New Orleans: As recently as a decade ago, the Youth Study Center would have been unlikely to attract an educational pioneer to their juvenile detention facility. The roughly 40 teenagers held in the flood-damaged center rarely made it to class because they were often on lockdown 23 hours a day. The staff had a reputation for incompetence. The building itself was plagued with bugs and mold.

But this summer, the Orleans Parish School Board signed over operations of the school to the national nonprofit Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings (CEEAS), which is known for its work tackling the academic deficits faced by juvenile delinquent students. CEEAS is Up to 70 percent of detained youth have a learning disability and more than half have not completed eighth grade, according to a study by the national Youth Reentry Task Force, a group of 20 federal and state organizations that support young people leaving the juvenile justice system. The study also found that two-thirds of those who are sentenced to a juvenile facility don’t return to school once they get out and noted other research showing that a startling 60 percent of juvenile-justice-involved youth may also meet the criteria for at least three mental health disorders, limiting their ability to learn and to get along in a classroom.run by David Domenici, best known for the innovations he implemented as founding principal of the Maya Angelou Academy, which serves delinquent juveniles from Washington, D.C.

Teachers at the Youth Study Center work with arrested juveniles being held pretrial, nearly all of whom are African-American males. Time spent at the facility varies wildly, from about two weeks to nearly two years.

The new contract is a key test for CEEAS, because many students in New Orleans are still suffering from the trauma of Hurricane Katrina and the schooling gaps that followed.

Domenici is not naïve about the challenges: he first began working with the Youth Study Center about a year ago, when he and his staff were hired as contractors to help shape instruction there, as they do in dozens of juvenile facilities across the country. Ultimately, Domenici believes that CEEAS can oversee transformation at the school. “With a lot of work, it can become really spectacular,” he said.

“Providing high-quality correctional education that is comparable to offerings in traditional public schools is one of the most powerful — and cost-effective — levers we have to ensure that youth are successful once released and are able to avoid future contact with the justice system,” wrote Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Up to 70 percent of detained youth have a learning disability and more than half have not completed eighth grade, according to a study by the national Youth Reentry Task Force, a group of 20 federal and state organizations that support young people leaving the juvenile justice system. The study also found that two-thirds of those who are sentenced to a juvenile facility don’t return to school once they get out and noted other research showing that a startling 60 percent of juvenile-justice-involved youth may also meet the criteria for at least three mental health disorders, limiting their ability to learn and to get along in a classroom.

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