Youth Stat Reaches Out To Frosh

Benjamin’s teachers at Hillhouse High School hadn’t seen the ninth-grader in class for more than five months — until a new Youth Stat program intervened.

Marked absent since August, practically right after the school year started, Benjamin started showing up again in recent weeks, after youth workers showed up at his house and caught him up.

At a day of games with other struggling freshmen, Benjamin finally got the welcome that he’d missed.

Since 2014, the citywide Youth Stat initiative has tried to put students in danger of dropping out back on track to graduate, by connecting them with extra help from teachers, social workers, administrators and others who strategize about how to help them avoid failing. The initiative now has a new target: high-school freshman.

“We have, from what I understand, a real crisis in freshmen succeeding in New Haven,” said Jason Bartlett, the city’s director of youth services. ​“What we have to do as a district is combine our resources.”

Currently, 12.9 percent of the Elm City’s ninth-graders fail a core class in their freshman year, often derailing their chances of graduating within four years. By reaching students at that transition point, Youth Stat’s administrators believe they can get students back on track earlier while three years of school remain.

The Freshman Project, as the new initiative is known, is open to first-year students at the district’s two comprehensive high schools, Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross; two alternative high schools, New Light and Riverside Academy; and one magnet, High School in the Community.

The freshmen in the program are grouped into ​“houses” of about 10 students each, a smaller setting where they can connect with classmates and receive three-on-one support from a tutor, a mentor and a ​“house parent.”

As of mid-December, Youth Stat had signed up 106 freshman. Over the next two months, 11 dropped out, either because they moved away from the district or did not want to continue participating.

As workers collect more consent forms, those enrollment numbers should be rising soon, said Christian Tabares, a youth project liaison.

The students enrolled so far are close to failing out. In the first half of the year, the average participant scored mostly Ds, with a 0.92 GPA, and missed almost one-third of their classes, with 70 percent attendance, Tabares reported.

Bartlett’s goal is to push up each student’s GPA by a full point, the equivalent of a full letter grade on report cards.

Each student who reaches that goal can earn up to $150 per marking period. The team who notches the biggest academic improvement will earn $500 for a field trip, say, for an outing to see ​“Black Panther” in theaters.

Those financial incentives help teenagers start to see a long-term perspective, where hard work is rewarded with a pay-off, Bartlett explained.

“We know that young people think short-term, what’s today’s pleasure. They’re not necessarily oriented to think long-term, what’s success over life,” he said. ​“Really, this is to jolt them, to get their attention, to get them motivated. Every time that we want them to do something, do we have to give them a gift card? No. But I do want them to be excited, to reorient themselves in terms of what is success, to grab their attention.”

Bartlett added that the payments can also open up a conversation about future employment and the degrees needed to pursue it.

“It helps set goals,” he said. ​“What does it take to become an artist or an automobile mechanic? How much math do you need to know to be a plumber? How do you get there and what kind of money are you going to make?”

Youth Stat’s newest program is funded with a grant from the Dalio Foundation. The charity was set up by Ray Dalio, founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, and his wife Barbara Dalio, founder of the Connecticut Rise Network, which is running programs out of Hill Regional Career High School.

The Dalio Foundation is contributing $200,000 over two years. ​“We’re going to keep talking to them, and hopefully, they’ll renew,” Bartlett said. ​“And if we’re successful, they could use it as a best practice to bring to other districts. We’re really a pilot.”

Still in the first marking period after the program’s roll-out, Bartlett doesn’t yet have data on how students are performing in class. But his team does have plenty of stories and anecdotal proof that the program is getting students to show up.

Akeem Berry, a youth services worker who serves as Hillhouse’s ​“house parent,” has worked closely with Benjamin. He said that Benjamin didn’t understand certain classes. Confused, he eventually decided to stop going.

“Getting him back into class, the best way is consistency,” Berry explained. ​“I made multiple home visits and spoke with both of his parents. I talked through his grades so they know where he’s at right now. They don’t have anybody in the school system do that, to sit down with them and show them, ask if there’s any subjects that they need tutors in.”

During the recent winter break, Benjamin showed up for a full-day competition, ​“The Challenge.” With other freshmen, he jumped through an obstacle course, tried to outsmart other teams in Connect Four, balanced blocks in a huge Jenga set and shot hoops in a three-point contest.

The students also squeezed against bungee cords in a life-size version of Hungry Hippos. ​“You strap the belt on you, and you jump,” one basketball-player from Creed explained. ​“You jump as far as you could.”

Benjamin said the games taught him ​“how to work together” with new people he’d just met. His team made it to the end, tying for the $500 prize.

Bartlett eventually hopes to roll out the program district-wide. ​“The district could be taking another 200 freshmen,” he said, but he’s struggled to get ​“enough buy-in at the schools” for the new program.

“I think we all need to work together,” Bartlett explained. ​“I don’t want to be that program where we’re doing what we’re doing and they’re doing something different.”