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USC Program Helps Low-Income Students Prepare for College

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ht alfa lopez bus tk 130304 wg?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1362485906084Next Generation(LOS ANGELES) — She stands just 5 foot 2, with a slight frame and soft voice, but to her family, Alfa Lopez is a giant.

The Los Angeles teen lives in a low-income area where teenagers are tempted by drugs and the high school drop-out rate is 50 percent. As she matter-of-factly puts it, “It’s not the best neighborhood.”

Lopez, though, has big plans and big dreams.

This 16-year-old has her sights set on becoming the first member of her family to go to college. “I try to get straight A’s to make my family proud,” she told ABC News, “and to show myself that I can do this and that I can work hard.”

She is succeeding with the help of an innovative program run by the University of Southern California. Called the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), the program offers intensive classes and tutoring to hundreds of low-income children who live in the shadow of the university.

“It’s a long road believe me,” said Kim Thomas-Barrios, who is the program’s executive director. “We start with them in the sixth grade.”

There are 721 students in the program, grades 6 through 12. Participants begin their day at USC, attending English and math classes taught by high school teachers. Then it’s off to their regular high school for the rest of the day. There is tutoring on campus three nights a week, and Saturday morning classes for more academic support and college prep work. It opens up the middle and high school students to a new world of possibilities.

“Everyone in the University campus is about the business of learning,” said Thomas-Barrios. “They are taking classes down the hall, down the hall from college students. I call it my college brainwashing.”

Alfa has no illusions about how much this program means to her. “It’s life changing,” she said, “without it I don’t know where I’d be. I wouldn’t have the same opportunities, and I don’t think I would be able to face the hurdles that maybe college would bring to me.”

The NAI program has an impressive record. “All of our students graduate from high school, that’s a no brainer for them. Their goal is to go college, period,” said Thomas-Barrios. Once they’re at college, three-quarters go on to get a diploma.

It’s the kind of success that Ann O’Leary would like to see replicated nationwide. O’Leary heads up the Children and Families Program at the Center for the Next Generation, a non-profit think tank based in California. The group is launching a national initiative called “Too Small to Fail”– a campaign to get the government and private industry to focus on the needs of America’s children. O’Leary points out that nearly 22 percent of children in the U.S. live in poverty, compared with 10 percent of seniors.

“That’s because we made a very big and important commitment to seniors,” she said, “and we haven’t made the same commitment to kids. We think it’s time we did.”

O’Leary and Alfa and Thomas-Barrio have come to Washington, D.C., to try to jump-start that effort. They’ll take part in a one-day summit Tuesday on children, focusing on everything from poverty to parenting, hosted by the Center and Washington Post Live.

“It makes no sense not to invest in the next generation,” said O’Leary. “The way we’ve done it right now is just to abandon the next generation.”

New government funding for programs for children could be a tough sell in this age of budget cuts. O’Leary sees it as a “critically important time” to be in D.C. With sequestration threatening funding to Head Start programs, for one, O’Leary says, “It’s a time to highlight that this is just no way to do business.”

As for Alfa, this is her first trip to Washington D.C., and she’ll have the job of introducing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will take part in the conference. It’s something this first-generation American could never have imagined.

But what really has the attention of this high school sophomore is her college dream. Alfa has a passion for math, and hopes to use that talent as an aerospace engineer or a pediatric neurosurgeon. She is eyeing MIT or Johns Hopkins. The universities might want to get ready. Alfa Lopez will graduate from high school in 2015.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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