Steering a Course Toward Effective Youth Policies: Dashboards for Youth

Adapted from: State Youth Policy: Helping All Youth to Grow Up Fully Prepared and Fully Engaged

Based on frameworks advanced by states across America and countries around the world, the Forum for Youth Investment has developed a sample youth policy framework to help policy makers and administrators bring more discipline to the challenge of ensuring that all young people are Ready by 21: ready by college, work and life. This framework, which is summarized on pages 8–9 of the full report, builds off of the metaphor of a car dashboard. If one wants to “steer a positive course “for youth, the first thing they will need is a clear vision of the areas of development they wish to promote. Then they will need a clear view of young people at different ages (odometer — which shows how many miles
a car has driven), how they are growing and developing (speedometer — which shows how fast a car is moving), the amount of services, supports and opportunities they are receiving (fuel gauge — which shows how much gas a car has) and the quality of these services, supports and opportunities (octane — which indicates the quality of the gas in a car).