Employment Needs of Foster Youth in Illinois: Findings from the Midwest Study

Far too many of the young people who age out of foster care in Illinois fare poorly in the labor market during their transition to adulthood. Since the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program was created in 1999, it has been providing states with funds to help foster youth making the transition to adulthood achieve self-sufficiency. A major purpose of the program is to ensure that youth who remain in foster care until age 18 or older "receive the education, training and services necessary to obtain employment." Unfortunately, the limited research that has been done on young adults who "aged out" of foster care has found that their labor market outcomes are generally quite poor. This study describes what Illinois young people told us about their current and prior participation in the labor force, including work-related training or services they received. Throughout the report, we make comparisons between the young people who were under the care and supervision of the juvenile court in Cook County (hereafter referred to as the Cook County sample), and the young people who were under the care and supervision of juvenile courts in other counties (hereafter referred to as the Other Counties sample). Although most had some work experience, they had difficulty staying employed. Moreover, despite the fact that the percentage of young people who were working was greater than the percentage who were not, most of those who were employed were not working at a job that paid a living wage. The Foster Care Independence Act specifically mentions employment-related services and supports as being among the types of assistance that states should use their Chafee funding to provide. At baseline, when these young people were age 17 or 18, only 63 percent reported having received at least one service or support to help prepare them for employment. Unfortunately, the percentage of young people who reported receiving services or supports to prepare them for employment fell over time

Review of Policies and Programs Supporting Youth Transitioning Out of Foster Care

This comprehensive review of policies and programs designed to support youth transitioning out of foster care spans all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As part of the review, Chapin Hall administered a web-based survey of state independent living services coordinators to collect up-to-date information about their state's policies and programs. The survey questions cover a number of domains including: conditions under which foster youth can remain in care after turning 18; provision of independent living and transition services; opportunities for youth to reenter care; and use of state dollars to supplement federal funds from the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. A number of online resources including state independent living program websites, the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Youth Development's State-by-State Fact Pages, and the Transition from Foster Care to Adulthood Wiki were also reviewed. The study was commissioned by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP)

Senior Recital: Amy Hebel, soprano

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Miss Hebel studies voice with Jana Young.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1259/thumbnail.jp

Still Too Fat to Fight

The problem of junk food sold in schools is not just a national health issue. It is a national security issue.Over the past 40 years, obesity rates have more than tripled for children and teens. About 1 in 4 young American adults is now too overweight to join the military. Being overweight or obese is the number one medical reason why young adults cannot enlist. When weight problems are combined with poor education, criminal backgrounds, and other disqualifiers, an estimated 75 percent of young Americans could not serve in the military if they wanted to

How Do Teachers Use Comics to Promote Engagement, Equity, and Diversity in Science Classrooms?

Equitable learning opportunities are critical to the goals of science education. However, major curriculum standards are vague on how to achieve equity goals, and educators must often develop their own resources and strategies to achieve equity goals. This study examines how educators used a comic book series designed to interest youth in virology as a way to make science more broadly appealing to their diverse students. We begin with the notion of Pedagogical Design Capacity, which describes a dynamic relationship between teachers and their tools and the ability for teachers to perceive and leverage affordances of artifacts as tools in their curriculum design. In a qualitative analysis of 18 interviews with educators, survey responses, instructional artifacts, and classroom observations, we describe the potential that educators saw in the comics and the strategies they used to take advantage of that potential to promote equitable science teaching. Notably, we observed how the comics enabled educators to incorporate multiple literacies and disciplinary lenses into their lessons, thereby expanding traditional views of science literacy. We documented the range of techniques by which they used comics and fictional narratives to support specific scientific practices, such as modeling. We also observed challenges that participants encountered in using comics, which included overcoming their own and their students’ attitudes and beliefs regarding the role of informal reading materials in science education

Discovery Orientation, Cognitive Schemas, and Disparities in Science Identity in Early Adolescence

Why are some youth more likely to think of themselves as a science kind of person than others? In this paper, we use a cognitive social-theoretical framework to assess disparities in science identity among middle school–age youth in the United States. We investigate how discovery orientation is associated with science interest, perceived ability, importance, and reflected appraisal, and how they are related to whether youth see themselves, and perceive that others see them, as a science kind of person. We surveyed 441 students in an ethnically diverse, low-income middle school. Gender and race/ethnicity are associated with science identity but not with discovery orientation. Structural equation model results show that the positive association between discovery orientation and science identity is mediated by science interest, importance, and reflected appraisal. These findings advance understanding of how science attitudes and recognition may contribute to the underrepresentation of girls and/or minorities in science

Open Access, Public Access: Policies, Implementation, Developments, and the Future of U.S.-Published Research

In February, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memo directing each US funding agency with over $100 million in annual research expenditure to develop a plan to support public access to the results of research funded by the federal government, including results published in scholarly journals. How has the OSTP memo impacted scholarly publishing so far? What exactly has been achieved so far, and what will it mean for the future of U.S.-published research? This interactive session features a panel of speakers who will be discussing the recent developments and emerging issues from the librarian, funder, researcher, and publisher perspectives. Among the questions to be addressed are: What is the US position on implementing open access? What steps have been taken to implement OSTP objectives? What role do institutional repositories play in open access? How will funder’s open access policies impact universities and researchers? What role are publishers playing in the implementation of open access? How will open access content be linked and measured? Will it affect usage

Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth

The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (Midwest Study) is a prospective study that has been following a sample of young people from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois as they transition out of foster care into adulthood. It is a collaborative effort involving Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago; Partners for Our Children at the University of Washington, Seattle; the University of Wisconsin Survey Center; and the public child welfare agencies in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.The Midwest Study provides a comprehensive picture of how foster youth are faring during this transition since the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 became law. Foster youth in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois were eligible to participate in the study if they had entered care before their 16th birthday, were still in care at age 17, and had been removed from home for reasons other than delinquency. Baseline survey data were collected from 732 study participants when they were 17 or 18 years old. Study participants were re-interviewed at ages 19 (n = 603), 21 (n = 591), and 23 or 24 (n = 602). A fifth wave of survey data will be collected when study participants are 25 or 26 years old.Because many of the questions Midwest Study participants were also asked as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, it is possible to make comparisons between this sample of former foster youth and a nationally representative sample of young people in the general population. These comparisons indicate that young people who have aged out of foster care are faring poorly as a group relative to their peers across a variety of domains.The Midwest Study also presents a unique opportunity to compare the outcomes of young people from one state (i.e., Illinois) that allows foster youth to remain in care until their 21st birthday to the outcomes of young people from two other states (i.e., Iowa and Wisconsin) in which foster youth generally age out when they are 18 years old. The data suggest that extending foster care until age 21 may be associated with better outcomes, at least in some domains

White mountain stewardship program monitoring report

In December 2011, the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University (ERI) contracted with the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and the White Mountain Stewardship Project (WMS) Monitoring Board to address four of the prioritized ecological monitoring questions developed for the Project. The questions were: 1) Is there a difference between pre-treatment crown fire potential and post-treatment desired fire behavior across selected analysis areas? 2) What proportion of treated acres exhibited a change in Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) from 2004-2014? 3) Are patch sizes of denser (i.e., untreated or lightly treated) areas connected? What is the range of areas and sizes of these patches? 4) Are exotics/invasive species present at landings and burn piles