Report

 This study, Continuous Quality Improvement in Afterschool Settings: Impact Findings from the Youth Program Quality Intervention, shows how a cycle of assessing staff practices, planning based on the assessment and targeted training improves the quality of services delivered to young people. It says the Youth Program Quality Intervention model increases program quality among a wide range of afterschool systems, is sustainable and cost-effective, and might boost staff retention.
 

The guide address a common problem throughout the youth field: We know that out-of-school time (OST) programs can help youth develop skills and attributes they need to be ready for college, work and life – skills and attributes like communications, relationships and collaboration, critical thinking and decision making, and initiative and self-direction. But few OST programs have the tools to effectively measure those outcomes. Finding the right one can be daunting.

This United Way Worldwide report highlights the voices of everyday Americans concerned about education in the United States. Above all, the opinion was that there is so much acrimony, divisiveness and negativity in our debates on the issues of education. Everyday people are hungry to get past the posturing and get on to doing whatever it takes to set children up for success. While so much attention lately has been placed on schools, the people in this report said that while schools play an important role, communities and indivduals have to step forward in a different way.

GTO consists of 10 steps that empower program developers to do the following:

As in many other states, New York’s juvenile justice system is run by several agencies that each collect and report their own data. Until recently, this data had never been compiled or distributed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the system. This project sought to empower state agencies to report data back to counties in a systematic way that could improve local planning. The Vera Project staff are currently working with county officials from across New York to help them use these and future reports to shape juvenile justice policies and practices.

The paper presents a new approach to evidence-based practice that will produce better outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The paper begins with an overview of the different approaches to evidence-based practice and introduces a tool Dr. Mark Lipsey has developed to better make use of the vast knowledge base. It then embeds this new approach within a comprehensive juvenile justice framework that will allow increased knowledge to benefit the entire juvenile justice continuum, rather than a handful programs serving a limited number of youth.

Gallup has harnessed years of research and development, and distilled three key indicators of student success into a single metric. The Gallup Student Poll adds clarity to the discussion around the purpose and utility of non-cognitive measures and their relevance to student success. The poll measures student hope for the future, engagement with school, and wellbeing - factors that have been shown to drive students' grades, achievement scores, retention, and future employment.

Hope - the ideas and energy we have for the future.

If excellence is necessary for America to continue to effectively compete in the global economy, then there is much work to be done in preparing the next generation of professionals to enter the workplace.