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Blogs by Forum staff and by leaders around the country about getting young people ready for college, work and life.
 

The $1.2 Billion Program that Changed America’s Approach to Afterschool

Karen Pittman & Charles Smith
Monday, March 30, 2015

We’re all for evidence-based policy making. But there are moments when the use of the “evidence” card just rings false. Brookings Senior Education Fellow Mark Dynarski’s reprised conclusion that existing research on afterschool programs does not support the current federal investment has that telltale clank.

Readiness as a Right

Karen Pittman
Tuesday, March 10, 2015

We’re four weeks out from the Ready by 21 National Meeting and I’m stoked. We couldn’t ask for a better location or better host partners. The plenary and workshop line-up is fantastic, as is the mix of familiar and new names on the registration list.

My excitement, however, also comes from within.

To Overcome Poor Schools, Students Need to be Engaged

Karen Pittman
Monday, December 8, 2014

Imagine that you're the parent of 13-year-old twins. One thrives in school: His test scores place him in the top quartile of his peers. The other struggles: He's not motivated to learn what schools want to teach, and his test scores put him in the bottom quartile.

It's time to select high schools. You decide that the boys would benefit by going to separate schools, and you live in a place (such as Washington, D.C.) where they can choose schools through a lottery. You feel lucky when that lottery gives you slots in two schools - until you discover a disturbing truth.

How Public Policy Can Support Collective Impact

Elizabeth Gaines
Thursday, November 20, 2014

Take a look at any set of youth issues that you hear people complain about in the news: youth mental health, youth violence, youth homelessness, you name it. Each of those issues is not squarely in the hands of any one federal, state or local agency to tackle. But because our government agencies aren’t set up to work together very well, they don’t typically tackle these issues very well.

If government is going to more effectively take on such complex social problems, somebody has to connect the dots among these different agencies. Somebody like José Esquibel.

Community Engagement for Collective Impact: Lessons From Alaska

Karen Pittman
Monday, October 13, 2014

People who run collective impact efforts say one of their toughest tasks is keeping community engagement going beyond the "summits" where everyone gets fired up. What does it mean to keep communities engaged in the mission that they've signed on for? Why is it so hard to do this well?

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