Out-of-School Youth & Struggling Students

Business Leadership: Supporting Youth Development and the Talent Pipeline
Businesses have a role to play in helping young people ages 14 to 21 get the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. This paper from the Forum for Youth Investment and Corporate Voices for Working Families looks at how businesses can work with youth programs, and highlights companies' innovative strategies to prepare young people for the challenges of the global marketplace.

New Project Launched to Increase Youth Participation in Out-of-School Time
Research suggests that spending time in structured and constructive after-school activities that enable leadership development, skill building and civic engagement can mean positive outcomes during adolescence and beyond.  The Fund for the City of New York is launching the Beacons Young Adolescent Initiative, a four-year after-school project for young teens.

Creating a Truancy Reduction Program: Tool Kit
This Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) tool kit is designed to help communities, schools and parents develop their own policies and programs. It covers the basics about drop-out and delinquency, and offers examples of promising interventions -- including youth service learning and teen courts.

High School Survey Finds That Students Are Bored in Class
With average graduation rates at only 70 percent (and as low as 50 percent in some areas), it's important to know how young people are feeling about their connection to school. This National Academies report finds that many students have thought about dropping out. It's based on a survey of 81,000 students from 110 public and private schools. Most students who reported boredom said they had little or no connection to the material presented in class, or to teachers. 

Heads Up: Leadership for Change: A Nation without Dropouts Conference (Fall 2007)
Communities In Schools, the nation's largest dropout prevention organization, will host a conference on youth development, education reform, and community-strengthening from October 31 to November 4, 2007, in Atlanta.

College-Ready, College Enrolled: Spotlight on Postsecondary Opportunity

Community Colleges and the Drop-Out Crisis
The latest Youth Research and Development Fund blog looks at an often-overlooked angle of the "drop-out crisis": community colleges. According to the Beginning Post-secondary Students Longitudinal Study, only 31 percent of students who entered community college in 1995-1996 with the intention of earning a degree or certificate had met their goal six years later. Unreleased research states that fewer than 10 percent of African American males with a GED who enter community college complete their course of study within six years.

Birthright: Access to College
The statistics can be staggering, but in the latest issue of Perspectives, Ray Bacchetti, Carnegie Foundation scholar-in-residence and former vice president of Stanford University, shares a more personal story of the importance of a college education to three generations of his family -- starting with grandparents who did not have the opportunity to go to college. An online forum allows you to engage with the author.

Sharpening the Dialogue: Engaging Policymakers in the Alignment of Appropriations, Tuition, and Financial Aid Policy
This report, from the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, examines ways to make college more affordable -- including appropriations, tuition and financial aid.

Access, Equality and Success in Higher Ed
"Big dreams and good grades" aren't enough to make college a reality for every student. The Lumina Foundation has several reports on the challenges and dangers of pushing college as a goal without ensuring access or tools for college success.

All Students College-Ready: Findings from the Gates Foundation's Education Work 2000 to 2006
This report examines findings from the first seven years of education work by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which impacts more than 1 million students. In general, they find that:

• Results will take root most quickly in new schools;
• Improvements happen more slowly at existing high schools;
• District-level commitment is critical and efforts must be clear and comprehensive to work; and
• Policy sets the context for school-level change and is a critical path to scaling best practices.

"College on the Brain" to Debut at Film Festival
What does it really take for inner-city students to get ready, get accepted, and get the funds to enroll in college? Students in Nashville's Stratford High worked with principal Brenda Elliot and filmmaker Molly Secours to create a film about the challenges and how teachers and students address them. The film will debut on April 20 at the Nashville Film Festival. The Forum for Youth Investment and its local partner, the youth organizing group Oasis Community IMPACT!, helped get the cameras rolling. 

• Read the Nashville City Paper article, Stratford Students make Brainy Debut at Film Festival

• Learn more about the Forum's work with Community IMPACT!

Foster Care Resources

"Change a Lifetime" During National Foster Care Month
There are some 513,000 American youth in foster care. These young people need - and benefit greatly from - stable, caring relationships with adults, and supports to help them transition back to their families or to adulthood. The National Foster Care Month partnership offers materials to help groups and individuals participate in the campaign. Fact sheets, toolkits, and a media kit are available on the Web site.


Sibling Issues in Foster Care and Adoption: A Bulletin for Professionals
Children who come into foster care or are adopted often are separated from existing or future siblings. This Children's Bureau bulletin explores research and intervention strategies, and provides tools to help professionals preserve connections among siblings.

Rise Magazine Addresses Domestic Violence
Domestic violence affects more than half of parents who come to the attention of the child welfare system, reports Rise. This issue of the magazine offers research, supports, first-hand stories, and tools for child welfare workers, families, and children who witness or experience violence. You can receive a free copy of the issue if you request it by April 20.

Heads Up: Six States' Experiences with Chafee Educational and Training Voucher Program
The Chafee Educational and Training Voucher Program gives states funds to provide youth aging out of foster care (or adopted after age 16) with vouchers for education and training, including college.  In May, for Foster Care Month, the National Foster Care Coalition will release a report highlighting the program's implementation in six states: California, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, New York and Wyoming.

Juvenile Justice News

New Map Documents Record Number of Youth Courts
Youth courts give young people (generally those charged with non-violent and minor offenses) trial by a judge, jury, and attorneys of their peers. Research shows that this positive peer pressure can help kids turn their lives around and get assistance before they're in too deep. The federal youth court program is running in more than 1,200 sites across the country -- that's a record.

New Georgetown Center for Juvenile Justice
Launched by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, this Center will support scholarship and information exchange on issues relating to juvenile justice reform. Shay Bilchik has been named to lead the center, to advance the field of juvenile crime prevention and intervention.

Youth Justice Campaign Launches
The Campaign for Youth Justice launched a national campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of prosecuting youth in the adult criminal justice system and reduce the number of youth tried and sentenced as adults.

Several states are working to change laws that automatically try youth as adults at age 16 or 17. The report, The Consequences Aren't Minor: the Impact of Prosecuting Youth as Adults and Strategies for Reform, examines research and findings, and makes specific policy recommendations for seven profiled states (CA, CT, FL, IL, NC, VA, and WI).

The RWJF Reclaiming Futures Initiative: Improving Substance Abuse Interventions for Justice-Involved Youths
This article in the Juvenile and Family Court Journal looks at early evidence of the initiative and finds it is improving the quality and delivery of substance abuse services for justice-involved youth. Chapin Hall has a summary.

Chapin Hall Juvenile Justice Resources
There is evidence that youth crime rates are starting to rise in some cities, after a decade of declines. Testifying before Congress in February, Chapin Hall Research Fellow Jeffrey Butts says it's too soon to predict a youth "crime wave." But it's not too soon to focus on early intervention and positive youth development. Read his testimony.

This section of the site has other great publications to contextualize the issue, and identify what works to make communities and young lives safer.

Act 4 Juvenile Justice: Statement of Principles
The federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) is up for reauthorization in Congress this year.  A new coalition is working to ensure that the renewed Act sets strong federal standards for care and custody of young people while also supporting community safety. Organizations can sign on to the Statement of Principles. For more information, email: info@juvjustice.org.

You can also visit the National Juvenile Justice Network site for more information on JJDPA.

Selected Tools for Youth Work

Clearinghouse on Expanding and Sustaining Youth Programs and Policies
The Finance Project and The Forum for Youth Investment together launched this new site. It currently houses more than 400 resources to help leaders craft sound policies to improve the lives of children, families and communities, and it will be updated daily. You can filter for data, toolkits, policies, projects, funding tools, and technical assistance. Take it for a test drive!

Tools for Measuring Program Performance
The Forum for Youth Investment has released two new reports to help youth-serving and community organizations assess the impact and improve the quality of their work:

• Measuring Youth Program Quality: A New Report from the Forum examines nine program observation and quality improvement tools and explains their purpose, history, structure, methodology, and technical properties, to help you decide whether they're right for your program.

• Building Quality Improvement Systems looks at assessment and improvement efforts underway in three networks, and provides a preliminary framework for thinking about key questions when planning any kind of program quality improvement work.