Three new bills would support mentoring for student success

National Mentoring month in January arrived paired with three pieces of legislation to support mentoring activities: A Transition to Success Mentoring Act, Mentoring to Succeed Act, and the Students Helping Younger Students Act. All three bills currently have only Democratic support.

Service Focused Mentoring: The Students Helping Younger Students Act, (HR 654/S. 183) re-introduced by Rep. Carson (D-Ind.) and Sen. Booker (D-N.J.) would encourage more connections between university students and afterschool programs. The legislation would ensure that all universities employing federal work study dedicate at least one component of their program to either tutoring, literacy, or afterschool programs and allow for universities to receive higher federal match amounts for their students who do participate in afterschool employment. College students would be further supported with training and transportation.

Programs that bring together college students with their near-peers in K-12 education have a number of positive impacts for the afterschool field. College students may come from the communities they serve, reflecting the students demographically and culturally yielding deep connections. As a result, younger students see a similar pathway to college for themselves. Additionally, college students can bring their knowledge, background, and expertise into the afterschool environment — for example, an engineering student leading a robotics activity, or a literature major supporting student poetry. These work study programs not only support the younger students’ academic progress, but offer students hands-on learning and ignite passion for future careers. College students who participate in these types of service activities often stay more connected both to the community and to careers in youth development and education, fields that need to recruit a highly qualified and diverse workforce.

Skills Focused Mentoring: The Mentoring to Succeed Act, (HR 525/S. 65) also reintroduced, by Rep. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Sen. Durbin (D-Ill.), would create a five-year federal grant program through an amendment to the Perkins Career and Technical Act to support school-based mentoring programs for middle and high school youth. Programs could work with community and faith-based organizations and would be designed to equip students identified as in need of additional support with mentors trained to help support a student’s social and emotional development in service of their long term success. The legislation focuses on areas of training for mentors such as trauma informed care, working with a public school system, cultural competency, disability inclusion practices, and positive youth development among other areas.

Goals Focused Mentoring: The Transition to Success Mentoring Act (HR 653/S. 182), sponsored by Rep. Carson and Sen. Booker, would hone in on youth during the middle to high school transition by providing all eligible students in a school participating in the program with a success coach. The success coach would work with the student, parents, and teachers. During monthly check-ins, the coach would work with the student to guide their goals (including personal, academic, college and career), connect them with resources and opportunities (such as academic support, behavioral strategies, and career exposure experiences), and track their progress, revising the success plan as necessary.

All three pieces of introduced legislation would complement the efforts of the administration alongside the Department of Education’s National Partnership for Student Success.