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Editor's Note: Our guest blogger today is Patricia D. Gill, Senior Program Associate, National Collaborative on Workforce & Disability for Youth at the Institute for Educational Leadership’s Center for Workforce Development. She directs RAMP (the Ready to Achieve Mentoring Program), a high tech career-focused mentoring program for youth with disabilities involved with or at-risk of becoming involved with the juvenile justice system. Today she reflects on the program, its outcomes, and what has been learned over its first few years.*

As the Ready to Achieve Mentoring Program (RAMP) enters its third year, community partnerships have emerged as an important component to making the program work in all communities.  With support from the Institute for Educational Leadership, the 12 RAMP sites around the country provide career-focused mentoring for youth with disabilities who are at-risk of or currently involved in the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, as youth with disabilities are highly overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, all youth with disabilities – especially those with learning disabilities or mental health needs – are at-risk of becoming involved in the system. The RAMP programs place special emphasis on engaging youth with disabilities with a history of high truancy rates, low grades, or school discipline incidents.

Through a mix of education, employer, and community partnerships, RAMP sites have succeeded in providing career-focused mentoring to these youth with outstanding results! In the first year, 95% of the youth enrolled in the program engaged in ...