PhilanTopic

A New Way to Sustain the Campaign: Foundation Center and Open Society Foundations Launch BMAFunders.org

(Shawn Dove is the campaign manager for the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement. The original version of this post appears on Philanthropy New York's Smart Assets blog.)

This June will mark the five-year anniversary of the creation of the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which was launched in 2008 to address the economic, political, social, and educational exclusion of black men and boys from American society. When I consider the upcoming five-year milestone I can't help but think that the campaign was originally slated to be just a three-year "initiative." But thanks to the determined and focused work of our partners in philanthropy, government, the not-for-profit community, and the private sector, our board extended the campaign's term limit and provided CBMA staff with much-needed breathing room, increased funding, and an opportunity to exhibit bold leadership on behalf of the emerging field of black male achievement.

During the past five years, the work of the campaign, along with the efforts of an evolving group of philanthropic partners and leaders from the policy, advocacy, practitioner, and research sectors, has expanded on the earlier work of funders like the Ford Foundation and the 21st Century Foundation to tackle a seemingly intractable problem. It has been fueled by a broad and diverse sector of organizations that combine a direct services and policy change approach. From the time we launched the CBMA, my daily mantra has been "sustain the campaign" in the belief that the philanthropic sector could not remedy a generational problem facing black men and boys with a short-term grant-cycle mindset.

In partnership with the Foundation Center, we have launched the Web portal BMAfunders.org to facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America. It could very well be the pivotal investment that enables this work to gain the sustained philanthropic commitment necessary to overcome the structural and systemic barriers that prevent too many black men and boys from realizing their full potential.

The portal will be the go-to source for data and information related to black male achievement, serving as a resource not only to funders, including affinity groups like the Association of Black Foundation Executives and Grantmakers For Children Youth & Families, but also to nonprofits, policy makers, business leaders, and anyone else interested in the field.

Features of the portal include an interactive mapping tool with funding data, a timeline of philanthropic milestones in the field, a toolkit for assessing project outcomes, a comprehensive collection of research reports, descriptive case studies of work on the ground, and multimedia content. Currently on the site are highlights of the recent Black Male Re-Imagined II, a collaborative effort by the Ford, Knight, and Open Society Foundations to examine strategies for shifting perceptions of black men and boys in America.

BMAfunders.org builds on the groundbreaking 2012 report Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys, which examines foundation funding flows in support of black men and boys and highlights innovative philanthropic initiatives. The report highlights the deepening funding commitments of foundations such as Knight, Skillman, Robert Wood Johnson, Mitchell Kapor, and the California and Heinz Endowments in the field of black male achievement. The portal also complements the field-building efforts of the Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, which seeks to strengthen the infrastructure and sustainability of the growing field of black male achievement.

The portal magnifies the words of Open Society Foundations founder George Soros, who in the afterword of Where Do We Go From Here? states how he hopes the report (and the ensuing launch of BMAFunders.org) "will motivate other philanthropists and foundations to invest in efforts to improve achievement by African American boys and men....[T]his is a generational problem. It demands a long-term commitment."

-- Shawn Dove

5 Questions for…Cheryl Dorsey, President, Echoing Green

Social innovation and entrepreneurship are two of the most powerful tools available to those committed to black male achievement. So argued Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, a global social venture fund based in New York City, at the Innovation and Impact Forum hosted by the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement last October. In part, added Dorsey, that's because they have captured the attention of, and increasingly are being driven by, a millennial generation interested in a networked, technology-enabled model of social change.

In 2012, Echoing Green partnered with OSF to launch the Black Male Achievement Fellowships and announced the first cohort of BMA fellows in June. Earlier this month, the organization announced the 2013 semi-finalists for both the Echoing Green and Black Male Achievement Fellowships.

Recently, PND spoke with Dorsey about the BMA fellowship program, her own experience as a social entrepreneur, and the role of public policy in the field of black male achievement.

Philanthropy News Digest: What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address?

Cheryl Dorsey: I think the president's address presented a call for effective collaboration to solve crucial problems in our country. Many people make it their life's work to try to solve tough problems, from engineers working to create microchips that are smaller but carry more information to community bankers seeking to provide greater access to capital and teachers seeking to help more children in the classroom move ahead. President Obama's State of the Union address was a call for those who are on this path of enterprise, service, and innovation to work together.

These are the principles at the heart of the work of our fellows, who strive every day to solve some of the challenges and problems the president laid out in his speech. When the president talks about reducing the cost of solar energy, I think about 2012 Black Male Achievement Fellow Donnel Baird, who is doing important work to make clean energy accessible to all communities, especially low-income communities. When the president talks about expanding service opportunities for young people, I think about Echoing Green alums like Wendy Kopp, Alan Khazei, and Michael Brown, visionary leaders of the national service movement. The State of the Union address made me think about how Echoing Green can continue to support our fellows who are out there on the front lines in communities across the country and around the world.

PND: Last June, you announced the first cohort of Black Male Achievement Fellows. What were your hopes for the initiative? And have you been pleased with the response?

CD: Echoing Green was incredibly honored when we were approached by Shawn Dove and Rashid Shabazz, who head up the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement. After many in-depth conversations, it became increasingly clear that our twenty-five-year record of accomplishment in terms of identifying and supporting top early-stage, next-generation social innovators was a terrific complement to the campaign's comprehensive approach to the issue.

While you might say the campaign tapped Echoing Green because of our "process expertise" in social innovation and social angel investing, we were also very much aligned intellectually and emotionally with the goals of the campaign. Quite a few of our global network of five-hundred-plus social entrepreneurs over the years had worked on issues related to black male achievement, so the opportunity to bring into the social innovation pipeline a new generation of talent committed to these issues was appealing.

Needless to say, we are simply thrilled with the early response to the program. In the first two fellowship application cycles alone, we received nine hundred and fifty applications on average from across the country. For a newly minted fellowship program without any accumulated brand equity, that's quite something. And we think the response underscores the important and useful synergy between two social movements -- the deep intensity and focus of those working in the area of black male achievement married with the growing interest in and energy of the global youth social entrepreneurship movement.

PND: Did your own experience as a recipient of an Echoing Green Fellowship shape your vision for the BMA Fellowship initiative?

CD: Very much so! Receiving an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help start the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit focused on the issue of black infant mortality in inner-city Boston, quite simply changed my life. The investment by Echoing Green in the Campaign for Black Male Achievement is not simply about funding; it's much more about opening up fledging social entrepreneurs to a network of peers, experienced mentors, and advisors who are deeply committed to the professional and personal growth of social change agents. Echoing Green recognized that we could bring our highly engaged network to bear on the Black Male Achievement Fellowship and leverage all the forms of capital -- social, financial, et cetera -- residing in the network for those committed to issues of black male achievement.

My colleague Decker Ngongang, who runs the Black Male Achievement Fellowship program for Echoing Green, recently wrote a blog post highlighting a few of our BMA Fellows. I think the post does a nice job of illustrating the kind of knowledge and wisdom -- past and present -- that lives within our network and social innovation ecosystem.

PND: While the Echoing Green Fellowships support social entrepreneurs from around the world, the BMA Fellowships are specifically focused on the male African-American population in the U.S. Is this a strategic shift for Echoing Green?

CD: For us, the Black Male Achievement Fellowship is not so much a strategic shift but rather a unique opportunity to focus our strategy where we see an opportunity to have increased impact. One of Echoing Green's mantras has always been that you must strive to scale your impact rather than your growth. We saw in the partnership with Open Society Foundations an opportunity to leverage the resources, brand, and breadth of that institution to smartly scale our own impact.

PND: In addition to being a social entrepreneur, you served as a White House Fellow and in the Labor Department during Bill Clinton's second term and on the transition team for the Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Policy Working Group in the first Obama administration. You also continue to serve as vice chair for the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. What do you think the role of public policy should be in the field of black male achievement?

CD: Good public policy can set the stage for new programs that otherwise might not be incubated. Structural barriers to black male achievement in America are not new, but we have struggled to catalyze innovative solutions that could be game changers for black men and youth. A policy environment that brings attention to and keeps the focus on black male achievement, incentivizes the deployment of financial resources and top talent around the issue, and privileges collaboration and the replication of proven concepts is key to moving the needle. I'm excited, for example, about the work that New York City, which recently launched the Young Men's Initiative, is doing to model this kind of public policy behavior. For those who don't know, the city plans to invest more than $43 million a year over the next three years in both public and private funds to find new ways to connect with, and help, marginalized black and Latino young men. And it plans to do it through a comprehensive approach that involves education, health, employment training, and justice systems. If successful and widely replicated, it's a public-private model that has the potential to effect positive change in the lives of men and boys of color all across the country.

-- Kyoko Uchida

The Case for Using a Social Justice Lens in Grantmaking

(Over the course of his career, Michael Seltzer, a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic, has served as a program officer at the Ford Foundation, as president of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, and as founding executive director of Funders Concerned About AIDS. A version of this post appears in the summer issue of GMNsight, a new journal written for and by members of the Grants Managers Network.)

Social Justice -- A New Phenomenon?

No. As early as 1972, in an internal memo to John H. Knowles, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of his officers suggested that the foundation use the phrase "Towards Social Justice in an Interdependent World" as a 'unifying theme' to describe its work.

Also, in the 1970s, select small- to medium-sized public, family, independent, and public foundations embraced the practice, language, and ethos of social justice, as evidenced by their early support of the U.S. civil rights movement. Their ranks included such private foundations as Norman, Field, Stern, New World, Taconic, and the John Hay Whitney. Subsequently, the public foundations that comprised the Funding Exchange Network -- the Tides Foundation; women's and LGBT funders such as the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; and the Black United Fund movement -- joined their ranks. David Hunter, Stern's long-term executive director, served as a mentor and guide for many of these funds. The word justice also appeared in the literature of religiously affiliated grantmakers such as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Jewish Fund for Justice. This was not surprising, since the precepts of justice are evident in the world's major religions and sacred texts.

Subsequently, this diverse set of donors, in terms of their structure and sources of revenues, began to meet annually under the aegis of the National Network of Change-Oriented Foundations. In 1981, the network's successor organization, the National Network of Foundations (NNG), asserted the following two purposes in its mandate:

To be a voice for issues of social and economic justice within the philanthropic community and externally in sectors of the broad community including government, business, labor and education, and to expand the resource base (human and financial) for social and economic justice activities.

As one indicator of the size of this community of funders, also in 1981 the National Network of Grantmakers and the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) in their publication, The Grantseekers Guide, A Directory for Social and Economic Justice Projects, listed more than one hundred foundations and corporate-giving programs.

In the following decades, other foundations used many terms akin to social change or social justice in their annual reports. A sample lexicon of phrases would include: advocacy, equity, the poor speaking and acting for themselves, human rights, civil rights, empowerment, movement building, progressive change, social action, promotion of democracy, accountability and transparency, systemic change, and public policy.

Starting in the 1990s, large foundations began to use the term social justice. When the Ford Foundation reorganized its program divisions in 1996, it renamed one of them Peace and Social Justice, for example. (That Ford Foundation program division is now called Democracy, Rights, and Justice.)

In 2007, the Atlantic Philanthropies adopted a social justice framework for its grantmaking in all of its program areas and countries where it operated. The Open Society Foundations (previously known as the Open Society Institute) also asserted a mission to "advance human rights and justice around the world."

What Then Is Social Justice Philanthropy?

Social justice is not just a slogan on a banner or bumper sticker or button. Its definition needs to be backed with substance to be useful as a grantmaker tool. In the late 1990s, the Foundation Center and Independent Sector sought to define social justice philanthropy. What these two key philanthropic sector organizations adopted, is worth quoting. Social justice philanthropy is

the granting of philanthropic contributions to nonprofit organizations based in the United States and other countries that work for structural change in order to increase the opportunity of those who are the least well off politically, economically and socially.

The report went on to describe the characteristics of a social justice framework, which makes lasting change more likely:

• a focus on root causes of inequity rather than symptoms
• a striving for lasting systemic and institutional change
• the use of a combination of tactics such as policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, litigation, and communications that together are more likely to yield enduring results
• the strengthening and empowering of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations to advocate on their own behalf

Subsequently, the Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace convened by the Ford Foundation put forward the following definition of social justice:

Effective social justice philanthropy aims to end the injustices suffered by one group of people at the hands of another. These injustices often result in social, economic, and/or political inequalities. But rather than focus on the effects of unjust treatment, good social justice grantmaking attempts to undo the mechanisms of oppression.

How Can a Foundation Effectively Practice Social Justice Philanthropy

According to the Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace, the following elements are necessary for good social justice philanthropy:

1. Sound Analysis…

Of the forces that contribute to injustice. Effective social justice grantmakers base their work on a sound analysis of the historical forces that contributed to shaping the current reality they wish to change, the forces that help maintain the status quo, and the likely future evolution of these forces.

Of the effects of membership in oppressed classes of people. Foundation staff examine the current context and their own work through the lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, country of origin, and membership in other social categories that experience unjust treatment.

Of institutional structures. Because the mechanism of oppression sometimes appears faceless, foundation staff analyze the myriad ways in which institutional structures -- the policies that govern institutions, their practices, their cultures, their relationships with one another and with the communities they’re meant to serve -- contribute to injustice. The category of institutions studied is broad and might include, for example, the local school system, the church, the military, local and national governments, NGOs, the business sector or individual businesses, etc.

Of the distribution of power. One of the goals of an effective social justice grantmaker is to shift power from those who perpetrate injustice to those who suffer it. To this end, foundation staff examine how power in its various forms (wealth, political influence, etc.) is acquired, held, and brokered in the current context.

2. Effective Choice of Strategies and Tactics

A good social justice grantmaker is able to translate a sound analysis into (a) an effective formulation of goals and objectives, and (b) a smart choice of strategies and tactics. Does the analysis lead to a clear sense of what should be changed and how? What are the best strategies for making the desired change happen? Do the strategies lead to a choice of tactics rich enough to initiate and sustain social change?

For example, if funding an advocacy initiative were deemed a good strategy, would the grantmaker support the organizational capacities of activist groups; the building of a broad base of support; the strengthening of alliances among participating organizations; improved data collection and analysis; more strategic communications; and the ability to mobilize additional resources over the long term? If the grantmaker seeks a particular policy outcome, does foundation staff also fund the organizations that would monitor implementation and enforcement? If a social change effort requires litigation, does the grantmaker fund only the legal effort, or, understanding the nature of social change, does the grantmaker also support movement building and other activities that, taken together, are more likely to succeed in removing the injustice?

Because people's lives often hang in the balance, good intentions are not good enough. The grantmaker’s work should have a significant chance of succeeding. It will thus be important to attend carefully to such matters as the scale of the intervention and its time horizon. Social justice is not easily achieved, nor does it come quickly.

A social justice grantmaker will be most effective when they recognize and use all the tools and privileges at their disposal as a grantmaker: the power to convene, the ability to speak with the voice of an institution, access to decision-makers, the ability to marshal significant resources, etc.

3. Solidarity and Respect

Solidarity. An effective social justice grantmaker works in meaningful partnership with the communities they aim to serve. The staffer recognizes that she or he is ultimately accountable to these communities. In practice, this means that the grantmaker will learn from communities and, whenever possible, take direction from them. The grantmaker will aim to make the communities' voices heard, not that of the foundation. There should, in other words, always be a strong presumption against contravening the desires of these communities, to the extent that going against their wishes requires special justification. By working in solidarity with affected communities, the grantmaker gains a deeper understanding of the issues involved. By looking to these communities for leadership, the foundation staffer increases their ownership of the work. Both of these lead to better outcomes. Social justice grantmakers must also be willing to take the medicines they prescribe. We undermine our social justice efforts by exempting ourselves from the rules we would apply to others.

Respect. Effective social justice grantmakers respect the dignity of the communities they serve. They do not cast them as victims, unable to change their basic condition without assistance. Nor do grantmakers romanticize these communities. Because all people possess free will, all parties must acknowledge that they have the ability to participate in their own oppression or liberation. Respect drives out both under-valuation and unrealistic expectations. It motivates social justice grantmakers to seek wisdom and strength from the communities they serve.

4. The General Qualities of a Good Grantmaker

Effective grantmakers take calculated risks; they're often creative in the use of the limited resources available to them; they partner well with others, across sectoral lines and other divisions; they’re patient because they understand that meaningful social change takes time; and they learn from failure -- their own and that of others.

The most difficult and most important practice may be to examine one's logic model and ask, "Even if I do all of these things, what is the change I must see in order to know I am engaged in social justice philanthropy?"

Key Questions

Is social justice a valuable lens for grantmakers? Using a social justice framework has attendant issues: the concept of social justice has become so broadly defined that it may be perceived as being devoid of true meaning. In some cases, foundation trustees and executives may perceive social justice as having a negative connotation. At the Grants Managers Network's 2011 conference, one participant shared that, although most people, regardless of their relationship to the philanthropy sector, would regard her employer's grants as social justice funding -- the foundation has awarded grants to address the issue of high incarceration rates, including awards to the Innocence Project and local re-entry programs for ex-offenders -- the foundation itself framed them as public safety grants. "We couldn't have funded them under the name of social justice," the participant said.

If a foundation has clearly defined what it means by social justice, however, the terminology can provide a useful framework.

Is the term applicable to how a foundation conducts itself separate from its grantmaking? Yes, that is a defining hallmark of social justice philanthropy. Listening, for example, is one of the most important tools when using a social justice lens. The Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation, which helps working families advocate for change on their own behalf, uses listening as its first line of approach. Several years ago, the foundation convened a series of Listening Circles across the country, inviting local experts, parents, and youth to provide feedback on how the foundation should spend $30 million dollars per year to benefit low-income families.

Underlying this approach is a fundamental axiom: the outsider (e.g., funder) first should listen carefully to the members of the communities where it works or seeks to work before making any assumptions on where their support can effect the greatest and most long-lasting social change.

What are some of the common characteristics of social justice foundations? Based on my informal survey of a number of foundations that would be identified by their peers as social justice-focused, I identified the following common traits:

• Their field of interests is akin to a forest that comprises a common canopy rather than a collection of individual trees. In other words, they understand how one grantee's activities are part of a larger ecosystem that includes many other players.
• Social change is a journey rather than a destination. That truism requires donors to perceive themselves as long-distance runners rather than as sprinters.
• A foundation is able to draw on an extensive philanthropic toolkit in addition to grants. That kit includes the power of convening, making recommendations with respect to consultants, enabling peer exchanges, providing meeting space, and technical/management assistance.
• Grants officers go beyond checking off the "we've received your report" box. In practice, they act more as partners and resource brokers. They move beyond checklist grantmaking at the front and tail ends of a grant. Their relationships with grantees do not have a beginning or an end date.
• The menu of the types of financial support that these grantmakers provide is varied and includes general support, multi-year grants, capacity-building support, and individual fellowships, in addition to project-specific grants and endowment support.

How can grantmakers -- and grants managers in particular -- use a social justice lens in their work? My checklist includes the following:

• What are the organization's mission, vision, core values, and track record with respect to diversity?
• Do those things jibe with the foundation's mission, interests, and strategy or theory of change?
• Who is the organization's constituency/base, and how does the organization engage them?
• Does it have a clear plan of action?
• Is it able to show evidence of collaboration and networking with like-minded organizations?
• Is it supported by other social justice funders?

Finally, if a grants manager's job description doesn't encompass at least some of the responsibilities described in this post, let me suggest that as a topic for discussion when next developing/revising position descriptions, reviewing annual work plans, and in the performance review process.

Resources

For more information, check out the following Web sites:

• Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation – Reports & Publications
• New World Foundation – Technical Assistance to Grantees
• Greater New Orleans Foundation – Initiative Grantmaking
• Atlantic Philanthropies – Thought Leadership
• California Endowment – Meeting Ground
• Marguerite Casey Foundation – Listening

-- Michael Seltzer

This Week in PubHub: Children and Youth: Juvenile Justice

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that examine how well the rapidly evolving news business is serving local communities.)

After nearly twenty years of widespread "zero tolerance" school discipline policies, questions are being raised not only about their effectiveness but about their fairness and long-term effects. This week in PubHub, we are featuring four reports that explore how school discipline policies affect students' academic performance and involvement with the juvenile justice system, as well as efforts to reform that system.

According to Breaking Schools' Rules: A Statewide Study on How School Discipline Relates to Students' Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement (124 pages, PDF), a report from the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, suspending or expelling students for disciplinary reasons increases the likelihood of their failing academically and/or becoming involved with the juvenile justice system. Funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Foundations, the report found that 54 percent of students in the state were suspended or expelled at least once between seventh and twelfth grade, with students of color and those with specific educational disabilities disproportionately at higher risk. The report also found that students who had been suspended or expelled were nearly three times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system during the subsequent academic year, that 31 percent of those who were disciplined repeatedly were held back a grade, and that 10 percent of those who were disciplined repeatedly dropped out.

Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis (25 pages, PDF), a 2010 report from the Civil Rights Project, also argues that frequent suspensions and expulsions do not contribute to better school safety or student behavior but instead reduce opportunities for academic success and increase the risk of incarceration. The report examines the widening race and gender "discipline gaps," finding that while K-12 suspension rates for all students nearly doubled, from 3.7 percent to 6.9 percent, between 1973 and 2006, the 2006 suspension rate for African-American middle school boys was 28.3 percent. Indeed, with such policies resulting in minority students being separated from opportunities to learn at a disproportionately higher rate and facing greater risk of incarceration than their white peers, the issue is as serious a problem as low test scores and high dropout rates, the authors argue. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the report offers a number of recommendations, including better data collection and analysis, providing alternative strategies and technical assistance to schools with high suspension rates, and taking measures to address unlawful discrimination in the use of suspensions and expulsions.

When students do get into trouble with the law, they often are tried as adults -- with negative consequences for the community (not to mention the students themselves) in terms of both public safety and economic prosperity. The Campaign for Youth Justice report State Trends: Legislative Victories From 2005 to 2010 Removing Youth From the Adult Criminal Justice System (52 pages, PDF) examines the unfairness of trying teenagers in the adult criminal justice system (where they are often housed in adult jails and prisons) given their still-developing brains and the (usually) minor nature of their offenses; the grave consequences (including higher recidivism rates and lifelong barriers to employment); and the social implications of a disproportionately high rate of minority youth being tried as adults. The authors also highlight encouraging trends at the state and local level, including raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, changing transfer laws, and revising youth sentencing laws. The report was funded by the Casey, Eckerd Family, Meyer, Falk, Ford, JEHT, MacArthur, Public Welfare, Tow, and Open Society foundations; Atlantic Philanthropies; the  California Endowment; the Fund for Nonviolence; the Moriah, Rockit, and Chasdrew funds; the Carter & Melissa Cafritz Trust; Covington and Burling LLP; DHO Consulting, Gladys Jensen; and Julie Jensen.

The JustPartners report Bridges to Manhood: A Multifaceted Probation Strategy That Incorporates Fatherhood Development (28 pages, PDF) addresses a different issue: how to help young men complete their probation while learning to become responsible fathers and family members. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the report argues that because many young men who go through the juvenile justice system have either no relationship or a damaged relationship with their fathers, helping them become better fathers can help prevent recidivism and may contribute to breaking the negative intergenerational cycle of father absence.

What do you think? Are school disciplinary actions counterproductive? Are racial/ethnic disparities in suspensions and juvenile justice involvement indicative of a larger problem? Do you know of any programs that have been effective in addressing those disparities? Use the comments section to share your thoughts.

And be sure to check out PubHub, where where you can browse more than 765 reports on topics related to children and youth.

-- Kyoko Uchida