Youth Today: A Delicate Balance

By Karen Pittman, October 2002

There is a new mantra on Capitol Hill: scientifically-based research. The term is used more than 100 times in the No Child Left Behind legislation. But...

What exactly is scientifically-based research? Is there enough of it available to really guide policy development and implementation?

If so, will it really be used to ensure quality? If required, could it actually undermine quality? These are the kinds of questions that arise when policy and research are forced to occupy too-close quarters in the name of improving practice.

Case in point: after-school programming. The expansion has been helped by the fact that the prevention of almost every known youth problem can be linked loosely to the provision of extracurricular activities, organized youth programs, service opportunities or mentors. Giving young people things to do and people to talk to seems to cure a variety of ills, from delinquency to school failure, and to promote a variety of less-valued virtues, from volunteering to voting.

With polling conducted by Lake Snell Perry and Associates for the Afterschool Alliance showing almost nine out of ten adults in favor of expanding out-of-school opportunities, it doesn't take much research to convince policy makers to take a stab at filling the void.

But think about the challenges. Once the demand is created, who monitors for quality, equity or access? When the public call for programs is almost universal, research should help put the brakes on the bandwagon growth that strains capacity or targets places and populations for solely political reasons.

With state coffers emptying rapidly, research should help curtail the inevitable dilution of quality as per-child-costs are reduced to keep overall numbers growing. And when the demand for more youth development opportunities intersects with the demand for higher academic achievement, research should help us find the right balance.

Unfortunately, research on after-school and out-of-school programs is not up to these tasks. We have solid and varied evidence that after-school activities matter. The National Research Council's report Community Programs to Promote Youth Development confirms this. We have spotty but growing evidence that specific programs make a difference (although some would question whether this evidence is scientific enough). But we have only begun to tackle the much more taxing questions of why, for whom, under what circumstances and with what outcomes.

It is not clear how or how much weight even definitive research findings bear on policy decisions. This is not because policy makers have a natural disdain or distrust of research. It is because of the natural dynamics of politics. The certainties of votes, trade-offs and constituent interests outweigh the certainties of data.

But the findings are not in yet. It has only been within the past few years that public and private funders have invested in the development of large, "scientifically rigorous" studies of after-school programs that begin to categorize the variation across programs (e.g., in size, duration, focus, activities, staff/student ratios, staff turnover and training). These studies, undertaken by major universities and large research organizations, such as MDRC, Public/Private Ventures and Mathematica, are only beginning to yield results that can help to answer questions about quality.

Organizations like California Tomorrow have undertaken less rigorous but no less important work to answer the "for whom" question. It is documenting the similarities and differences in programs that serve predominantly African-American, Latino and white children and youth, and looking at why these differences exist and how much they affect outcomes.

But to my knowledge, there is no major research underway aimed at answering the politically charged questions of whether the heavy public investment in the elementary school years versus the secondary school years is warranted.

These research gaps make it easier for politicians to deliver Volkswagens and call them Volvos, leaving advocates looking for creative ways to argue for program quality, diversity and age coverage. But these research gaps leave after-school and youth programs vulnerable on another front.

Without sufficient research to create a codebook for building appropriate out-of-school time (OST) structures — ones that have enough space for those who need it, enough rooms to accommodate different activities, enough ceiling height and light to ensure quality space and enough floors to accommodate children and teens — OST builders may be forced to build to the education industry's code and meet economists' cost-benefit standards. The first requirement constrains form and function — pressuring out-of-school programs to not only produce academic results but look like schools. The second requirement, given the absence of hard data on benefits, may keep per-child costs so low that we end up with an infrastructure that cannot be renovated to achieve quality — once the research studies tell us what quality is.

Read More:
Out-of-School Time Policy Commentary #1: Out-of-School Research Meets After-School Policy. (2002, October). (7-page PDF)
The past five years have seen a ground swell in public attention and public policy focusing on after-school programs for children and young teens during the "risk" hours when safety, supervision and homework are of top concern. Popularly called "after-school," these programs represent a new and growing variation on the broader group of out-of-school time programs and opportunities that have been around for decades — programs ranging from youth orchestras to soccer leagues. What does research tell us about after-school programs? What outcomes are realistic? What practices are essential? What changes are measurable? How does the call for scientifically-based research fit into the picture? In the first of a series of policy briefs focused on out-of-school time issues, Deborah Vandell, a leading researcher on after-school programs, gives a walking tour of the research. Kerry Mazzoni, California Secretary of Education, shares her perspectives on how research influences policy.

September 2000 Alliance Poll of California Voters at www.afterschoolalliance.org/poll_2000_ca.cfm.

Community Programs to Promote Youth Development. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2002). (Link will open in a new window)
This report explores the role of community-based programs for adolescents, focusing on essential elements of adolescent well-being and healthy development, and offers recommendations for policy, practice and research to ensure that programs are designed to meet young people's developmental needs.

Off the Shelf and Into the Field — Making the Most of the National Council's New Report. Pittman & Yohalem. (2002, April).
We feel compelled to highlight a handful of concrete take-aways from Community Programs to Promote Youth Development that strike us as particularly important and useful to the field.

Community Programs to Promote Youth Development: Implications for Research, Practice and Policy. Report compiled by the Forum for Youth Investment. (2002, April). (17-page PDF)
A group made up largely of researchers interested in the youth development process and the potential for community programs to promote positive development, gathered together in April 2002 to mark the arrival of Community Programs to Promote Youth Development. The overall goal of the meeting was to stimulate more and better research related to community-level youth programs and youth development. Panelists shared their observations about how the report contributes to moving the field forward, identified opportunities for the research and practice communities to respond to the recommendations or otherwise align their work with the report and reflected on key challenges facing the field.

_______________
Pittman, K. (2002, October). "A Delicate Balance." Washington, DC: The Forum for Youth Investment. A version of this article appears in Youth Today.

Karen Pittman is executive director of the Forum for Youth Investment.