Youth Today: An Official Seal of Approval

By Karen Pittman, December 2001

The National Academies has released its long-awaited report on “Community Programs to Promote Youth Development.” Youth Today was at the unveiling meeting last month, looking for controversy. Did committee members disagree with certain recommendations? Were there statements or concerns that were squelched? Is there anything that the public or policy makers will find controversial or even surprising?

The answer, over and over again, was not really. The report sums up what research tells us about adolescent development and assets that support well-being. It spells out the common features of settings that support development: Safety, structure, relationships, positive norms, opportunities for belonging, skill building, “mattering,” and coordination with family, school and community efforts. It summarizes research on the outcomes of program involvement. It talks about what else is needed: More and better evaluations, better social indicator data, as well as data on program implementation and operations, and more supports for more youth.

None of the recommendations in the report are surprising. None are new. Most, quite frankly, have been said before by many others.

So why the fuss? The report is a good, if long, read. It is clear, thorough and precise. But it comes to the same conclusions that many a youth worker arrived at years ago. Should we be angry that a bunch of academics get credit for saying what practitioners have been saying?

Absolutely not. The field needed this report, and wanted it to do what it has done.

While on the road, I often state that the work done by organizations like the Forum for Youth Investment is to footnote common sense. The academies’ report does this big time. If we are smart, we will all adjust our reports, recommendations and footnotes to match theirs. We have an incredible opportunity to not only justify our work, but to link our lists, calibrate our measures, and talk the same language among ourselves and with our funders. We can quit squabbling about whether we are reducing risks or building assets, whether there are five promises or 40 assets. We can assess how well the research-based work we have done on shoestring budgets squares with what researchers tell us makes sense.

Where should the work begin? If done correctly, anywhere gets you everywhere, as Con Hogan, former health and human services commissioner for Vermont, is fond of saying. But here are some thoughts about leveraging this gift:

Start with the national organizations: The centers, institutes, forums and research and development shops that have fed the field a steady diet of conceptually complementary but linguistically unique models, frameworks and tools. Forget whether they were synthesizing or trailblazing. Let’s put out translation guides for the public that link the 5 Cs to 40 assets to the five fundamental resources of America’s Promise. No guide would help more than one that unbundles the Healthy Communities (Search) and the Communities that Care (Hawkins/Catelano) models. I’ve seen people almost come to blows over which is best.

Challenge the national and local intermediaries and the handful of researchers that have been carrying the cause for standards and assessment to come together quickly to see how their work compares to the academies’ report and with each other’s. They are on the verge of success. They should come along as we call on the academic researchers who are a part of the Society for Research on Adolescence or the Society for Research on Child Development, to make sure the academics’ discussions about evaluation have the benefit of wisdom from the field.

Double back to make sure that this report was broken down and translated for the folks who make policy. Update the opening language of the Younger American’s Act, check in with the array of state teams that are thinking about how to coordinate youth policy, and bring renewed voice to local coalitions and task forces working on after-school programs or community-based prevention.

Finally, let’s park our wagon for a while in front of the schools. The second part of the report talks about what community programs do for youth. But the first part of the report summarizes what youth need and what any good developmental setting offers. This report gives us the tools we need to talk with schools about how well we are supporting young people’s learning, well-being and development.

We can’t let this report sit on the shelf.
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Pittman, K. (2001, December). "An Official Seal of Approval." 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.