Don’t call them high school dropouts. Call them “opportunity youth,” former students ages 16-21 who are not in school and don’t have jobs.  Nationally, 20% of these students never return to school. Many traverse the “school to prison pipeline” and end up in jail: According to the Bureau of Justice, in 2020 75% of state prison inmates and 59% of federal inmates did not complete high school. The Gates Foundation calls this a “silent epidemic” that affects all states, including New Jersey.

The Newark Opportunity Youth Network (NOYN) is committed to changing these grim prospects for young people in New Jersey’s largest city. To that end, NOYN has been working with a non-profit called Cortico, which collaborates with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to amplify the voices of opportunity youth, pinpoint the primary obstacles they face, and create solutions for how New Jersey schools—indeed, schools across the nation—can transform they way students are educated and prepared for postsecondary learning, careers, and life.

“Bridging the equity gap across the state,” reports NOYN, “requires a disruption to the status-quo, led by collaborative thought-leaders, mission-driven partners, and tested strategies with clear outcomes.” The Network estimates that 100,000 opportunity youth have “fallen through the widening opportunity gap in New Jersey.” 

NOYN has four arms: LEAD Charter School, which enrolls opportunity youth; My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, focused on policy to improve educational and workforce outcomes for low-income youth of color; YouthBuildNewark, which offers opportunities to earn high school equivalency diplomas and workforce experience; and Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative, which helps young people break into the job market.

To capture the insights of Newark opportunity youth, Cortico and NOYN created 33 small group conversations with 6-8 students in each.  A total of 170 students recalled their early experiences in school and reflected on their disengagement from classwork, as well as disruptions in their home life. The AI component allowed researchers to highlight themes, analyze student commentary, make sense of the data,  and share recommendations and insights that can improve the educational experiences of all Newark students.. What would a truly supportive school environment look like?

The results point to eight overriding obstacles to school success:

There is a clear pattern: Students left school, says NOYN, due to Lack of Access to Mental Health Supports; Poor Teacher Quality; Lack of Diversified Academic Support; Lack of Understanding How External Factors Affect Attendance and Participation; No Sense of “Belonging;” Disciplinary Policies that Alienate Students From Their School Communities.”

Here are excerpts from Newark opportunity youth voices that illustrate these eight obstacles:

Sontee: “I remember how I used to go to class every morning, at my homeroom, and it was English class first. And I even know I used to be on the computer, but I used to be crying in the class. And I don’t know if my English teacher’s seen me or not, but I know every morning I was just in there crying because of what I had going on at home, didn’t nobody understand, and I just know, hey, I was crying, but I still do my work. If it got finished, it got finished. If it didn’t, it didn’t. I didn’t care about none of that.”

HJ: “At my time during [redacted] I realized that they didn’t really care about the students. It was more of them perfecting an image of the school rather than the students. They limited what we could and could not do. And this impacted me a lot because I’m not saying I needed special help, but I needed more attention than others and I didn’t really get that. So that’s why I left.”

Zah: “A time I felt like I wasn’t supported or understood while at school, it was during COVID, you feel me? While we was online. While I was in the middle of class and then I got told my father had passed away, you feel me? After that, I just mentally I was not there.”

Star: “[My teacher] said  by the time you 14, 15, you’re going to be in jail, you’re going to be in the gang, all that.  I feel like she told me my life was going to be. When I got older, I really went on them same routes. I really became a gang member. I really went to jail by the time I was like 14.”

Chubbs: “It was like everybody knew me from the community so everybody was telling the teachers what happened, this, that, and third, he was one of the people that got shot. I don’t know, it was just like people got to mind their business. Because like I said, when they found out I was one of the people that got shot, it was like a whole different type of environment. They moved me into TD, they took me out of normal classes, all that. Like I said, it was like a planned attack. They knew they was going to kick me out.”

Mari: “They was like, “Oh yeah, we can get you a therapist.” I could get myself a therapist. I need more than that. People will all day be like, “Oh, this kid is bad, this kid don’t listen.” Take time to figure out what that kid got going on. What if that kid literally lost five people in their family within a whole year and they’re not being able to focus in your class because of that. People automatically think that kids are just bad and that there’s problem children and that there’s something wrong with these kids. And no, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of kids, for example, him, he probably don’t like to come to school because of the teacher’s in the environment, it probably don’t have nothing to do with his intelligence level. He seems like a good kid, he could get work done. It all is depending on your environment and your space and what people tell you.”

Lola: “People’s needs, student needs should be heard. A lot of time you want to even talk to the counselor or your advisor, and you have to either be on a waiting list. Does that even sound okay? A school is a school. When you bully, you face the consequences. When you do things outside schooling, outside studying, then you should face consequences. Strict rules on this would really, really help.”

Mia: “Elementary school, guidance counselors and teachers would bully the fuck out of me. I’m so sorry for cursing, but they were bullies. It was also because I had curly hair, and everyone in my school was either Ecuadorian or Brazilian. So, they had straight hair, small bodies, really petite and light-skinned…The teachers were even worse. In high school, the guidance counselor would tell everybody’s business to anybody that walked through the door, anybody that walked through the door…. I never trusted teachers or guidance counselors since then, because if you can do it to somebody else, you could do it to me.”

Joanna:  “I remember, because I’d been going to [redacted] from seventh grade to 12th grade, so I remember when I got there, there were these freshmen kids, these boys that would just throw food at us all the time. And I would go report it to the staff and it was like nothing would happen to them. It would just be over and over and they would come and bother us and nothing would happen.”

Shayaka: “My ideal vision for a supportive school environment has a dedicated student support staff. So whether that’s school counselor or social workers, just somebody that students can actually talk to and have their concerns heard and addressed. It also has a flexible curriculum, so students aren’t forced to take classes that they have no interest in.”

A recent report from NOYN, “A Portrait of Newark,” shows the lifelong impact of these eight obstacles captured through the partnership with Cortico: The life expectancy for Black men in Newark (90% of opportunity youth are Black and 10% are Latino) is “a shockingly low 67.4 years,” eight years less than the state average. The typical Newark resident earns $33,300 a year, $18,200 less than the NJ median. Among Hispanic residents 25 and older, only one in three has a high school diploma and 11% have a bachelor’s degree. Among all Newark adults 25 years and older, only 78% have a high school diploma, far lower than the state average.

In regards to K-12 schooling, “fewer than one in five third-grade students [in Newark Public Schools district] passed their English language arts tests…Newark’s public school district addressed drops in test scores [through a summer school program], but only students within 10 points of passing the state math test and with an attendance rate of 95% or higher could participate.”

From the report:

“Some public officials blame the Covid-19 pandemic for third-graders’ low scores, but others argue that Newark’s third grade reading levels have been declining since 2019, suggesting the problem runs deeper than missed school.”

Opportunity youth have so much in their way as they strive towards a productive adulthood. NOYN is working hard to clear that path and bridge the equity gap.

(Phono courtesy of Newark Opportunity Youth Network.)