights has grown since its iteration, and and we look just to the future on how to make it even better than it actually is now.
Althea Stevens
4:26:08
I'm just gonna go back to my original statement.
4:26:11
We especially this middle school population, we really gotta we get we just gotta reconsider some stuff and think outside the boxes.
4:26:17
I think that like it's just a different population, it's a different time, the different model just needs to be used not only for summarizing, but for SYP, all of it.
4:26:25
This is this is a population that we're losing and again and I and I haven't said this in a while, if we're not investing in young people on the front end, we will on the back end.
4:26:33
We know that gels are built off the reading scores of third graders and so at this point we also need to look at this middle school population because a lot of them are in secured detention.
4:26:44
We had a hearing before this, we have over 300 young people right now in secured detention right now, like as we're sitting here and so we've already failed 300 young people because how I see it and I say we as all of us and so I think that we need to really think about this population in a very different way and really just kind of reimagining programming all together around it.