READY BY 21 Action Campaign

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Changing the Odds for Youth A Call for
Organizational and Community Leadership
Presented by Karen Pittman, Executive
Director, The Forum for Youth Investment

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American Dream All Youth Ready Every Family
and Community Supportive Each Makes a Difference
American Reality Only 4 in 10 ready, only 1 in
3 supported too few making a difference. Why?
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Fragmented Efforts
Outcomes
Ages
Settings
Supports
Stakeholders
Strategies

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The Ready by 21 ChallengeTo Change the Odds for
Children and Youth by Changing the Way we
Do Business.
Outcomes
Settings
Ages
Supports
Stakeholders
Strategies

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We Advocate for the Use of a Big Picture Approach

• Take Aim
• Take Stock
• Take Action
• Make Progress

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We Provide Basic Conceptual Tools Such as
those in the Workbook
About Young People How Ready are your Young
People? Whos Not Ready? Whats Behind the
Numbers? About Communities How Supportive is Your
Community? How Many Promises Have Been Met? How
Well do Systems and Settings Provide Needed
Supports? About Leaders and Change Does your
Community Have the Change Horsepower it Needs?
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We Provide Training and TA for those needing
power tools

• Program Landscape Mapping
• Program Quality Assessment
• Workforce Status Surveying
• Program Quality Improvement Planning
• Workforce Development Asset Maps
• Training curricula and Turnover reduction
  planning
• Public/Private Demand development
• Resource Assessment
• Community and Cross-System Strategic Planning
• Change maker/change structure coaching

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Wanted Fully Prepared Youth
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The Need Well-Prepared Youth

• The continued ability of states to compete in
  the global economy hinges on how well they enable
  their younger citizens to attain the competencies
  and social attributes necessary to ultimately
  fuel economic growth and contribute to the
  well-being of their families and communities.
  
• National Governors Associations Center for
  Best PracticesOctober 2003

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To Deliver 21st Century Skills Content The
Common Core of Ensuring All Youth are Ready

• Ready for Work
• Youth Employment Outcomes

Ready for College Academic Outcomes
21st Century Skills Content Information
Media Literacy Communication Critical Systems
Thinking Problem Solving Creativity, Intellectual
Curiosity Interpersonal Skills Self-Direction Acco
untability and Adaptability Social
Responsibility Financial Literacy Global
Awareness Civic Literacy
Specific Vocational Knowledge Skills
Subject Matter Knowledge
Community partners are calling for and
contributing to the development of broader skills
and knowledge.
Cultural, Physical Behavioral Health Knowledge
Skills
Ready for Life Youth Development Outcomes
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Too Few Young People Are Ready
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New Employer Survey Finds Skills in Short Supply

• On page after page, the answer to the report
  title
• Are They Really Ready to Work?
• was a disturbing NO.
• Employers ranked 20 skill areas in order of
  importance. The top skills fell into five
  categories
• professionalism/work ethic,
• teamwork/collaboration,
• oral communications,
• ethics/social responsibility
• reading comprehension.

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Employer survey

• How critical are these skills?
• 7 in 10 employers saw these skills as critical
  for entry-level high school graduates,
• 8 in 10 as critical for two-year college
  graduates,
• more than 9 in 10 as critical for four-year
  graduates.
• How prevalent?
• Employers reported that 4 in 10 high school
  graduates were deficient,
• Only 1 in 4 of four-year college graduates were
  highly qualified.

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We Know What It Takes to Support Development

• The National Research Council reports that teens
  need
• Physical and psychological safety
• Appropriate structure
• Supportive relationships
• Opportunities to belong
• Positive social norms
• Support for efficacy and mattering
• Opportunities for skill-building
• Integration of family, school and community
  efforts

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Do these Supports Really make a Difference?
Even in Adolescence?
ABSOLUTELY Gambone and colleagues show that youth
with supportive relationships as they enter high
school are 5 times more likely to leave high
school ready than those with weak
relationships.

SOURCE Finding Out What Matters for Youth
Testing Key Links in a Community Action
Framework for Youth Development
2.6
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Do these Supports Make a Difference in Adulthood?

• and those seniors who were ready at the
  end of high school were more than 4 times as
  likely to be doing well as young adults.

SOURCE Finding Out What Matters for Youth
Testing Key Links in a Community Action
Framework for Youth Development
2.7
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Providing these Supports Can Change the Odds
Gambone/Connells research suggests that if all
young people got the supports they needed in
early adolescence, the picture could change

• from 4 in 10 doing well
• to 7 in 10 doing well
• .

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Wanted High Quality, Coordinated Community
Supports
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National Research Council Report Recommendations

• Communities should provide an ample array of
  program opportunities through local entities
  that can coordinate such work across the entire
  community.
• Communities should put in place some locally
  appropriate mechanism for monitoring the
  availability, accessibility, and quality of
  programs
• - Community Programs to Promote Youth
  Development, 2002

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Education Experts Recommendations

• Paul Hill, a leading education researcher at the
  University of Washington suggests that

.. the traditional boundaries between the public
school systems responsibilities and those of
other community agencies are themselves part of
the educational problem and asks How can a
community use all its assets to provide the best
education for all our children? His answer
Community education partnerships Paul Hill, It
Takes a City
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The Challenge for All Community Stakeholders
Filling the Developmental White Space
?
?
?

• prevention to participation
• cognitive, social, civic, physical

school
after-school
At its best, school only fills a portion of
developmental space
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Who is Responsible for the Rest?

• ?

• Families
• Peer groups
• Schools and Training Organizations
• Higher Education
• Youth-serving organizations
• CBOs (Non-profit service providers and
  associations)
• Businesses (jobs, internships, apprenticeships)
• Faith-Based organizations
• Libraries, Parks, Recreation Departments
• Community-based Health and Social Service
  Agencies

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Why are all these stakeholders needed?

• All learning doesnt happen in schools. Critical
  learning can and does happen outside of schools
  for every kind of student.
• All students are not in school. Not all students
  who need to learn are in school (nationally,32
  do not graduate on time).
• All students in school are not learning. Those
  in school are frequently not absorbed in learning
  because teachers have not had to master the art
  of creating youth-centered learning environments.
• These are not indictments of schools. They are
  facts that have to be considered if we are going
  to ensure that every student is ready for
  college, work and life.

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To Provide Consistent Supports
across the settings where young people spend
their time
WHERE?
In the Community
In the School Building
There is increasing evidence that the
characteristics of good learning environments are
the same across the range of settings where
learning happens.

During the School Day
Formal Learning
WHEN
Enriched Learning
Out of School Time
Informal Applied Learning
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To Foster Initiative All settings have
equal potential, all do not currently deliver
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Wanted Cross-System Commitments to Quality
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The NRC Report Affirms that Some Environments are
Actually Toxic
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The Systems and Settings Where Youth Spend their
time
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Can we measure quality across them? Use a common
lens to assess systems and settings
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YES. If we get to the core of youth-adult
interactions.

• Point of service quality is the space where kids,
  adults and resources come together. It
  emphasizes the after-school experience from the
  perspective of the youth meaning that quality
  is defined in terms of access to key experiences
  by all youth in the program.
• Converging research suggests improving POS
  quality adds value in the most important youth
  outcome areas.
• High/Scope 2005

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Maintaining and Improving Program Quality
New Research, New Impetus for
Investments
High/Scope Educational Research
Foundation Point of service assessments
Engagement

• Make choices

• Reflect

• Set goals and make plans

Interaction

• Lead and mentor

• Be in small groups

• Partner with adults

• Experience a sense of belonging

Supportive Environment

• Reframing conflict

• Skill building

• Active engagement

• Appropriate session flow

• Encouragement

• Welcoming atmosphere

Safe Environment

• Healthy food and drinks

• Physically safe environment

• Emergency procedures and supplies

• Program space and furniture

• Psychological and emotional safety

High Expectations
Youth Centered Policies Practices
Access

• Staff availability and longevity
• Program schedules
• Barriers addressed
• Families, other orgs, schools

• Staff development
• Supportive social norms
• High expectations for young people
• Committed to program improvement

• Staff qualifications support positive youth
  development
• Tap youth interests build skills
• Youth influence setting and activities
• Youth influence structure and policy

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Program Quality Drops as the Expectations increase
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Program Quality Improves with Training and
Capacity Building

• Across settings, POS Quality decreases with
  movement up the pyramid from safety to
  engagement.
• The High/Scope research strongly suggests that
  best way to improve POS Quality is to
• Reduce staff turnover
• Increase training, professional development and
  on-site support
• Increase opportunities for young people to have
  input and share control

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QUALITY COUNTS, QUALITY COSTS, and YOUR
LEADERSHIP IS REQUIRED

• Improving youth outcomes requires improving
  community supports.
• Improving community supports requires adequate
  investments in infrastructure in the things
  that ensure that learning environments are
  plentiful and positive.
• This means redoubled commitments from public and
  private leaders to focus on increasing the
  quantity and quality of supports for youth.

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How do We Change from Business as Usual?
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We Need to Think Big
Incremental change can be easier to attain, but
limited policy improvements for children can
frustrate policy advocates and parents when
conditions for children are slow to improve.
Who Speaks for America's Children?
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Even the smallest communities have too many
initiatives
Civic Engagement
Physical Health
Delinquency Violence
Pregnancy HIV/AIDS
Core Supports Opportunities
Dropouts Illiteracy
Educational Attainment
Unemployment
Vocational Readiness Success
Substance Abuse, Suicide, Depression
Social Emotional Health
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We Need to Alter Our Response Set See a
Problem, Convene a Task Force, Create a Program.
Has created a tangle of inefficiencies
Childrens Services in LA County
SOURCE Margaret Dunkle
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Think Differently

• the more we focus (on narrow pieces),
• the more we fragment (the responses),
• the more we fail (our children and youth).
• C D x V x P
• Change Dissatisfaction x Vision x Plan
• The Harvard Change Model suggests that the
  likelihood of change increases exponentially as
  any of these factors gets stronger.
• But disconnected change efforts may actually
  dissipate the energy for change.

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Big Picture Vision Core Assumptions About Youth
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Big Picture Vision Building on the Core
Assumptions about Youth

• Big Picture Vision
• Youth-Centered
• Research-based
• Actionable
• using the core assumptions
• taking what we know about
• young people and how they develop
• to build our strategic planning framework.

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Take Aim on the Big Picture of Youth Outcomes
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Create Big Ticket Assessments Take Stock of
Youth Outcomes Using a Set of Key Indicators
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Take Stock of Public Private Community Supports
Using a Common Set of Performance Measures
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Alternative Keeping Focused on the Big Picture
shifting red to yellow, yellow to green
Big Picture Change Planning
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The Ready by 21 Roadmap

• Big Tent Partnerships that take Shared
  Accountability for a Big Picture Vision and
  work to develop
• Integrated Strategies, and
• Sustainable Change Structures, to achieve
• Big Impact Results

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Support Big Picture Change Makers Support the
Individuals and Organizations Who Are Trying to
Connect the Dots
Individuals and organizations with the capacity,
motivation and authority to work across
initiatives and entities to achieve a shared goal.
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The Ready by 21 ChallengeTo Change the Odds for
Children and Youth by Changing the Way we
Do Business.
Moving the small gear makes a big difference

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www.forumfyi.org