A Brief History of the Creation of Liberty LEADS

The Center for Leadership and College Prep brings together two Bank Street initiatives that have well established records of efficacy over time. These initiatives originally served two constituencies through separate but interconnected programs. The first, the Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), began seventeen years ago and has had tremendous success working with youth at risk of dropping out of high school. LPP's accomplishments are readily seen by comparing Board of Education citywide data with LPP data. The average on-time graduation rate citywide is 54%. By contrast, an average of 90% of LPP youth complete high school on time -a figure that is all the more stunning considering that over three-quarters of the students are originally referred to LPP on the basis of poor academic performance and attend high schools where graduation rates can be below 50%. Furthermore 90% of LPP students actually apply to and are accepted to a college, whereas 63% of students citywide report only that they plan to attend college after graduation.

The second program under the Center umbrella is known as I-LEAD (Institute for Leadership, Excellence and Academic Development). This program serves promising high-achieving students at under-resourced parochial schools and prepares them to become competitive applicants to selective colleges and universities. (I-LEAD is now accepting students from public schools as well as independent schools). The program began five years ago and was based on Liberty's model of youth development. It too has been very successful. Every year, 100% of I-LEAD's graduating seniors are admitted to selective and competitive four-year colleges, (including about 18% of the students in each class who are accepted at Ivy League schools). On the other hand, the rate of admission to selective schools for a comparison group of students is only 34%.

Combining these two programs in the Center allows us to maintain each program's level of success while increasing the overall strength of our program. We are able to offer the academic challenges and high expectations of I-LEAD to LPP students and the strong supportive environment of LPP with its psychosocial services to I-LEAD students. Too often, the high schools these young people attend have neither the time nor the resources, despite their best intentions, to assist a student with emotional difficulties or a student with exceptional academic needs, whether gifted or struggling. The Center has both the time and the dedicated staff to more than meet these needs.