Borsuk: City Year mentors are making an impact in Milwaukee's schools

This is Mabel Flores’ message for the students she works with at Milwaukee’s Pulaski High School: “Yes, you have a million obstacles in your way.” But you need to find ways to overcome them. She’s there to help them do that.

“I am extremely caring, but I’m also extremely demanding,” Flores says. “If you’re going to work with me, you’re not allowed to just give up in a class and fail.”  

Flores is not a teacher, although she is aiming to become one. She is part of the City Year team working at Pulaski, a group of seven young adults working at the school and one of about 100 City Year members working in 13 Milwaukee Public Schools this year.

What do they do? From the start of the day, when they stand as a group and cheer students as they walk in the door, until after school, when they staff programs offering extra help, they reach out to students individually and in small groups to encourage and prod them to do what it takes to succeed in school. They are boosters for the students, in the best sense of the term — no glossing over the weak spots, but pushing forward in positive ways.

They tutor, they mentor, they assist, they befriend, they prod, they help set individual goals, they keep a close eye on the data on performance. They build relationships.  

As Kate Niemer, who works on communications for the Milwaukee City Year operation, says, “We’re trying to make the schools we’re in places students want to be.”

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For several reasons, I’m increasingly a fan of City Year. Among them:

Flores is right: There are so many obstacles to success for so many kids in the city, from home, from the neighborhood, from the way the school day goes, and on and on. Giving teens friendly but firm support just makes huge sense.

But beyond common sense, there is growing evidence that there is a positive impact to this kind of help.

Helping to close gaps

At a recent City Year event, results from both local and national data analysis were presented, much of it conducted by analysts from Deloitte, the giant accounting and professional firm that is a major supporter of City Year. For example, in Milwaukee, 37% of students who worked with City Year members closed the gap in English language arts between where they were and getting to grade level by at least 10% in one year. For those in the same school who didn’t get City Year help, the figure was 22%.

Across the 13 Milwaukee schools with City Year, 7.5% of students working with City Year moved in a year from being labeled “off-track” to “on-track” for doing grade level work in language arts. That compared to 2.1% of students not involved with City Year.  

Is City Year solving the problems of urban education? No. But the data say it is moving the needle — and so few things move the needle at a lot of low-success schools that you have to applaud something that does.

Take Pulaski, for example. Some people say things are getting better at the school. I certainly hope so. But the most recent available statistics are excruciating to look at. The four-year graduation rate for the Class of 2018 was 50%. Attendance overall in 2017-'18 was 69.5%. In English language arts, 5.1% of students were rated as proficient last year. In math, it was 1.4%.

Somebody, please help. Enter City Year, largely staffed by people not much older than high school students. In general, they are doing one-year stints under the federally funded Americorps program. 

At Pulaski, the City Year members work with ninth-graders. Making it to 10th grade is one of the biggest hurdles for many Milwaukee students. It is historically the biggest year for dropping out or failing to get promoted.

Sinclair Johnson, head of the City Year team at Pulaski, said students are offered a “promotion promise” when they partner with City Year — if they work together, the student will get into 10th grade. 

Pulaski Principal Lolita Patrick said that when she took the position, one of her requests was to bring in City Year. She’s in her fourth year at the school and City Year is in its second there (and its ninth year overall in Milwaukee). Patrick says one impact of City Year is to increase the trust students have in the school.  

Plans to expand

City Year is aiming to expand its impact. Meralis Hood, executive director for the Milwaukee effort, said not only do they want to work in more schools, they want to help in other ways. With grants, including from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it is launching an effort in which principals of five schools with middle school grades will collaborate with experts on what can improve the transition of students from eighth grade to ninth.   

Hood said MPS is paying about $125,000 a year for each school involved with City Year. The cost per school is about $420,000. That leads to a lot of fundraising.

But as so many education programs and policy initiatives nationwide have failed to bring encouraging results, attention has shifted increasingly to the needs of students themselves. Thus, all the focus on everything from building character to “social-emotional learning” to responding to trauma. City Year fits into that picture in the ways it aims to build up students’ willingness to engage with school and pursue goals.

“They just need frequent reminders and sometimes a little push in the right direction,” City Year’s Flores said of the students she works with. In a warm, firm way, she’s there to give all that.   

Alan J. Borsuk issenior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.