Policies and Funding

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.

As a condition for receiving State Fiscal Stabilization Funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, every governor and chief state school officer has agreed to develop statewide longitudinal data systems that can follow individual students from early learning through K-12 to postsecondary education and into the workforce.  This publication provides an in-depth look at the collaborat

States are struggling. Children’s lives, too often, are truly in the balance as states and localities decide where to make cuts, often sacrificing long-term investments to achieve short-term cost savings. And a new National League of Cities report, City Fiscal Conditions 2009, suggests that the situation will worsen over the next two years.

On August 12, the Forum for Youth Investment hosted a webinar on the topic of ‘Aligning Policies and Funding’. The session, part of the Ready by 21 Webinar Series, featured presenters from Austin, TX and the Finance Project, a member of the Ready by 21 National Partnership.

Click here for the 2004 Legislative Report highlighting suicide prevention, under health and wellness.

The challenge for the 1990s was to get youth development principles adopted into the mainstream discussions of what young people need, do and offer. The challenge for the next decade is to get these ideas embedded in public policy — not as new pieces of legislation, but as lenses and frames that guide policy analysis, prioritization and decision making.

Policy makers across the country have stepped up their efforts to address key challenges facing our young people.