How the Economy has Impacted Non-Profits

A 2010 State of the Nonprofit Sector report showed only 18 percent of the more than 1,300 nonprofit leaders surveyed expect their organizations to end 2010 in the black. While in 2009, 35 percent of organizations ended the year with an operating surplus. 61 percent of those organizations surveyed have less than three months of cash available, and 12 percent have no cash.

80 percent of nonprofits expect to see an increase in demand for their services in 2010, while only 49 percent expect to be able to fully meet that demand. Organizations are taking a number of steps to maintain, and expand — service delivery during this period of economic uncertainty. Collaboration is big now, with 52 percent stating they have collaborated with other organizations to provide programs, 43 percent have added to or expanded their program offerings, 18 percent have expanded the geographic area served by their programs, and 60 percent have become more engaged with their board.

The economic crisis on foundations includes the fact that there is expectation among grant makers that the field of philanthropy will become more strategic as a result of having weathered the economic crisis. In addition, the long-term impact of the crisis on their own foundations are forcing engaging in "being more focused and disciplined in executing our strategy” as well as “more robust strategic planning,” and “more focused use of the foundation’s capabilities.”

This means the field of philanthropy will become more strategic as a result of the world’s economic crisis. There have been declines in overall consumer demand and our country’s highest unemployment figures in a quarter century, so it is no surprise that nonprofit community has suffered as well.

Children of the City in Sunset Park near Brooklyn, New York, is actually growing, according to their Chairman of the Board Rocco Basile, who has been affiliated with the charity for a number of years. In fact he even has a website devoted to nonprofits. Visit http://www.roccobasile.net/

(Source: The Foundation Center.)

Hugh Jackman is Guest of Honor at Children of the City Gala

Last week Hugh Jackman, Tony and Emmy Award winning actor and producer, was the Guest of Honor at the Brooklyn, New York-based Children of the City Benefit to help raise awareness of the educational needs and social challenges of underprivileged children in Brooklyn communities. The evening was hosted by WABC Features & Lifestyle reporter Lauren Glassberg as the guests gathered at New York's Pier Sixty.

Rocco Basile, chairman of the board of directors of Children of the City was honored by District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, for his efforts in supporting the non-profit. Brooklyn Retail Market Manager for TD Bank Eileen Holmes, was honored with the 2010 Children’s Champion Award.

The benefit was an opportunity to bring about awareness of the challenges the children have to face. Founder and President Joyce Mattera, who has dedicated her life to helping disadvantaged and neglected children talked about the fact that there is a 48 percent dropout rate in the Brooklyn community, which as more than 30,000 children. One out of four are living in abject poverty.

Children of the City is dedicated to changing the culture of poverty. Visit www.childrenofthewcity.org.

Title IX and Nondiscrimination

Vice President Biden today announced that the Administration has issued a 'Dear Colleague' letter that withdraws a 2005 interpretation of Title IX policy. Joining the vioce president for today's announcment were Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls.

What is Title IX? It was enacted in 1972, mandating that any educational institution receiving federal funding for programs and activities cannot discriminate on the basis of sex.

In 2005 this policy included compliance standards that were criticized nationwide for being inadequate and inconsistent with Title IX's nondiscrimination goals. Today's announcement reverses this interpretation, and returns to a more thorough test for assessing compliance with Title IX.



-- Rocco Basile

Survey Says Nonprofit Giving Has Declined 10% due to Economy

In order to keep an eye on my chairites from time to time I review research and statistical informatio n to post on my website http://www.roccobasile.net/. According to survey findings released by the Foundation Center, giving will likely decline by more than 10 percent since 2008. The survey is the result of interviewing and obtaining the responses of 600 foundations. What’s more, continued reductions are expected throughout 2010.

The year has suffered declines in overall consumer demand and our country’s highest unemployment figures in a quarter century, so it is no surprise that the future outlook for the nonprofit community has been impacted by the recession. The field of philanthropy will become more strategic as a result of the economic crisis.

The majority of experts believe that the nonprofit sector will emerge stronger but agree that ultimately there will be fewer organizations. U.S. foundation giving suffered an estimated 22 percent drop in foundation assets in 2008. Earlier this year, the Foundation Center estimated that 2009 giving by the nation’s more than 75,000 grant making foundations would “decrease by around eight to 13 percent, and at this time, it seems as if it is likely the decline will be even more.

The economic crisis has forced nonprofits to adjust their operating costs. More than two-thirds of respondents to the September 2009 said they have in some way reduced operating expenses since the beginning of the economic crisis, even those that still have endowments. It seems that some nonprofits are trying to preserve the value of their endowments, so that they will not permanently diminish grant making capacity, while others have determined they will be smaller institutions going forward and are making necessary staffing and expense adjustments.

How are they cutting back? Many have reduced operating expenses since the onset of the economic crisis, by reducing staff travel and salaries. Two-thirds of the respondents that cut expenses reported reducing staff travel budgets and/or limiting staff to attend conferences. A little over one-third indicated that they had also reduced staff training and professional development opportunities.

A larger share of respondents expect that their giving will be lower in 2010 (26 percent) than higher (17 percent). Larger foundations, those giving over $10 million, are more likely than smaller foundations to reduce their giving further next year. While asset averaging generally limits the impact of modest economic fluctuations on annual giving, the extreme 2008 asset losses will not be balanced out by 2007 asset growth and the 2009 turnaround in the market.

Finally, the impact of the economic crisis on foundations has been twofold. 1) There is a clear expectation among grant makers that the field of philanthropy will become more strategic as a result of having weathered the economic crisis. 2) The long-term impact of the crisis on their own foundations are forcing engaging in “more robust strategic planning,” “more focused use of the foundation’s capabilities,” and being “more focused and disciplined in executing our strategy.” The focus of other types of long-term changes cited by survey respondents ranged from governance to grantee relations to investments.

The Foundation Center’s next Foundation Giving Forecast Survey will be conducted in January 2010, with results released in the March 2010 edition of Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates.

The annual Foundation Giving Forecast Survey and made it available to approximately 5,000 large and mid-size U.S. community, independent, and corporate foundations.

-- Rocco Basile
Source: Foundation Center, 2009 http://www.foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/pdf/researchadvisory_economy_200911.pdf

Has the Economy Affected Top Twelve Educational Trends?

Every generation has sets of educational trends that are constantly evolving right along with the times. By taking a look at these trends, higher-education institutions are better able to prepare for the future students to become productive members of society and world leaders.

As you know I am fascinated with how our children develop and learn, as evidenced from the topics on website at http://www.roccobasile.net/ - especially the underpriviledged kids in the charities where I serve as a Board member such as Children of the City. (Kaylen on right)

Let's take a look at five of these predictions (there are twelve in all) to see if the economy has affected them in any way this last year.

1. Evergreen students - It is the 18 year olds who are bringing the new technologies to college campuses, but due to this fact they expect the infastructure to be in place to support their new evergreen ideas. But this last year the biggest trends included social media like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, interactive mobile smart phones, and places like SecondLife.com are a great tools to train students virtually. Universities continue to explore new ways to integrate these tools into a productive learning environment and the slow economy only slows down the process of implementation.

2 Globalization - The demand for higher education worldwide is increasing and will continue to grow. There a re 100 million college students globally, and the growth areas have been India, China and the Middle East. Today students must prepare for a global workforce.

3. Techninal and informational literacy. Technical literacy among teachers in increasing, and more are using computers and ew technology in teaching. Students may be device savvy but they need to improve on being information savvy, therefore using technology for academic purposes is the new goal. a wave of faculty retirement is bringing new teachers to the forefront who are younger and more technologically savvy.

4. Enrollment, retention, and branding. Schools are hip to using the Internet to market academic programs, and e-learning online is well under way (e.g. Zinch.com is to help students in the college application process). Colleges have built attractive brands, and are using new methods to enroll and keep students in school - such as call centers to contact students and leave voicemails if they miss classes.

5. Mobility. Colleges are compelled to capitolize on feature rich mobile phones to reach students new ways such as texting, instant messaging, video, etc. Now colleges are exploring ways to use PDAs to deliver coursework, field data, training modules, schedules, and much more.

Just as colleges and universities are experiementing with technology tools to improve learning, our younger students are less fortunate in some communities where public schools simply do not have the government support for funds to provide the technology - especially during bad economic times.

Life is a learning experience ... This is why programs like ChildrenoftheCity are so critical to communities like Brooklyn.

-- Rocco Basile

Private Lender Involvement for Students Loans to End

A hat tip to Wall Street Journal writers Corey Boles and Robert Tomsho for their news coverage on my favorite topic: education in the United States. As you know, my website http://www.roccobasile.net/ covers education and charity.

So just out of Washington today, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would end private-lender involvement in the student-loan market. This establishes the federal government as the sole provider of college loans, and means there will be much change within the federal government's higher-education policies.

What this basically means is that all lenders would be cut out of the market for originating loans, although there would still be a role for private banks and lenders to bid for a limited number of contracts to service the loans after they are made by the government.

What is known as the Federal Family Education Loan Program - this is when the government guarantees loans made by private lenders - remains the single largest source of college loans. Loan volume totalled $74 billion, up 13% from a year earlier.

Obama's administration has said they will use the anticipated savings from this measure to increase grants for low-income students, and also boost funding for minority student groups. This would mean they culd also provide money for school construction. All in all this could save taxpayers $87 billion over the next ten years.

How Educated are Americans?

This may come as shocking news ... but when I recently did some research on this topic, I discovered that the answer changes depending upon how you look at it. High school graduation rates have soared since the 1870s, yet although rates have fallen off in the last 30 years of the 20th Century, by 2000, the percentage of graduates was the highest it had been since 1960. I find this information fascinating, and often record the stats in my website www.RoccoBasile.net.

What's more, the number of college students has also been on the rise since the 1870s. There was a dramatic increase from 1950-2000. The good news is that for all racial groups, education has been rising steadily since the 1960s, and literacy rates for adults has been going up ever since the 1870s. It reached a rate of 99.3% in 1979.

Now here's an interesting concept: How do our children compare to other children in the world when it comes to education? The United States ranks in the top 10 for reading, and in math, we still rank in the top 10 for 4th graders. However, our scores drop in the rankings for 8th and 12th graders.

So you may wonder, why aren't the students in the U.S. keeping up with students from other countries? Standardized testing became a tool for measuring school performance in the 1970s, just as Federal spending on education increased.

If you would like to read more go to: http://social.jrank.org/pages/951/How-Educated-Are-We.html#ixzz0RPL72vNz

--Rocco Basile

Have you Heard About PROJECT RED?

It is a fact that many of our country's high shcool students enter college with inadequate skills. The National Education Computing Conference (NECC) posted a press release saying the Project RED coalition has launched their new Project RED initiative, an effort to put technology on a more stable basis within the challenging environment of education funding.

The lead author of this project and CEO of The Greaves Group, Tom Greaves said, "We all have anecdotal stories about how technology works and saves money while improving teaching and learning. But we need a full-bore national study to investigate cost-savings and revenue enhancement at the state level."

Project Red's team will research the schools in its database of approximately 3,000 K-12 technology-rich schools. The characteristics of technology use to transform learning will be analyzed to create a model for other schools. The technology-transformed schools that have at least 95 percent of their students using a computing device with Internet access will also be studied to determine what cost savings schools realize when they use technology as part of their everyday teaching and learning.

Most states know how much money is spent on remedial courses for these students - costs that frustrate state legislators because they feel they are paying for educating the same students several times. One of the bright spots in technology's investment pay-off has been the ability to reduce costs while improving both learning and attendance through online credit recovery courses.

This will revolutionize the way we look at technology - not as a cost, but as a way to personalize learning and to change the way students learn by making technology-assisted learning among recognized best practices, rather than an exception.

Technology holds the promise of allowing us to re-engineer our educational system. Project RED's importance has been recognized by a number of national education associations, including National School Boards Association (NSBA), American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and Software Information Industries Association (SIIA).

The technology-transformed schools are defined as any elementary and secondary school where students have consistent daily access to the Internet. Go to ProjectRED.org to find out if your schools are already included inthe program. -- Rocco Basile

The Obamas on Education for our Youth

First Lady Michelle Obama debuted as a public policy advocacy by visiting the Department of Education in the company of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. As I have mentioned before I follow the latest trends in eduication on my blog roccobasile.net.

Stressing the need for more education spending, she said, "Imagine what we can do with millions of dollars more investment in this area. We can expand opportunities in low-income districts for all students, particularly for students with disabilities."

Both Barack and Michelle Obama promoted the importance of a good education at a January 19 rally held by the Education Equality Project at Cardoza High School in Washington, DC.

UNCF President Michael Lomax was there to explain why our educational system is in a state of crisis.

In summary, they discussed how diverse leaders are coming together over the U.S. public education system, which is in crisis. Most speakers consider this crisis to be the predominant civil rights issue of our generation. Parent, grandparents, educators, families, neighbors, and friends were encouraged to tutor, and join the PTA, so that their voices could be heard.

The Education Equality Project states on its website, “Barely half of African-American and Latino students graduate from high school, with African American students graduating at 55 percent, Latinos at 53 percent, and their white counterparts at 78 percent.”

Joe DiMaggio Still Supports Students with Learning Disabilities

Joe DiMaggio was a friend and generous supporter of Xaverian High School and was the first person to ever receive Xaverian's highest honor, the Concordia Award, in 1997. DiMaggio died on March 8, 1999, with the honor of being known as "the greatest living baseball player."

Joe played for the New York Yankees baseball team and his nickname was the "Yankee Clipper." How did he get this nickname? In the game of baseball, to 'clip' the ball means 'hit' the ball. everyone knows that Joe DiMaggio was a great hitter! But 'Yankee Clipper' is also the name of a beautiful sailing ship. To the people who watching him play baseball, DiMaggio played as like a sailing clipper ship -- gracefully.

Xaverian's Concordia Award was renamed the Joe DiMaggio Award to memorialize DiMaggio's life-long commitment to the health, educaiton and the well being of America's youth. Dimaggio has an annual award gala in his memory - The Joe DiMaggio Award Gala - a fundraiser for Xaverian High. This is a special program for students with learning disabilities.

The Joe DiMaggio Award's mission, established in 1999, is to memorialize his "lifelong commitment to the health, education and well being of America's youth."

More than 100 young men have graduated from this special initiative and all have gone on to four-year colleges. Because Xaverian is private and tuition driven, all proceeds from the annual Gala benefit its many students. the evening usually always includes a silent auction of rare Joe DiMaggio memorabilia donated by the DiMaggio Estate and Morris Engelberg, Esq.

Earning the Bay Ridge school's highest honor, formerly called the Concordia Award, DiMaggio won it in 1997. The award has since been presented to Dr. Henry Kissinger, Maestro Luciano Pavarotti, former mayor and current presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani, television personality Regis Philbin, singer/songwriter Paul Simon, Sopranos star James Gandolfini, CBS Sports commentator Boomer Esiason and NBC Emmy-Award winning sports broadcaster Bob Costas.

This year's May 2009 Joe DiMaggio Award Gala honors Reggie Jackson. This year's Master of Ceremonies is Jim Ryan, the Legendary Television Reporter and Anchorman.

--Rocco Basile

The New Obama Administration and Education

Prior to his election to President of the United States, Barack Obama said he will reform the No Child Left Behind, invest in early childhood education: implement a comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan to provide support to young children and their parents, and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.

Obama and Biden also said they will create a new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 in exchange for community service, covering two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university. They also said they would make community college tuition completely free for most students.

As many of you know, my website http://www.roccobasile.net/, shares news and the statistics on the state of education in the country - so any new improvements to our ailing education system is music to my ears.

At his inaugural speech at the U.S. Capitol President Obama mentioned that, "our schools fail too many." Now that they are settled into their new posts, President Barack Obama and the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have set a tone of bipartisan cooperation on challenges that are facing our country's schools.

Despite the prospect of cutbacks in school budgets nationwide, the education community in Washington is optimistic about the future according to Jack Jennings, the president of the Center for Education Policy, an advocacy organization.

President Obama believes that giving money to education will stimulate the economy but his opponents believe that he is trying to increase long term funding to schools. He has proposed doubling federal funding for charter schools, who can apply for up to $600,000 in start up money from the federal government.

As a Board member for programs like the Joe DiMaggio Awards Committee at Xaverian High School, (my alma mater), we have long known how financial assistance helps the quality of education that the school can provides its students. Xaverian offers the very best in secondary education by serving young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, including learning disabilities and students in financial need. In fact, if it were not for the generosity of alumni, parents and friends, many of these students would not be able to afford the quality, college-preparatory education our school offers.

In fact, the Joe DiMaggio Award Gala is the major fundraiser for Xaverian, and since the inception of the program in 1994 more than 100 young men have graduated from this special initiative and all have gone on to four-year colleges. Every year the DiMaggio Award outdoes the previous in money raised and national media attention.

-- Rocco Basile

Income Disparity and Children's Education

The latest news item on educational information comes to us from Georgia in an article about how income disparity shows up in children’s health. Andy Miller of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/8/2008) wrote about a new report that sadly ranks Georgia near the bottom on two key measures of children’s health focusing on family income and education.

Georgia has a higher-than-average rate of infant mortality. That is when a child dies before their first birthday. According to a national report that was released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Georgia infants born to the most-educated mothers have a much greater chance of living past their first birthday than infants with mothers who have fewer years of schooling.

Georgia comes in as 46th among states on the size of that gap in infant mortality based on a mother’s education; and the state also shows a big disparity in children’s health status based on household wealth. Here are some of the main points:

• Nearly 15 percent of Georgia children age 17 or younger are in less-than-optimal health, as reported by their parents. But as income rises, children’s health improves. The report said 26 percent of Georgia children in poor families have health problems, compared to 5.7 percent of kids in high-income households.


• Georgia ranked 41st on that health gap between higher-income households and poor families. Even children in middle-class families appear to be less healthy than those in higher-income households in Georgia, the report found.


• The study, by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, shows that across the country, shortfalls in health are greatest among children in the poorest or least-educated households.

Other statistics in the report state:

• More than 40 percent of Georgia children live in poor or near-poor households, while 26 percent live in high-income families.


• More than one-third of Georgia children live in households where no one has education beyond high school.


• Infant mortality rate among Georgia babies born to African-American mothers is more than twice the rates among babies of white or Hispanic mothers.

As this study clearly proves, there are significant inequalities in children’s health based on income, education and race, we know that there are ways that communities can come together to help find solutions to overcome such issues. As I continue my work with charities such as Children of the City, which can be viewed on my website at http://www.roccobasile.org/, we see examples every day of successes.

For example, the charity's Create Success Summer Program ended with outstanding results. It is the only summer program in the community of Brooklyn New York that has a strong academic focus. It is no surprise that with a drop out rate of 48 percent, children doing poorly was especially evident in the areas of reading and math. They simply lack of crucial foundational skills.

Children of the City tailors programs to the specific needs of each child as well as the general needs of each age group. There are students suffering from the effects of poverty like trauma, challenges at home, language barriers, poor self-esteem and lack of confidence, all of which affect their ability to learn. But because of the program's familiarity with their needs, and a holistic approach, there is much success.

No child is incapable of literary success. Children in this program have left Special Ed classes to join main stream classrooms, and kids that were about to be placed in Special Ed were able to comfortably read after being in this program for less then two months. Based on academic assessments, children in the Children of the City Summer Program showed a marked increase in their developmental reading assessments. Several even increased one whole grade level.

Educational Trends: Learning Games for Kids

Today I noticed a very interesting news announcement about a company called LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. who just released two new educational game titles based on Lucasfilm's upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

These are learning games, and apparently they are so successful that the company also plans to develop two additional Star Wars learning games for 2009. Each game connects to what is called the LeapFrog(R) LearningPath, which is a free online tool that shows parents what their child is learning.

LeapFrog developed these educational games, based on the very popular Lucasfilm storylines and characters, for its two new gaming platforms:

1) The Leapster2 Learning Game System, for kids from four to eight,
2) TheDidj Custom Gaming System, for children from six to ten years old.

Both games are available at http://www.leapfrog.com/gaming and at major retailers. The suggested retail price for the Leapster2 game is $24.99, and for the Didj title, $29.99.

In a recent survey of more than 1,000 parents by ConsumerQuest for LeapFrog, 66 percent of the parents of three-to 11-year-old children felt playing with educational video games gives their child an educational advantage.

I know from my experience with my educational charity work, which can be seen at http://www.roccobasile.org/, that parents are concerned about how their kids learn. At Children of the City, for example, there is one program known as Create Success, that is fast becoming a model sought after by other organizations. A high priority is placed on student’s academic success with intense tutoring and daily personal homework help. This connection with the student allows us the open door to provide them with counseling, advocacy within the social systems (school and court), age-appropriate group and individual mentoring, family mediation, creative and performing arts, as well as sports.
Children of the City goals are:
To close the academic skills gap;
To displace the poverty mentality;
To provide the support and resources needed to help each child and youth complete their education and enter the workplace;

Create Success evaluates student performance using NYC Department of Education assessment tools. Our evaluation measures showed that over the past three years:
95 percent of the students tested improved several DRA levels;
20 percent increased an entire grade level;
All students expressed they felt more comfortable reading, more confident in their math skills, and had a positive outlook about their educational success.

CNN Black in America Program Highlights Educational Trends

Today CNN Student News posted an online news segment that examines how two specialized schools in New York are targeting the dropout rate of African-American students. CNN's Black in America project examines what it means to be black in America today, and education is a huge topic. I am definitely interested in this because of the charity work I do, which is featured in my website http://www.roccobasile.com/. There is a big disparity between black and white students.

The CNN news piece talks about one of the schools -- The Baldwin School -- a new public school with small classes, which has a 94 percent graduation rate. One student drops out every 26 seconds in America. Many of the New York students were failing before coming to Baldwin, and they are now doing better than most students in the New York public schools. age three blacks fall behind.

A Harvard study found that black students fall behind by the time they are three years old, and 3/4 of the one million New York students are a minority, with 70 percent impoverished. Schools like Baldwin are fighting to change this, proving that smaller schools and mentoring is what is doing the trick. They are beating the odds by focusing on a student's individual needs.

This is no surprise to me -- because the charity I work with, Children of the City, which has been proving this since 1981. We have been getting kids off the streets and into the classroom, helping to dramatically improve the students grades who live in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn New York.

In other CNN news segments, the news is grim about dropouts. One students drop out every 26 seconds in America, and for African-Americans the number is in (Source: American Alliance) or one million dropouts a year.

That's why well known and recognized African Americans like David Tyree, started volunteering at Children of the City, winning the football hero the charity's Children’s Champion Award at the charity's annual fundraising Benefit.

For more information on how you can support, go to http://www.childrenofthecity.org/.

--Rocco Basile

School Attendance and Crime

Have you ever wondered if more kids attended school, maybe there would be less crime? I have been researching many aspects of education and it's effect on a better life for our kids today, as you may have seen on my website http://www.roccobasile.com/. Studying the relationship between school attendance and crime goes back more than 200 years. Many people believe that rather than school, better crime control measures include vigorous police work, strict law enforcement, and allowing young people more choices in their education.

Crime and violence have been around for thousands of years, long before the compulsory school attendance statutes. In fact, violence and even references to youth gangs are all recorded in the Bible. But so have education, learning and achievement.

The American view about education and crime was referenced in the January 10, 1931 Literary Digest, in an article entitled "What We Shall Be Like in 1950" (pages 43-44). Predictions in the article state "definite prophecies made by the National Education Association" and adapted from a publication called Tomorrow's Business say, "Crime will be virtually abolished by transferring to the preventive processes of the school and education the problems of conduct which police, courts, and prisons now remedy when it is too late."

A number of experts believe school causes crime more than it prevents crime. This is not necessarily a new belief either. Check out what Henry Fielding said in his day! "Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality." Henry Fielding (1707-1754).

Many people wonder if crime is closely related to drug use. In 2006, there was a study entitled, "The Monitoring the Future Study" which asked high school seniors, "On how many occasions, if any, have you used drugs or alcohol during the last 12 months?"

The answers may be surprising:
Alcohol - 66.5
Marijuana - 31.5
Other opiates - 9.0
Stimulants - 8.1
Sedatives - 6.6
Tranquilizers - 6.6
Cocaine - 5.7
Hallucinogens - 4.9
Inhalants - 4.5
Steroids - 1.8
Heroin - 0.8

The good news is that there are programs across the country that are helping prevent both drug use and crime. My work with Children of the City proves every day how they have helped students do better in school, and therefore I am certain, it has helped the community of Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York prevent crime.

They have a program called "FutureSafe," a collaborative monthly event attended by around 500 kids. It's like a neighborhood block party, with food, games, singing, crafts, and other fun stuff. Attending one of these events is often a first step for children when it comes to engaging in structured afterschool activities where they are picked up from their homes and brought to the
community center. Children of the City provides a preventative element designed to deter children from drug abuse, delinquency, gang involvement, teen pregnancies, as well as teach them on important issues such as health and education.

The non-profit also organizes parent workshops at these events that gives parents the tools and support to help them be a better advocate for their children, to teach them how to combat social challenges. And at Christmas they provide toys and gifts for hundreds of children, most of who have proven over the last 23 years since the organization was founded, are NOT involved in crime.

--Rocco Basile

Getting Kids to Study, and Not do Homework

Most parents will agree that they are tired of nagging their children to do their homework, day after day, pushing, threatening, bribing, and still kids refuse to listen. We see this quite often in my charity work for ChildrenoftheCity. There is hope. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind, and ten excellent tips that can improve study time hassles between kids and parents.

Most children do not like or want to do their homework. Getting a kid to sit and study is very difficult because they simply do not enjoy it. So don’t try to get them to like it, rather focus on getting them to do it. In fact, you cannot make anyone do anything, let alone make a child learn. So stop insisting and instead, you can assist. Concentrate on assisting children by sending positive thoughts and invitations. You need to help a kid’s brain to engage.

My website RoccoBasile.org has many great tips on trends in education, but one of the best programs I have seen is the Children of the City Create Success program -- an after school and summer program that really works and in fact is fast becoming a model sought after by other agencies for their own after school program sites. Here, a high priority is placed on student’s academic success with intense tutoring and daily help with school work.

But for those who don't live in Brooklyn New York where this program is currently being offered, here are some ideas. Most often parents see homework as the parent's problem, so they create ultimatums, scream and shout, threaten, bribe, ground and take away privileges. But most of these strategies simply don’t work. It’s a parent’s job to provide our children with an opportunity to do homework. Our job is to provide structure, to create the system for the child to learn to use.

Here are some tips:
1) Don’t use the word “homework.” Replace it with the word “study.” Make it study time instead of a homework time. Have a study table. This will keep a child from ever saying "I don't have any homework." Study time is about studying, even if there are no homework assignments. It gets kids into the habit of studying to learn.
2) Establish a study routine. Routines are the same time every day, so let your children provide their input for when study time should occur. Once the time is set, stick to it. Kids often protest but thrive on structure. Routines become habits. This is how you will demonstrate that you value education.
3) KISS – Keep it simple stupid. Routines are predictable and simple. For example, you could give kids a five minute warning that study time is near. So if they are playing, it needs to stop. They need to go to their study table, get out their books and supplies, and start studying.
4) Allow you’re children to make choices about schoolwork. They could choose to study before or after dinner, or they could do it immediately after they get home or wake up early in the morning and do it. Invite them to choose the spot, a table in the den or kitchen or in their room.
5) Help without over-helping. Just help if your child asks for help, otherwise do not do their work for them, such as math problems or writing assignments.
6) If your child uses the term, "I can't do it, " you must tell them that they should act as if they can. Tell them to pretend like they know and see what happens. Then leave. If they keep saying they can’t and you decide to offer help, concentrate on asking them questions, rather than telling them. For example, "What do you understand?" "Can you give me an example?""What do you think the answer is?"
7) Behavior makes behaviors – you must teach it to get it. So if disorganization is a problem you must invest the time to help them learn an organizational system. Teach them the system, and then it’s their job to use it. Check to make sure they continue using the system and offer direction if necessary.
8) Some kids need help with time management, so teach them the skills by helping them to learn what it means to prioritize tasks. Teach them to create an agenda each time they sit down to study – and then help them learn to prioritize their agenda.
9) Do not reward with money or external rewards. Reward with encouraging verbal responses. Never pay for grades or suggest going to get ice cream as a reward. This bribery does not encourage children to develop a lifetime love for learning or education.
10) Make positive verbal comments that concentrate on describing the behavior you wish to encourage.

-- Rocco Basile
Source: News for Parents.org

Educational Plan Helps Students Go to Bat for the Future

Education is all about preparing students for a future as a healthy, successful adult. And part of that means that most people need to get a job and work for a living. I have been studying the importance of improving education for our youth through the charity work I do - which you can see at my own educational website http://www.roccobasile.org/. One of my interests is the Joe DiMaggio Committee that raises money to provide a good education for children who come from financially challenged families. This is one charity that I go to bat for...

The Joe DiMaggio Award Gala benefits Xaverian High School, my Alma mater. Its Ryken Program serves as the model for the New York State Regents for all such endeavors. Xaverian has a tradition of serving young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, boys with learning disabilities and students that are in financial need.

Which brings me to this issue -- for many students it is the lack of focus that is causing them problems. In my research, I found something called the Strategic Plan for Students, a tool that has been designed to help them determine their personal mission, goals, and objectives. Used by many business professionals this method can help students stay on track when it comes to meeting their academic goals.

A strategic road map for success is used by many companies, and because things change, this plan is often updated more than once a year. Students can can use the same sort of plan to achieve their goals too - starting in high school, and definitely in college. And long term planning can focus on a student's entire education - from high school preparatory to a Masters, all leading up to being out in the world working in a profession.

The plan usually has five basic points: A mission statement, goals, a strategy, objectives, and finally the evaluation and review, as follows:

1) Mission Statement – You first have to develop an overall mission for one to four years of education, so state what you’d like to accomplish, then write a paragraph to define this goal.

Keep in mind how you are special and how you can tap into your skills, talents and strengths to achieve your goals.

2) Select your Goals - These are general statements identifying a few benchmark goals you’ll need to accomplish in order to meet your mission. Don't forget to recognize any weaknesses and create a defensive strategy for these. For example - set aside two hours every night for homework. or get my favorite teachers to write recommendations.

3) Plan Strategies – You need to come up with specific tactics for reaching each goal, so for example, if one of your goals is spending two hours each night on homework, then a strategy for reaching that goal is to decide what activities you need to give up that could interfere.

4) Create Objectives - These should include measurable goals towards objects, tools, or numbers providing evidence of success. For example - the objective for doing two hours of homework is to improve your grades. The grade "A" when the last grade you got was a "C" is your objective, showing concrete improvement. This will help you stay on track.

5) Evaluate Your Progress – It's not really that easy to develop a good strategic plan, and your plan will most definitely change due to unforeseen circumstances, changes in the world, and in your own life. It will require re-thinking for new goals, objectives and evaluation.

New York's Reading Scores Rise Up

In an article that was published today in the New York Times, written by Jennifer Medina, we learn that reading and math scores for New York students in grades three through eight are showing sharp gains across the state of New York since last year. State reading and math test scores are up, which is fantastic news. The gains are in the five biggest cities in New York.

Across the sate of New York, 81 percent of students tested were at or above grade level in math, up from 73 percent last year, state education officials said. Reading scores, which has proved more difficult to improve, showed that about 69 percent of students met or exceeded state standards for their grade level, up from 63 percent last year. The passing rate is the percentage of students scoring in level 3 or 4.

New York state's education commissioner, Richard P. Mills believes these results are “encouraging and exciting.” He also said they were evidence that the state’s emphasis on giving more money to poorer school districts and focusing on high standards was successful.

This is really no surprise to me, because as you know I have been closely following educational trends and posting them in this blog and also on my website at http://www.roccobasile.com/ -- and we have seen tremendous results among the students at Children of the City who are in some of the the after school and summer programs where high priority is placed on each student’s academic success with intense tutoring and daily personal homework help. We have always seen dramatic increases in student’s reading and math levels, healthy study habits, communications, improved peer relationships, and more. Click here to learn more about this program.

As for the recent results in our state, for example, click here to see Brooklyn's results. These results have been climbing steadily over the last two years, and this year, about 57.6 percent of the students performed at or above grade level in reading, which is up from 50.7 percent in 2006, and 74.3 percent did so in math, up from 57 percent two years ago.

Still, four out of ten students in the city are still not reading at grade level, and although the students had improved substantially on New York’s exams, such gains were not mirrored in the national tests. Everyone agrees that the gap in achievement is between blacks and Latinos compared with whites had narrowed in the last several years.

The state education system is on its way to helping the overall situation, but programs like Children of the City will continue to bridge the gap and help those in need, by reaching out and providing solutions, where basic social services programs fail.

A Green'er Education for Kids

Now that summer is here, and kids are out of school, parents, school administrators and kids all need to think about our environment and keeping it a safe and beautiful place to enjoy summer after summer in the future.

According to a recent article in THE Journal by Chris Riedel entitled, "Green Schools : The Color of Money" school districts have finally discovered the abundant financial gains of going green.

"Something all schools are doing is consuming energy," says Arthur Stellar of the Massachusetts Taunton Public Schools. With energy costs on the rise, "we needed to find a way to better use our resources."

Energy efficiency isn't just about turning off lights and shutting down idle computers -- it is about rethinking the way things are done at every level of an organization. Schools need to take everything in to account, from natural gas and electricity use to HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) systems, grounds maintenance, as well as construction procedures. Schools really need to develop long-term plans for maximizing savings. This is something most schools have no idea about. That's why the Taunton Public Schools contacted a group known as Energy Education, who is in the business of developing energy conservation programs for school districts around the U.S.

Energy Education's goal is to take dollars needlessly spent on energy and convert them to dollars spent on education. The group was retained to help Taunton find ways to decrease its energy consumption in order to increase its bottom line. "

Once example mentioned in the article, is that a typical school vending machine costs up to $450 a year to run, but by using a motion sensor that shuts down the machine's compressor when there is no activity, schools like those in the Taunton district can save up to two-thirds with each of the 40 to 50 vending machines. In fact, over the last two years, the Energy Education program alone helped Taunton save more than $660,000 in energy costs. That figure includes costs on electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, and water. Everything from disabling vending machine lights to managing irrigation has played a role in the savings.

Students everywhere in schools across the country are also beginning to get the message about taking responsibility on their own. Parents teachers, anyone who can help educate them, will make formidable changes in the future. It's why, in fact, that I have a website devoted to educational issues - http://www.roccobasile.com/. One of the most rewarding experiences is working with charities like Children of the City to try to make a difference.

Here's a list of environmentally inspired websites for kids to take a look at this summer:
Environmental Education for Kids - An online magazine for grades four to eight created by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which has short articles and activities about animals, plants and environmental issues.
EPA Student Center - This Environmental Protection Agency site includes information on a wide range of environmental issues. Kids can click on "Fun Activities" to play environmental games.
The Green Squad - An NRDC website that's also available in Spanish shows you how to identify and solve environmental problems. You can can explore a colorful virtual school room by room, and use the mouse to locate potential hazards. Parents and teachers will find the site useful as it offers a wide range of resources on the environment.
The Greens - Izz and Dex are green animated characters that not only have green skin, but they have lots of great ideas about protecting the planet. Visit this site to watch short cartoons about environmental issues
Nature Challenge for Kids - This David Suzuki Foundation website place for all kinds of fun activities starting with ten simple ways you can protect nature, followed by four challenge activities that offer first-hand experience with the natural world.
Planet Slayer - "Greena, the Worrier Princess" is an animated Australian teenager who is going to save the earth. This website provides lots of fun facts and a greenhouse Q & A.
Tunza - This U.N. Environment Programme magazine is especially for young people and it focuses on a specific topic related to sustainable living. Read articles written by and for teens around the world.
Be, Live, Buy Different -- A project of the World Wildlife Fund and the Center for a New American Dream, the site was created to inform young people about how everything we buy and use affects biodiversity. Take the Buy-O-Diversity Quiz!

Why Kids Still Cannot Read

If you want our children to do better in school, then it is important to begin to understand the reasons why they are not. In researching the various trends and strategies in education, everyone, including educators and parents alike, can communicate more effectively about the issues.

One issue I read about is the fact that during the couple of decades new views of reading instruction emerged and morphed in school districts nationwide. The issue now isn't whether phonics or whole language methods are better for beginning readers, but how to blend these reading programs tailored each individual child.

It was known as "the reading wars," waged during the 1980s and '90s. It was around 1987 when apparently, personal journals became one of the latest classroom tactics for teaching kids to read. Defined as whole language, it was an instructional philosophy emphasizing that children focus on meaning, which contrasts with phonics based methods of teaching reading and writing - with an emphasis in instruction for reading and spelling.

At that time, many people believe that children were poor readers because the old skills-based approach that emphasized phonics. The fact that memorization ended up turning reading into a chore, thus alienating them from reading at all.

But ultimately whole language proved to be a disaster when applied to real kids and teachers. Eight years after whole language first appeared in California grade schools, by the mid-90s, fourth-grader reading scores had plummeted to near the bottom nationally, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP).

It was in 1997 when Congress formed the National Reading Panel to evaluate the research on teaching practices to determine what really works. Thereafter, the federal No Child Left Behind Act required that school districts use scientifically proven instructional methods as they strive to make all children proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Today there is a trend towards balanced or comprehensive literacy. Most educators agree that there is no one program that fits all children for learning to read.

This makes sense insofar as what I have experienced with our Children of the City programs such as Create Success, an after school and summer program with a high priority on individual students and their academic success with intense tutoring to improve each child's reading and math levels. I think that if more communities in the United States had programs like this, our kids would learn to read much faster.

One student that has been helped tremendously through this program, is a second grade boy named Weixum. His favorite topic is about dinosaurs, and he now reads books that are way above the standard reading level of a second grader, and he does fine interpreting the text. Why? He sounds out the harder Latin based words. You would never guess that Weixum does not speak English at home. His teacher initially referred him to Children of the City’s Create Success for help with his homework and reading.

To learn more about my involvement in this and other charities, please go to my charity website known as http://www.roccobasile.org/ where I continue to list facts, trends and success stories.