U of Ideas of General Interest -- September 1999
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
(217) 333-2894; [email protected]
EMPLOYMENT Poverty, schools among barriers to job success for minority youth
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Even in good economic times, many of the nation's minority youth are finding significant obstacles in their transition from school to early job success, a University of Illinois professor says in a study to be published this month.
In schools, in workplaces, in society and in themselves, many of these youth are dealing with barriers that are keeping them from becoming the productive members of the workforce that the nation increasingly will need, says Rose Mary Wentling, a professor of human resource education.
"I think it's very important for society, and workplace and school personnel, to understand that these barriers do exist and are hindering the successful progress of minority youth, who really are our future," Wentling said. Projections by the U.S. Bureau of the Census show minorities growing as a percentage of the labor force over the next several decades, she noted.
Wentling and co-author Consuelo Luisa Waight, a research associate, sought out a small but very knowledgeable group for their study: 21 directors of school-to-work partnership programs in 16 states.
The 21 programs were the recipients of 1995 grants from the U.S. Department of Education, National School-to-Work Office, which recognized them as exemplary in their efforts to support minority youth in high-poverty areas. The programs, 12 in urban areas and nine rural, served more than 50,000 students total. The directors of the programs averaged 5.2 years in their current positions.
The researchers conducted in-depth, open-ended telephone interviews in 1998 with each of the program directors, giving each a chance to discuss in detail the barriers they thought youth faced.
Highest on the list of barriers cited was poverty, by 18 of the 21 directors, or 86 percent. They recognized that "when you live in poverty, then you're disadvantaged in a lot of ways," Wentling said.
But school-related barriers also were high on the directors' list, with 81 percent citing what they saw as resistance to change by school personnel, she said. Schools were not open to new teaching methods that might accommodate diverse learning styles, these directors said. Many also cited a lack of understanding in schools concerning different cultures (76 percent) and the lack of an integrated or relevant curriculum that might help prepare students for the workplace (71 percent).
The directors perceived that "many times teachers thought that if you [a student] weren't going to college, you were a failure, and that showed in the way they prepared the students. They didn't provide them with the relevant, current curriculum that they needed to succeed," Wentling said.
A lack of cultural understanding also was cited as a barrier in the workplace, by 67 percent of the directors, Wentling said. Discrimination in the workplace was cited by 57 percent. Among the barriers youth faced as individuals, directors cited a lack of knowledge and skills needed to succeed (71 percent) and a lack of English language proficiency (67 percent).
The study will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Vocational Education Research.
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