The Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 16 national education associations representing more than 10 million parents, educators and policymakers, has named American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Executive Director Dan Domenech as chair of its board of directors.

For communities wishing to be named an All-America City this year, reading will be fundamental.

Communities across the country are forming leadership bodies to help improve outcomes for youth. But one group of stakeholders, the youth-serving sector, is often the least organized and least systematically represented of all.

On July 21, the Forum hosted a webinar on the 2011 Ready by 21 State Policy Survey, the first comprehensive survey of state child and youth policy coordinating bodies in the U.S.

RAND researchers Anita Chandra and Joie Acosta joined Forum staff to recap the results and answer questions from the audience.

Washington, D.C. – A new tool is on the way to help providers and funders improve the quality of out-of-school time services.

For those looking to turn Ready by 21 theories into practice at the state level, Chattanooga, Tenn., was the place to be last month. At the Ready by 21 State Strategy Symposium, convened by the Forum and the National Conference of State Legislatures, about 20 state-level leaders convened for two days to learn more about Ready by 21 and develop action plans to take home.

Just how does an organization increase the quality of its afterschool programs? In Chicago, the answer was to adopt research-based quality improvement tools developed by the Weikart Center, a division of the Forum.