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Great news! Sports4Kids Founder and America Forward Advisory Board member Jill Vialet has partnered with the former Mayor of San Jose, Susan Hammer on an op-ed about Sports4Kids and America Forward. The op-ed ran today in the San Jose Mercury News. They highlight the innovative work of Sports4Kids and call on the presidential candidates to look to social entrepreneurs when developing their policy agendas. Read the full article.

Sports4Kids is a member of the America Forward Advisory Board.

We are spending spring break in Arizona to get away from the damp cool of March in Washington, DC, not to mention our weariness of increasingly unhopeful presidential campaigns. Arizona offers not only picture-perfect 75-degree days, but also Major League baseball played in small stadiums where you can score autographs and see the expressions on the players’ faces.

This past week, The New York Times reported that many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

Highly regarded New York Times editorial writer, David Brooks, devoted his column today to America Forward and the great work of social entrepreneurs. In praising social entrepreneurs, he says, “Earlier generations of benefactors thought that social service should be like sainthood or socialism. But this one thinks it should be like venture capital. These thoroughly modern do-gooders dress like venture capitalists. They talk like them. They even think like them. That means that aside from the occasional passion for heirloom vegetables, they are not particularly crunchy. They don’t wear ponytails, tattoos or Birkenstocks. They don’t devote any energy to countercultural personal style, unless you consider excessive niceness a subversive fashion statement. Next to them, Barack Obama looks like Abbie Hoffman.” He calls social entrepreneurs “some of the smartest and most creative people in the country” and highlights J.B. Schramm and Gerald Chertavian as examples. He ends his column by saying, “Even if we don’t know how to reduce poverty, it’s probably worth investing in these people and letting them figure it out.” For the full column, click here.

This article ran in the Palo Alto Daily News on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.

All presidential candidates believe that the real problem in our educational system, at both the national and the local level, is a lack of funding.

More targeted spending measures also have a mixed record. Modernizing classrooms and increasing access to technology are often cited as one of the reasons for increasing the budget for our schools. After several students from Edison-McNair Academy in East Palo Alto vandalized multiple classrooms and caused thousands of dollars worth of damage, it is not clear that merely increasing the presence of technology in schools will help these students invest in their education.

Last month, President Bush released his budget for fiscal year 2009, in which he proposed eliminating $3.3 billion by cutting 47 education programs; a net loss of $1.5 billion in programs affecting children under the age of 18. This included $300 million in cuts to after-school programs that provide academic opportunities and other services to children, particularly those students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools. A cut of this magnitude would result in the removal of 300,000 kids from after-school programs this year. These programs deliver a positive community influence into the lives of impressionable youth, helping them stay on course to achieve a diploma and a better life. Cuts of such substantial magnitude would be a serious setback for kids.

The nonprofit sector is facing what experts call an “unprecedented crisis in leadership,” with organizations across the country struggling to recruit and retain talented staff. In a major study entitled “Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out” being released today, researchers report what many of us already know – even as baby boomers retire, nonprofit groups stand to lose ambitious young employees who feel underpaid, overwhelmed by long hours and demanding responsibilities, and frustrated by a lack of career progression. For example, 69% of respondents feel underpaid, with only slightly less saying they have serious financial concerns about committing to a nonprofit career. And one in three respondents aspires to become the head of a nonprofit organization, but only 4% said they were being groomed for leadership positions. The study also found that many of the nonprofit organizations are a vibrant force in the economy, and help address key social problems, including homelessness, hunger, violence and illiteracy, in the early stages “which saves the government money down the road.” If the sector continues to struggle with retaining talent, all of this is at risk. The report, which uses data from a survey last fall of about 6,000 nonprofit employees, is the largest national study to date of emerging nonprofit leaders. It was conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, and Idealist.org. For more on this story click here.