Issue Brief

The Youth Program Quality Intervention (YPQI) offers a continuous improvement approach that flips traditional professional development upside-down: the intervention leads with performance assessment, and then engages staff in a multi-month cycle of planning and improvement. The YPQI study, the first experimental investigation of a data-driven, continuous improvement intervention in the after-school field, occurred from 2006-2008. We set out to understand if the YPQI could improve the quality of youth experiences in afterschool programs.

The brief from the Forum for Youth Investment looks at two initiatives. One, the Credentialed by 26 Community Challenge, helped leaders in four selected communities jump-start local conversations and identify strategies to improve postsecondary success. Among the results: Leaders enlisted more partners committed to increasing postsecondary completion, used new data to inform planning efforts, extended their goals beyond college access to college completion, and strengthened connections between the K-12 and postsecondary systems.
 

This brief summarizes research about employment and postsecondary success, and features examples of employers and institutions that have found creative ways to both support student persistence and advance their bottom lines by creating “college-friendly” jobs.

The principles can be implemented in a wide range of organizations, including schools, youth organizations or community centers that want to strengthen their commitment to youth leadership, or community-change focused organzations or coalitions that want to strengthen their commitment to youth involvement.

In this column, Pittman calls for the youth development field to improve their use of data. She says "changing the odds for young people requires us to not only be passionate in our commitment to providing high-quality supports and opportunities to all youth, but precise in measuring how well we and they are doing, so that we can make real time adjustments."

This brief provides an overview of four guiding principles to stakeholder engagement: be intentional about who to involve; be specific about what you ask the group to get involved in; think about how and how much you want people involved; and think about when you need the group to be engaged.

Children's cabinets and councils have the potential to systematically coordinate the fragmented funding and services that often occur at the state level. Children's cabinets are typically made up of heads of government agencies with child and youth serving programs, who meet on a regular basis with the collective goal of coordinating services, developing a common set of outcomes and collaboratively deciding upon and implementing plans to foster the well-being of young people.

The case studies described in this report underscore the critical role that community-based organizations can play both in developing young people’s leadership abilities and driving positive community change. Specifically, the authors push beyond principles, identifying effective organizational and management practices that can help any organization committed to meaningful youth engagement advance their efforts in concrete ways. Additionally, the outcomes they identify present a useful impact framework for much-needed future program evaluation and research efforts.

School districts and municipalities throughout the U.S. are under intense pressure to reform schools, raise graduation rates, and better prepare American youth for a workforce that must compete globally. Improving America’s educational system so that all students have access to a quality education is important but focusing on that system alone will not ensure the educational success of our nation’s young people.