No Child Left Behind

 

 

Reauthorizing No Child Left Behind: Linking Mentoring and Education

 

To build support in Congress for recommendations that would strengthen the link between mentoring and education through the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
 

April 23, 2009: Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have made statements expressing the urgent need to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the 111th Congress. Currently, Mentoring Program’s ED grants are authorized under the Safe and Drug Free Schools National Program in No Child Left Behind.

Earlier this year, the House Mentoring Caucus co-chairs (Davis, Rogers, McCollum) again came together to reintroduce the Mentoring America’s Children Act (H.R. 913). This legislation, though introduced as a standalone bill, is expected to rolled into the NCLB reauthorization.

The Mentoring America’s Children Act builds upon the current program by providing training and technical assistance to grantees, tracking youth outcomes, strengthening research on the effects of mentoring, and improving the sustainability of grant recipients. Particularly important for current grantees, the bill would ensure that grantees in their final year of funding would be able to compete for future grants to expand their services.

A Senate bill is expected to be introduced this spring by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT).
While the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate and the Ed and Labor Committee in the House face packed agendas dealing with early childhood education, healthcare reform and labor laws, it is important that we keep elementary and secondary education at the forefront of their minds.

With your help, we can get this legislation passed and signed into law. Encouraging more Representatives to co-sponsor this legislation will help make the case for moving it forward. A list of current cosponsors for H.R. 913 can be found athttp://Thomas.loc.gov. Please ask your Members to co-sponsor by clicking here.

March 12, 2009: In the last Congress, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) fell prey to too many differing opinions as well as to a focus on other priorities such as the Higher Education Act reauthorization for the House Education and Labor and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees. As a result, the Mentoring America’s Children Act did not make it out of Committee in either chamber, although it had been embraced by both sides and included in NCLB drafts. With your help, hopefully we can get this legislation passed and signed into law, which would strengthen our Mentoring Programs grants in the Department of Education and hopefully bolster it from further recommendations of funding cuts.

Earlier this year, the House Mentoring Caucus co-chairs (Davis, Rogers, McCollum) again came together to reintroduce this legislation (H.R. 913); a Senate bill is expected to be introduced shortly. The legislation builds upon the current program by providing training and technical assistance to grantees, tracking youth outcomes, strengthening research on the effects of mentoring, and improving the sustainability of grant recipients. Particularly important for current grantees, the bill would ensure that grantees in their final year of funding would be able to compete for future grants to expand their services.

Encouraging more Members of Congress to co-sponsor this legislation will help make the case for moving it forward. A list of current cosponsors for H.R. 913 can be found athttp://Thomas.loc.gov. Please ask your Members to co-sponsor by clicking here.

May 12, 2008: As summer approaches and election time draws near, Congress will likely head home early this fall. The reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act is currently tied up in Congress and likely faces too many barriers to actually become law this year.

However, with your help, we can get the Mentoring America’s Children Act (H.R. 2611/S. 1812) passed and signed into law. This stand-alone bill is focused solely on the U.S. Department of Education’s Mentoring Programs grants, created through No Child Left Behind.

The legislation builds upon the current program by providing training and technical assistance to grantees, tracking youth outcomes, strengthening research on the effects of mentoring, and improving the sustainability of grant recipients. Particularly important for current grantees, the bill would ensure that grantees in their final year of funding would be able to compete for future grants to expand their service.

Encouraging more Members of Congress to co-sponsor these bills will help make the case for moving them forward. To contact your Representative, click here:http://capwiz.com/mentor/issues/alert/?alertid=11362571. For your Senators, click here: http://capwiz.com/mentor/issues/alert/?alertid=10069291.
 

The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in January 2002. It reauthorized the primary federal programs that govern elementary and secondary education. NCLB is now due for reauthorization in this session of Congress. During a reauthorization, Congress looks at existing programs to assess their effectiveness, and may make changes or terminate programs. They may also add new programs.

The US Department of Education’s “Mentoring Programs” grants were originally created through NCLB. This program provides competitive funding directly to community organizations and schools to establish or expand mentoring opportunities. Since 2002, over $200 million has been granted out, which has contributed to a 20% growth in the number of young people being mentored. However, the Department of Education has proposed eliminating this program.

Mentoring is a critical element in a child’s social, cognitive and emotional development. Plus, it plays a key role in improving the learning environment for a young person: mentored youth have better attendance and are more connected to their school, schoolwork and teachers. Young people with mentors perform better in school and are more likely to graduate and go on to higher education. For these reasons, we believe mentoring should continue to be a part of the reauthorization of NCLB.

MENTOR, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the National Collaboration for Youth worked together to develop recommendations that would strengthen the availability and quality of ED’s Mentoring Programs grants and tie it more closely with the important role mentors can play in improving a young person’s academic standing and learning environment. In addition, the recommendations would broaden the reach of mentoring to include a number of specific populations of young people who could benefit from a mentor’s involvement.

These recommendations have been incorporated into a House bill (H.R. 2611), introduced by Democrat Reps. Susan Davis (CA) and Betty McCollum (MN) and Republican Rep. Mike Rogers (MI), co-chairs of the House Mentoring Caucus. In the Senate, Democratic Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY), John Kerry (MA), Daniel Akaka (HI), and Evan Bayh (IN) introduced Senate counterpart bill S. 1812. We are asking for help from mentoring advocates to build support for both versions of the bill, called the Mentoring America’s Children Act of 2007.

We will be working with members of the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to ensure that the bill’s provisions are included in the NCLB reauthorization. The bills would: 

• Strengthen the management of ED’s Mentoring Programs grants by building in stronger and more regular data collection and tracking of mentoring practices and youth outcomes and requiring that ED providing training and technical assistance.
• Specifically address a problem with this year's grant competition in which organizations with expiring Mentoring Programs grants were not able to compete for new funding due to a very short overlap in the two grant periods. The bill would specifically allow entities that perform well in their first grant to apply for a second grant to further expand the number of children beng mentoring, and would allow the two grant periods to overlap by up to three months.
• Improve the sustainability of Mentoring Programs grant recipients by requiring a sustainability plan as part of the grant application and building in a required match for federal funds (ranging from 10 percent in year 1 to 50 percent in year 3 of a grant).
• Add an authorization level for Mentoring Programs at $100 million, further institutionalizing the program within the Department of Education.
• Create a new $10 million funding stream to support high-quality research on school-based mentoring, which could only be funded when the grant program received above $50 million in appropriations.
• Include mentoring as an allowable use of funds for programs that target special populations, including native Alaskan and Hawaiian children, Indian children, migrant youth, and delinquent and neglected populations.
• Add mentoring as an effective drug and violence prevention program within the Department of Education’s Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant program.