Article/Column

June 29, 2009

AFRO-American

Leading the way to the graduation stage

by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings

May and June have always been bitter-sweet months for me - a time when the future of our children is most clearly revealed.  It is during these Graduation Months that some of our students will advance in their education, while others drop out of school.

There are few dramas in life more poignant than this parting of the ways. When we look into the eyes of those who succeed and those who fail, we can read their destinies there, just as clearly as if they were written in stone.

This is one reason why helping our young people to do well in school has always been such an important priority for me.  In a very real sense, the crossroads of success and failure on Graduation Day defines two fundamentally different directions that our nation could take in the years ahead.

One road - a bitter path toward a future America in decline - is portended by the appalling dropout rates in our urban schools. Last year, for example, the America's Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization led by Colin and Alma Powell, ranked Baltimore City's dropout rate fourth-worst among America's big cities.

"When more than one million students nationally drop out of high school each year," General Powell declared, "it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe."

What reasonable person could disagree?

I was heartened, therefore, when Maryland's State Department of Education joined with America's Promise to co-sponsor a statewide Dropout Prevention Leadership Summit at Randallstown High School this week. The insights from that conference, together with the targeted initiatives that Maryland's schools will be undertaking to better address our students' needs, offer a better road to the future for our community.

I also was pleased to note that an organization in which I have participated for more than a decade  has been utilizing many of the important interventions that parents and educators can undertake to encourage their own young people along the road to success.

Around 1996, a friend of mine, Stewart Greenebaum, reached out to me and a number of other concerned people – and we created a voluntary, non-profit initiative that Stewart and the other sponsors were kind enough to name the "Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel."

Through its two complementary components (a four-week trip to Israel and the two-year Jerold C. Hoffberger Leadership Enhancement Program), one dozen high school students from Maryland's 7th Congressional District are selected each year to receive intensive leadership training in addition to their regular high school work.

Our broad goal is to promote inter-ethnic understanding, as well as racial and religious tolerance.  The process toward achieving that goal includes hands-on, personalized engagement designed to help the ECYP scholars become the core of our region's future leaders.

At the core of that training is the opportunity to give back.  This year's contingent, for example, has mentored younger children at Baltimore's Recreation Centers twice a month, volunteered with the Maryland Food Bank, and hosted their own Teen Leadership Summit for 600 area students at Baltimore's Hyatt Regency Hotel.

In my view, all of the program's elements are important, but the most important of all may be the direct involvement of ECYP Board Members, staff and volunteers in our students' lives.  That personal interaction - and the mutual respect that results - has fostered a remarkable record of achievement.

Since our program began, every single ECYP participant has graduated from high school and gone on to college or directly to a good job.

Although all of our students are intelligent, their lives have not been free from distractions or danger, ECYP's Director, Ms. Keita Wells has observed.  Without our program, outside influences could have brought them to harm.

Instead, all of this year's graduating class will be attending college next fall.

As I mentioned, for me, there is a sweet, as well as a bitter, side to Graduation Day each year. There also is a lesson for our community and our nation as a whole.

Encouraging success among our young people does not have to be a complicated equation.  Direct, personal guidance from adults, respect, an opportunity to grow and the chance to contribute are  powerful  forces in a young person's road toward success.

"When adults work with youth," Ms. Wells has wisely observed, "we must be willing to listen to them, and then to do all that we can to help them meet their needs."

I am very, very proud of the youth leadership program that Ms. Wells and Ms. Phyllis Gwynn help us provide for these outstanding young people - just as proud as I am of the young people themselves.  I look forward to the day when every young person in our region has the same opportunity.

Helping young people become leaders, rather than dropouts, is not an easy challenge, but it is far from an impossible task.  Ms. Keita Wells  (410-542-4850) has generously offered to give her advice to any person or group interested in creating a student leadership program of their own.

Our future is being revealed in the lives of the young people of our community.  We have the power to make that future one of confidence, competence and hope.

- The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.