Integrating Youth Employment and Youth Development: Implications for Job Training Consolidation and Youth Policy

A Forum — January 20, 1995

A new report by the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC), Toward a National Youth Development System: How We Can Better Serve Youth At-Risk, discusses a comprehensive youth development system that does more that just promote youth employment strategies. NYEC believes that youth employment is only one benchmark of success on a continuum of youth development challenges, not an end in itself.

Three members of NYEC's board of directors discussed the key recommendations of their report. The question and answer period focused on the role of the federal government in promoting a youth development system.

Presenters

Erik Payne Butler, Executive Director of the Bay State Skills Corporation in Boston and Chairman of NYEC, discussed five key findings of the report:

1) Quick fixes are ineffective. Therefore, modest evaluation results are no surprise.

Policy makers must focus on creating a long-term comprehensive system that links employment preparation to development. In this system, youth must be recognized as having different needs than adults. Employment is part of the development experience, and must be connected to learning. Such a system must treat employers as partners, not consumers, in an attempt to build a system based on community. Elements of this system should include: a multi-year investment, providing different services based on needs (i.e.,by age), strategies to connect children and adults in some "long-lasting way," and ways of allowing children to do different things as they grow up. "We might [even] want to state it so they do progressively more challenging things," stated Butler.

2) Current quality assurance mechanisms in existing systems are inadequate.

The report argues for a system based on high standards, with the goal of long-term outcome measures. Since current efforts lack common definitions, providers need to get together in order to obtain long-term results. A system based on long-term follow-up and evaluation coupled with performance standards and benchmarks is needed.

3) Fragmented governance hampers success.

The current system is highly fragmented. A comprehensive system, based at the community level but built up to state and federal levels, is needed to foster long-term development and communication among all relevant players.

4) There are islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.

Strategies must be developed to connect these islands in order to identify and document best practices. This will foster a system of communication and lead to replication of the most successful programs.

5) Administrivia makes it worse.

There is currently no system which provides accountability and details successes. A simplified information network is necessary that has common definitions, is accessible to clients, and will both refer and track support services.

Butler is convinced that "a system could actually be built, but it's going to take a commitment to recognizing kids as whole human beings." The new Congress offers a "Golden Opportunity" to take advantage of consolidation and create this simplified system to promote youth development based on successful past experiences, not on short-term, quick-fix local solutions.

Russell Owens, Director of Government Relations at Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, discussed the critical importance of using communities as the foundation of such a system. "For far too long, the government and institutional structures have bickered over issues and not outcomes that are indicative of the public interest. All of our efforts are doomed to failure if we don't engage the local people in the design and implementation of our programs. We must take advantage of the interest and energy of communities to help youth."

According to Owens, through consolidation, resources can be combined and people can work together in a nonpartisan way to better serve the nation's youth. Today, "the first line of defense" for youth is the criminal justice system, and our first reaction is to lock up a child. This practice, according to Owens, must be changed. A comprehensive, locally-based development system would be a step in the right direction.

Joan Wills, Director of the Center for Workforce Development at the Institute for Educational Leadership, focused on what to do with the recommendations discussed by Butler. Although the Department of Labor has done a good job in promoting youth development, it cannot do the job alone, and must engage other parts of the federal government. She echoed many of the recommendations presented by Butler: creating youth development goals, getting serious about quality assurances, and providing different services to different individuals. She also proposed a summit to help establish these goals, pointing out that there is still time to craft legislation on youth development, and that "We can't afford not to still learn more."

Discussion Period

How to document best practices was a major point of discussion during the question and answer period. The concern was raised that current information clearinghouses go largely unused. Wills: clearinghouses are important because community organizations do not have proper avenues to share these successes with other communities. Better ways to organize and synthesize information, and to link the best practices with new and up and coming groups, must be developed.

A number of questions focused on how the federal government can create this new system for approaching youth development. All three presenters favored the School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the federal government's systemic change approach to youth development. School-to-Work brought the Departments of Education and Labor together for the first time to work toward a common goal. The presenters agreed that this act alone will not create the perfect system, but believe it can serve as the beginning of a youth development system, and is certainly a step in the right direction.

Butler: this Act highlights the critical importance of local communities in the long-term success or failure of a national program. "School-to-Work is encouraging because it requires local partnerships to come together. How we handle these partnerships will be the key."

The discussion also focused on the issue of developing a comprehensive system. Samuel Halperin concluded with references to the successful school-to-career system put in place in the Tri-County area of South Carolina (Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens), and how it took five years to build the level of trust and communication across counties and stake holders that allows the effort to prevail; "the federal government must allow time and flexibility for systems to develop and reflect this in policy and actions at the federal level." Local communities must "start the programs, and use the federal government to help build bridges to other communities."

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