Mentorship Benefit of At-Risk Youth

Written by Virginia Ju
Illustrated by Katherine Bonefas

Poverty-based performance gaps  take root during the earliest stages of children’s lives and fail to narrow in the following years. Students who start disadvantaged are less likely to equal their non-disadvantaged peers. As such, lower socioeconomic status (SES) correlates with  lower academic achievement creating performance gaps between the lowest and highest SES quintiles. These performance gaps reflect extensive unmet need and thus untapped talents among low SES children. Introducing diverse and involved mentorship could increase interest and performance of students in our local communities.

Low educational achievement leads to lowered economic prospects later in life, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and social inequities across generations.¹ The relationship between economic inequalities and education inequalities is apparent when comparing two southeastern Michigan towns: Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. To the University of Michigan community,  the city of Ann Arbor is well known for its vibrant educational and international community of educators, physicians, engineers, technology developers, artists, and scholars. Across Highway US-23 lies Ypsilanti, a city home to Eastern Michigan University and Depot Town. Once thriving with thousands of manufacturing jobs supplying the local auto industry, Ypsilanti has changed tremendously over the past 50 years as jobs shifted out of Michigan. Since 2001, Ypsilanti lost over 13,000 manufacturing jobs² leaving 30.9% of the population living below the poverty line.³ Unemployment impacts the whole family as indicated by the difference in standardized testing scores between children in Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti. According to the 2018 database of Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (M- STEP) scores, 63.8% of students in Ann Arbor public schools passed, while a mere 9.6% of students in Ypsilanti Community Schools received a passing score.⁴ The reasons behind performance gaps within an economic context are many. Lower income can mean fewer resources and limited access to quality education. Students may be bullied for low SES, which can lead to anxiety and negatively affect academic performance. Lower income can also be associated with less stability at home, which can make focusing in school difficult.⁵ 

Though poverty, especially intergenerational, is a complex problem further complicated  when entangled within the education system, academic disparity could be addressed by introducing students to mentors who are actively pursuing degrees. Mentoring relationships provide critical development opportunities throughout one’s career, especially in higher education by providing mentees with insight from an advisor figure.⁶ Moreover, students seek out and get the most benefit when mentors mirror their gender, race, or SES.  Mentorship programs have been installed at various universities. For example, the College of Engineering at Auburn University in Alabama created a longitudinal mentorship program to provide minority students with academic and psychosocial support during their transition from high school to college. First year students were matched with an upperclassmen (3^rd or 4^th year) at the same school and followed over the course of the year. During this program, cumulative GPA for the mentees correlated with the number of participatory hours in the mentoring group, suggesting that the more mentorship increased academic success.⁷ Similarly, when looking at how well underrepresented minorities integrate into the scientific community, informal mentorship programs along with training programs⁸ influenced individuals to persevere in STEM.⁹ When mentors are able to give an authentic experience of what it is actually like to be an academic, mentees are then able to build confidence and start to enjoy academic programs and more likely enroll in higher education.

However, aforementioned programs focus on transitioning high school or first year college students to higher education. Because performance gaps linked to low SES take root early on in student’s education (as early as kindergarten¹⁰), programs ought to turn their focus towards younger students in elementary school. In practice, undergraduates, medical students, and scholars from various academic backgrounds can be brought together in an interprofessional effort to engage elementary school students in Ypsilanti. . Volunteers can not only provide mentorship but also small group instructional activities in order to empower the Ypsilanti elementary school students to take an interest in academics. Increased engagement and interest could additionally  improve standardized test scores, a metric that is still important in advancing into higher ed and employment. Mentorship programs created to address a need right in our own community could foster a sense of curiosity and provide access to education that will inspire continued learning in following years.

Within the community of lower-east Michigan, outreach programs seek to provide mentorship programs to local students K-12. Indeed, organizations out of the University of Michigan have spearheaded programs that seek to increase diversity and education locally through hands-on activities and events (see panel). Many of these programs have a focus on STEM education, but some promote history, art, and literature. 

While socio-economic and educational disparity is not unique to our area, mentorship outreach programs could make a difference in the lives of students in our local under-performing school district. While diversity and equal opportunity improves the overall quality of every occupation by bringing new ideas, experiences and perspectives to the table,¹¹ we should do more to ensure student success regardless of background. By providing high-quality mentoring relationships earlier on in our education systems, we can expect improvements in academic performance as well as lower drop-out rates, higher educational aspirations, and positive feelings of self-worth in underrepresented students.¹² Most professionals would not have made it to where they are today were it not for their mentors at many stages of their academic careers.   As such, we should be developing mentorship programs that cater to students’ needs, mirror their demographics, through combinations of formal and informal initiatives that combine STEM and humanities education to help students flourish. A consistent mentorship program created to address this need can foster a sense of curiosity that will inspire continued learning in the years to come.