Better Data and Decisions

In order for community partnerships to have a positive collective impact on young people’s lives, federal policies need to support comprehensive, place-based interagency efforts. The Forum for Youth Investment, in partnership with the National Collaboration for Youth, American Institutes for Research, the Campaign for Youth, the Children's Leadership Council and the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions, hosted a webinar to learn about the White House and the Obama Administration’s plans to support such comprehensive efforts for youth in general, and for disconnected youth in particular.

In K-12 education, one increasingly popular strategy for closing the gap between research and practice is the development of sustained partnerships that link researchers with school district staff. This paper explores the benefits and challenges of that work and describes models for emerging partnerships.

Social service providers have a new way to help make their programs more effective. Urban Institute, Child Trends and Social Solutions have teamed up to create PerformWell, which provides information and tools to measure program quality and outcomes.

Data, smartly employed, can help after-school decision-makers with everything from allocating resources fairly to improving program quality. After-School Data: What Cities Need to Know is a new set of six tip sheets to help city agencies, after-school program providers, intermediary organizations, and others make the most of data in after-school programming.

This new report taps Public/Private Ventures' extensive experience evaluating and managing collaborative initiatives to offer practical advice about collecting and using data in a multi-agency environment.