The U.S. House of Representatives is proposing to eliminate AmeriCorps, the 30-year program that provides the people power that local nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations train and deploy to respond to our country’s most immediate and critical needs.
If this happens, it will have a devastating effect on City Year and the work we do to advance student success in systemically under-resourced schools and communities across the country.
AmeriCorps grants enable City Year to recruit near-peer mentors who serve as student success coaches and partner with teachers to develop trusting 1:1 relationships with K-12 students and to provide critical academic, social and emotional supports. City Year supports more than 2,500 AmeriCorps members serving as student success coaches and partners with 438 schools across 60 districts nationally.
Research shows that our student success model works and is making a real difference — it is motivating students to come to school and stay in school, In one New York City elementary school, for example, attendance increased 10% in the 2022-23 academic year, which school leaders credit in large part to the work of student success coaches. In addition, schools partnering with City Year are up to three times more likely to improve proficiency rates in math and two times more likely to improve on state English assessments. Without AmeriCorps members, the students we serve who are furthest from opportunity will lose access to mentors who listen, who care, and who make those young people feel seen and heard.
And through their year of national service, AmeriCorps members are developing the skills and mindsets needed to work across lines of difference and tackle complex problems, capabilities that are increasingly in demand from employers and institutes of higher education. AmeriCorps members serving as student success coaches with City Year are also contributing to a more diverse and culturally competent teacher workforce that persists at a longer rate than the national average—over 6,000 City Year alumni are classroom teachers, 39% of whom identify as people of color (compared to 21% nationally) and 86% of whom remain in the profession for three years or more (compared to <50%). Cutting AmeriCorps would eliminate critical opportunities for talented young adults and restrict pathways to making meaningful contributions to our education system, economy and democracy.
City Year’s work, and the work of other organizations like ours who want to ensure that all students can learn, grow and thrive, is needed now more than ever. If we put AmeriCorps funding on the chopping block as Congress has proposed, it will prevent our youth from realizing their potential and becoming our future leaders, innovators and change-makers. We need to invest in expanding and strengthening AmeriCorps so that we can help more students, not less.