Friday, November 5^th

Study Finds Juvenile Offenders Often Released Into Risky Neighborhood Environments

Researchers urge greater focus on improving neighborhood-based opportunities.

Roughly 100,000 juvenile offenders are released each year from U.S. correctional facilities and reenter the community, but little research has been done on the types of neighborhoods they end up in, including the risks they face and the types of resources available to them.

A new study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation's Prevention Research Center (PRC) helps fill this gap, measuring the rate of juvenile offenders released into each of Los Angeles County's 272 ZIP codes and examining specific neighborhood-level factors that could play a significant role in their reintegration or recidivism. Read More

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How Four California High Schools are Preparing Students for College and Career

Discussions around student success are no longer about academic proficiency, but college and career readiness. This comes from a recognition that students need more than a basic understanding of concepts to be prepared for success in the global economy. They need knowledge that is aligned to postsecondary standards and must be able to apply that knowledge to solve real-world problems. The question is, ‘what does teaching and learning look like in schools that are delivering on this promise?’

Last month, I had a chance to visit four schools in California that are using an approach called Linked Learning to prepare their students to succeed in postsecondary and career opportunities. Linked Learning is a strategy that integrates four components: rigorous academics aligned to post-secondary standards; a career and technical education theme; work based learning; and supplemental services. Read More

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A&E® Premieres New Original Real-Life Series “The Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars”

Executive produced by rapper and actor Ice-T, the series provides an unprecedented look at gang life.

A&E kicks off the new original real-life series “The Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars,” following gang mediator Malik Spellman as he oversees tense moments of mediation between rival gangs in South Central Los Angeles. The five-episode half-hour series premieres with back-to-back episodes on Thursday, December 16 at 10PM ET/PT on A&E.

Each episode of “The Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars” provides unprecedented access to gang members and the neighborhoods they live in, and sheds new light on the realities of gang life as Spellman works to coordinate truces, often between enemies with long histories of hate and violence. Read More

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Largest Study Ever Shows Half of All High School Students Were Bullies and Nearly Half Were the Victims of Bullying During the Past Year

Study of more than 43,000 shows high school experience is more glum than glee.

According to a new study by the Josephson Institute of Ethics (the largest ever undertaken of the attitudes and conduct of high school students), half of all high school students (50 percent) admit they bullied someone in the past year, and nearly half (47 percent) say they were bullied, teased, or taunted in a way that seriously upset them in the past year. The study reports the responses from 43,321 high school students. The margin of error is less than 1%. Read More

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New Report Shows Minorities Still Lag in College Attainment

Getting a college degree is still just a dream for many young minorities in the United States. New numbers in a report released today by the American Council on Education show no appreciable progress in postsecondary attainment among young Hispanics and African-Americans compared with their older peers in the past two years. However, women and Asian-Americans are moving ahead of their older counterparts.

The United States is no longer gaining ground in educational attainment from one generation to the next, according to Minorities in Higher Education 2010; Twenty-Fourth Status Report, which uses data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Read More

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Break the Cycle: UCLA Launches Speakers Series On Gang Prevention, Intervention, Policy

With an estimated 20,000 gangs and nearly 1 million gang members nationwide, gangs and gang-related violence are a problem that plagues cities, suburbs and rural areas across the United States. Tackling the problem is the focus of a new speakers series presented by the UCLA Department of Social Welfare that kicks off Tuesday, Oct. 19.

" GANGS: Strategies to Break the Cycle of Violence" brings together the nation's leading authorities on gangs – including Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and Homeboy Industries founder and author Father Greg Boyle – to address the issue of local and national gang violence, with a special focus on current knowledge of gang operations, intervention and rehabilitation strategies, effective support services, and policy recommendations. Talks will spotlight best practices from individuals with years of experience in planning, implementing and overseeing various multidisciplinary gang intervention models. Read More

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