Column/Article

Karen Pittman, Co-founder of the Ready by 21 National Partnership asks: Even if students graduate, are they really equipped for the next stage?

What do you think is the single most important thing that youth need to be successful? That is among the questions that the Forum tackled in a memo to the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs, which sought public comment for the development of federal youth policy and practice.

If you're trying to stay on top of budget developments in Washington, you know how hard it is to make sense of what's real, what's spin and where child and youth advocates can make a difference.

Every community wants to know about the hope, engagement and well-being of its youth, and Northern Kentucky is about to learn a lot more thanks to one of the Ready by 21 National Partners. The Northern Kentucky Education Council was selected to coordinate the national pilot test of the Enhanced Gallup Student Poll (GSPi), which Gallup developed with support from the Forum.

It is one thing for the poet Alexander Pope to suggest that “hope springs eternal in the human breast.” It is another for the leading pollsters to prove it.

In this article, Pittman looks at the recent results of the Gallup Student Poll.

“It’s all about the talent.” This is the conclusion that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other education reformers have come to after years of focusing on everything from class size to charter schools.

In this article, Pittman looks at what defines a teacher.

Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Forum for Youth Investment, the Search Institute and the National Collaboration for Youth responded to an invitation from the Secretary of Education to provide input into the Secretary’s Priorities for Discretionary Grant Programs.

May 2010
By Karen Pittman

Column time: I reached for the “recent research” inbox and pulled out five studies – three national surveys, two major evaluations – and started to read, looking for common themes. Good stuff.