The Pathways Program, founded by the Regent Park Community Health Centre in 2001, is a community-based program that delivers academic tutoring, group mentoring, student and parent advocacy and support, and scholarships for all students who complete high school and get into post-secondary programs.

Pathways to Education released today a pro bono evaluation study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) which demonstrates that the six year old program has had a dramatic result in reducing the high school drop-out rate in Regent Park from 56% to 10% and increasing the proportion of young people attending post-secondary education from 20% to 80%.

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How Did We Get Here?
Our schools are falling short—not because of poor teaching, apathetic youth or lack of rigorous standards but because the educational system of today was built for the needs of a bygone era, using the knowledge available at the time it was created. Significant changes in family, work, technology and culture have radically shifted the context for education in this country, yet the system remains essentially the same. Developments in neuroscience, brain imaging and anthropology now provide concrete answers about how the human brain actually learns and matures, but this relatively recent knowledge is not reflected within the existing educational structure or classroom practices. Decades of “educational reform” calling for higher standards and a return to the basics have served only to drag an already out of date system even further in the wrong direction. These types of simplistic and short term bandages directly contradict what we really know about the circumstances and opportunities that children need to learn, flourish and succeed. As a result, many students are frustrated and disengaged, parents are confused and disappointed, and educators are defensive and worn out. Learn more about the history of education.

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The Freedom Writers Diary is the amazing true story of strength, courage, and achievement in the face of adversity. In the fall of 1994, in Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, an idealistic twenty-four-year-old teacher named Erin Gruwell faced her first group of students, dubbed by the administration as “unteachable, at-risk” teenagers. This group was unlike any she had ever interacted with.

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