Like many bullies, JP Butler started out as the one who was bullied. What’s different about JP’s story is that his next transformation took him from bully to a bullying prevention leader and activist. Dedicated to taking a stand against bullying while instilling leadership qualities in youth and their role models, Quantum Leadership was born. Below is an interview with JP which I believe you will find inspiring and motivating.

What is Quantum Leadership?

Quantum Leadership is a nonprofit organization that seeks to lower the prevalence of bullying through leadership development. We provide leadership trainings for youth and adults, professional development workshops, parent education seminars, and other presentations that all revolve around empowering communities to end bullying.

Why combine youth leadership with bullying prevention?

I found that the common topics that are covered in bullying prevention programs (such as empathy, awareness, connection, and emotional regulation) were all topics that were just as applicable in leadership programs. I asked myself, “Why don’t we combine the power of youth leadership with the potential to approach bullying prevention in a way that had never been done?”

Why do you see a need for schools to teach leadership and bully prevention?

We are all leaders in one way or another. At the most basic level, we are leaders of our own lives. We must make decisions, reflect on our actions, strive to become a better person each day, and do what we can to make the world a better place. This is in alignment with schools’ objective of teaching and preparing contributing members of society. I see leadership and bullying prevention as a crucial social-emotional component of traditional academic learning.

Do you have a history with bullying?

I was a victim of bullying at the tender age of 11. The offense caused me to become a bully myself, picking on students who were easy targets. I finally recognized the wrong I was doing after my primary target finally stood up to me and pointed out the harm and pain I was causing. As I became older, I realized that so many students (19.6 percent of high school students in the United States, as a matter of fact, according to the CDC) experience some form of bullying each year.

How did you start Quantum Leadership?

After working for years as a youth program coordinator, I wanted to learn more effective ways to help adolescents. I enrolled in the couples and family counseling master’s program at the University of Colorado, Denver, and simultaneously began my career as an independent motivational speaker, focusing specifically on bullying. After two semesters of my master’s program, my passions took a new course and I changed my master’s degree to educational psychology with an emphasis in human development. I spent my spare time outside of class writing a leadership training curriculum that would eventually become the cornerstone of a new nonprofit.

How is Quantum Leadership different than other bully prevention/leadership initiatives?

A combination of our experience, creativity, innovation, and focus on leadership sets us apart. Between myself, our board of directors, and our volunteers, we have over 50-plus years of youth programming and leadership development experience. We work with youth to develop and redevelop our curriculum so it is up-to-date with what students are experiencing. Finally, we actively engage all members of the community to be a leader and to stand up against this social issue.

When did your organization take off? How is it funded?

Quantum Leadership incorporated in 2011, and every training we have done up to this point has been covered, in-kind, by my board of directors and my parents. They have been such a loving and supportive network and have continued to fuel and support my ambitions. Because of our future vision, Quantum Leadership is looking to raise $100,000 before the start of the 2015-2016 school year.

What’s in store for the 2015-2016 school year?

My goals for the 2015-2016 school year are: (1) serve 10,000 students through assemblies and keynotes to increase awareness about what students can do about bullying, (2) train over 1,000 students to lower the prevalence of bullying through student leadership, and (3) train over 500 school staff to recognize the signs of bullying and effectively intervene. In order to do that, we need to partner with community members across the nation to raise these funds so we can continue our work and see this vision through.

What do you hope to accomplish with Quantum Leadership in the next decade?

Quantum Leadership is already on the way to becoming a national organization. Many of my volunteers are close friends who work in education in several different cities. We want to diversify the national resources available to schools and communities through our knowledge and experience. Therefore, I truly do hope that everyone will see Quantum Leadership as a leader in bullying prevention and leadership development.

What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about bullying?

Bullying behaviors are not a part of normal youth development (or adult development, for that matter). When someone is bullying a victim, there is a power imbalance and the bully is taking advantage of that. So you have three choices: (1) victim-blame the student who “can’t stand up for themselves” and hope they figure it out, (2) shame the bully and try to remove the power imbalance, or (3) equalize the power imbalance. Quantum Leadership opts for the third option through self- and others-awareness training, leadership development, and empathy training.

How can someone learn more about Quantum Leadership?

Visit Quantum Leadership’s Website at: http://www.quantumleadershipinc.org and our youth website at http://www.qleaders.org.

Through JP’s vision, persistence, stamina, and his own quantum leadership, more students and adults are better equipped to recognize the patterns of bullying and prevent future offenses through dialogue, strength, and understanding. The more we can achieve this locally and throughout our own country, the more we will have peace, understanding, and respect throughout our world.

The above article was originally posted as part of my blog series on the Huffington Post where I share stories of young entrepreneurs making a difference. Read more at (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-j-carter/) 

I recently returned from a trip where I spoke in Bangkok at the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) Conference and in Singapore at the International Association for Scholastic Excellence (INTASE) Conference. The following article was originally posted as part of my blog series on the Huffington Post where I am sharing experiences and insights I gained from my trip. 

Two weeks ago I spoke in Bangkok at the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) Conference. Educators and school leaders from around the world attended, ranging from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Nepal, Greece, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh to name a few.Some of the teachers were originally from countries in Asia like the Philippines, but have relocated to places like Dubai for better job opportunities in order to support themselves and their families back home.

This single conference housed a tremendous amount of economic, educational, and situational diversity. Some schools struggle with limited resources to bring their students a world-class education in places like Bangladesh and Pakistan and the provinces of the Philippines, where even a private school education is in competition for resources. Conversely, educators in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia are challenged to inspire their privileged students to see their unique gifts and talents, not just those bestowed on them from their parents, royalty, or any other outside force.

Continue reading on The Huffington Post. 

This article was originally posted on The Huffington Post on May 8, 2013.

Last February, The National Center for Education reported that 50 percent of the 3 million students who begin college annually require some level of remediation. This trend costs students, parents, institutions, and taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year, while remedial students fail to earn a single college credit.

The high volume and costs of remediation have policymakers and education leaders scrambling to stop this financial hemorrhage. While reform in remedial education is inevitable, the unintended consequences of swooping changes can be harmful to students, institutions, and the economy at a time when the U.S. is struggling to fill the 21st century workforce with high-skilled workers.

Who are remediated students?

A report released today by the National Center on Education and the Economy states that many community college career programs demand little or no use of math, and high school students are taking math courses they will likely never use. In reading and writing, the group noted incoming college freshmen had simplistic and academically unchallenging skills. Finally, NCEE discovered that very little writing is required of community college freshmen, and when it is, there are low expectations for making a cogent argument and employing basic rules for writing, punctuation, and grammar. The report calls for the bar to be raised if students are to succeed in college, career, and life. Some of these same patterns exist for freshmen admitted to open admission four-year colleges.

Policymakers believe the solution to plugging up the remedial financial drain is to stop offering remedial classes in college, cut funding, or hold high schools accountable. Yet, these all-or-nothing solutions oversimplify who is entering remedial courses and how they got there. The spectrum of today’s remedial students includes:

• Nontraditional, returning students who’ve been out of school for years and need to brush up on learning skills while pursuing a degree or certificate.
• Students with undiagnosed learning disabilities.
• Low-income, minority, and first-generation students.
• Misplaced students who were misidentified as needing remedial classes.
  Multiple studies indicate up to 20 to 30 percent of remedial students are misidentified and don’t belong in developmental classes.
• Students who failed to master high school material due to a lack of focus, emotional/social maturity, home support, poor instruction, or a combination of these factors.

As funding plummets, remedial students still remain, as does the need to fill many of the 3.9 million U.S. job openings that require a college degree. Realizing remediation will be anything but a quick fix, many people and organizations are offering cost-saving strategies.

What does remedial reform look like?

Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently argued that Pell grant funding — a need-based grant that helps qualifying students afford college — should not be available for students who require remedial education. Instead, he believes this $40 billion annual federal aid should only be awarded to students who take credit-bearing classes. The argument has merit. Statistically, the 35 percent of students who require remediation in four-year institutions complete a degree within six years, and worse, less than 10 percent of students enrolled in one or more developmental classes in community colleges graduate within three years.

Petrilli’s solution raises many questions. Is limiting college access to low-income students really a solution to remediation? Will high schools have the bandwidth to take accountability for the underprepared students who are denied grant-funding because they don’t possess basic skills? Are college-ready students more deserving of federal dollars than those who are underprepared for college?

Already, a recent change to Pell grants is negatively impacting developmental students. In the past, students were allowed to receive funding for up to 18 semesters. Now, they are limited to 12 semesters. For many students who work while going to school or are required to take several semesters of remedial education, this reduction in aid is a huge barrier to degree attainment.

Institutions, as well as people like Petrilli, are evaluating their best response to the remediation crisis. For example, in Ohio, only 25 percent of residents hold a college degree. The state hopes to improve the number of grads by adopting a new formula that aligns the amount of funding four-year colleges receive with the amount of graduates they produce. The community colleges are also seeing a shift to performance-based funding but not at as high a rate as four-year colleges. Like Ohio, more states than not have transitioned, are transitioning, or are discussing transitioning away from enrollment-based funding to performance-based funding.

Another solution for some states is to simply get rid of remedial funding. In addition to Ohio’s performance-based funding, the state government will start phasing out funding for remedial classes in the 2014-15 school year and completely end funding by 2020. In Connecticut, a bill attempted to cut remedial courses and put those students who would have been placed in a remedial courses in college-level, credit-earning courses. A bill was ultimately signed into law which allowed students to take one remedial course.

There are a number of different strategies being proposed by states and colleges to cut costs in remedial education. Until the pipeline to college improves, however, the need for remediation will remain. Without careful analysis of tradeoffs, cutting funding, courses, and opportunity is not reform: it is giving up and hoping someone else will pick up the slack. We need a holistic solution for the short and long term. As the NCEE stated in their report this morning:

“The logical conclusion might be for community colleges to raise their expectations and for high schools to step up the rigor… but that would not help today’s large proportion of high school graduates who do not meet the criteria to enroll in credit-bearing college courses.”

What are solutions which impact pipeline preparation before college?

Remediation may never be completely eradicated, but improvement can be made in the K-12 to college pipeline to better prepare students for college from the start.

Continue reading at The Huffington Post

This week I was asked to contribute to a HuffPost Live segment with educators, policymakers, and students to discuss the pros and cons of early college high schools. The panel included:

• Dave Taylor,  Principal of Dayton Early College Academy

• Kathryn Young, National Education Policy Director for Jobs For The Future

• Kesi Augustine, 2008 Graduate of Bard High School Early College; Ph.D. Student at NYU

• Leon Botstein, President of Bard College

It was enlightening to hear all the different perspectives HuffPost Live was able to bring to the table to discuss this growing trend in education.  This coming Tuesday check out my article on the Huffington Post where I’ll continue the early college conversation. Watch the video below and let me know your opinion on early college high schools in the comments.