Some Things Do Make A Difference For Youth

A Forum — May 23, 1997

Some Things Do Make a Difference for Youth: A Compendium of Evaluations of Youth Programs and Practices, published by the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), was provided in draft form to participants in this May, 1997 forum pre-release event. The Compendium is a reader-friendly collection of summaries of 69 evaluations of 49 successful youth interventions supported by government or foundations. The Compendium was produced to challenge the unfortunate belief that "nothing works" for youth and to provide information on the varied approaches which do indeed work. A list of basic principles of effective youth practice was derived from an analysis of the entries in the publication. These basic principles are: adult support, structure and expectations; creative forms of learning; a combination of guidance and rich connections to the workplace; support and follow-up; youth as resources; and implementation quality. AYPF invited several prominent leaders in the youth field to share their ideas on the state of youth policy and on how the Compendium can be of assistance to both youth policymakers and practitioners.

How Can We Help Young People More? What Do the Data Tell Us?

According to Andrew Hahn, Associate Dean, Heller Graduate School, Brandeis University its very important that we increase our public investment in programs for young people, especially disadvantaged young people, given current data on youth population, employment and earnings and societal connectedness. The youth population, after years of decline, is on the rise. There were 3.5 million 17 to 21 year olds in 1974 and 2.1 million 17-to-21 year olds in 1995, a shrinkage in the youth population of 18 percent over 15 years. However, the youth population of 18 to 24 year olds will grow by 21 percent between 1995 and 2010.

Educational gains have never been so clearly important to productive adult lives and self-sufficiency. Individuals with some post-secondary education and training earn 30 percent more than people without such training. Each extra year of schooling adds about 10 percent a year to average earnings. Among people in their 20's with less than a high school degree, only19 percent have had any form of training, and among those who had it some of it was for less than 12 weeks.

Hahn also sites a disconnectedness among American youth as cause for concern. While high employment rates help some teens, but the bottom third of the labor market needs organized help to connect and benefit from the economic upturn. Ten percent of American youth are disconnected for at least an entire year between the ages of 16 and 23 (not in school, not working, not in the armed services, and not married to anyone connected in these ways). These unconnected young people are primarily poor, lack high school degrees, are on welfare and/or are single parent heads of household.

Youth programming, and a smaller youth population, have resulted in some successes for young people including possible contributions to a national decline in dropout rates and a rise in the high school graduation rate for both white and Black young people to 87 percent (closing a gap between these youth populations). However, an increase in the youth population may reverse some of these positive trends unless there is a concurrent increase in funding of youth programs. A rise in the youth population may also increase negative trends (dropping out, low skill attainment, unemployment, drug use, crime, etc.) among youth, unless there is a large public investment in improving youth education and earnings and connectedness through effective youth programs and practices.

Programs Work, Policies Sometimes Don't

Gary Walker, President, Public/Private Ventures, Philadelphia, PA provides an overview of the employment and training field, with a focus on youth, particularly out-of-school and disadvantaged youth. He indicates that although much is known about what types of practice and policies work, over the last 25 to 30 years many policies have been used which are known not to work. There are three reasons this happens. One, Congress has a habit of not paying sustained attention to what works and not seeing youth policy as a serious endeavor. For example, the few major evaluations conducted during the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA) and of supported work and Job Corps in 1982 and of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), all show that short-term services do not provide long-term results. Each subsequent policy violated the lessons learned from implementation of prior policies.

Two, Congress cannot do it. None of the things that work for youth fit neatly into the funding streams of the U.S. Departments of Labor, Education or Health and Human Services. Coordination between agencies in large bureaucracies has not worked, so, Hahn says, we should quit trying.

Three, Hahn says, ALL of us have ignored the larger lessons buried in all evaluations. Almost all successful youth programs are run by strong, well supported and mission driven institutions. All youth problems are difficult and demand brokering between different institutions. Youth programs should not be run by organizations that have grown by "chasing after bits of federal money." Legislation has tended to create new institutions that run on these bad habits. They have weak structures and have learned to use federal funding, but do not build on it. A better model is a program like Big Brothers Big Sisters, included in the Compendium, which has a strong and lasting infrastructure. In this program, mentoring goes well beyond just placing a child with an adult. Training and screening and matching of volunteers and young people are extremely important.

Hahn adds that creating effective youth programs and policies takes considerable time and content knowledge. What knowledge exists, especially research showing outcomes and impacts for young people, needs to be spread to the youth policy field in easy-to-read formats like the Compendium. He suggests that technical assistance funds from a combination of federal programs be combined to create a quasi-private organization where youth practitioners and experts could collectively work towards operational principles that work. They could create strategies that get around the boxes and silos of federal policy and funding. The private sector and the military are, for example, often much better at running things. Funds could be used for developing sound institutions which can be sustained beyond or without federal support.

Youth Are Returning to the Front and Center of Policy Discussions

Robert Ivry, Senior Vice President, MDRC, New York, NY says that youth are returning to the front and center of policy discussions, especially the needs of youth lacking skills and lacking diplomas. The central importance of work, work skills and access to jobs is being made known. The youth policy world has many other examples, including many in the Compendium, which go far beyond the limited ability of JTPA to provide jobs. The largest youth demonstration project ever, Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Project (YIEPP), practically erased job disparities between white and minority youth. YouthBuild and Youth Corps have also been highly successful. The Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, CA has participants working on machines from their first day, the business community creates the curriculum.

Continuing contact with caring adults also plays a key role in youth initiatives. Mentoring in Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Quantum Opportunities Project (QOP) has been highly successful, as have strategies like Career Academies where corps of teachers stay with students over several years. Financial incentives and other forms of concrete recognition have been successfully used in both QOP and LEAP. Leadership building is a key feature of YouthBuild and STRIVE. The involvement of community colleges can create more stature for a program. A focus on career training is augmented by the use of education and training for upgrading and career advancement.

Ivry emphasizes that its important for communities to chose which and how many of these basic principles of effective practice - caring adults, mentoring, long-term services, financial incentives, leadership, career training - will be used at the local level. At the local levels, federal funding from a variety of sources can be used. For example, money for pregnancy prevention strategies could be used for the in-school children of teen parents. Justice Department funds could be used for violence prevention efforts as part of a larger program.

The Private Sector Perspective, Too Little Data

Milton Little, Senior Vice President for Research and Policy, National Urban League provides a perspective on how youth policy looks to the world of corporate philanthropy where there is a growing uncertainty that anything works for youth and where a lot of convincing needs to be done. A recurring question from foundations is why should we fund these programs absent data, particularly data on best practices. Too little high quality, accessible data is available. He finds the Compendium a very useful source of true information on "folks in the hinterlands are doing good work" and a vehicle to understand and know what they are doing.

Little asks, what do we do with this information on effective models? How can their funding be effectively sustained? How can local projects reflecting local needs and interests be created using the effective strategies found in the Compendium? He is concerned that many communities feel that "if it wasn't invented here, its not that good." Programs with multiple sites have to realize that imposing one model is difficult and often has to be modified to meet varying community needs. Local programs need high levels of staff training and technical assistance to ensure quality implementation. It is important to fund periodic evaluations and use these for continuous program.

The Congressional and Federal Perspective

Dwayne Sattler, Chief of Staff , Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, says we need to model legislation on proven programs, rather than at random, to ensure that money is being used properly and also allow for flexibility. While information on proven practice exists, it is often scattered. The Compendium helps bring this information together. It is often at the local level beyond D.C. where political entities share resources and information between departments and mold their unique initiatives with an eye to what works for their communities. He says there is a need for experimentation in the youth field and "permission" to succeed or fail. "We need to allow failure and help out the failures and not just say youth policy is dead."

Jeff Teitz, Minority Staff Member, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, said members are bombarded with two competing themes: (1) negative research findings of the past and (2) serious cutbacks in funding for youth in 1995 which need to be overcome and the increased recognition of the economic impact of not working successfully in this area. Teitz explains that Senators Jeffords, Devine, Kennedy and Wellstone are "senior students of public policy who have gone beyond common understandings and looked at programs for themes of success for the new legislation." These thoughtful Senators need good data so they do not feel like they are sending good money after bad. The Compendium presents exactly the right type of data at the right time.

Ricky Takai of the U.S. Department of Education and John Heinberg, of the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor were also asked to respond with their impressions of the Compendium. Takai cautions that many individual programs may work even when an evaluation of an entire initiative like JTPA or Title I may show poor results. Its important to ask whether some individual programs supported by some of those Acts work. Heinberg says the Compendium provides solid information in a useable form. He cautions that many different types of programs are included and readers should read carefully to differentiate "apples from oranges."

Further discussion of youth programming included a concern that youth programs are sometimes asked for a higher threshold of proof than other youth-serving systems, like schools. For example, if a school or university has a negative outcome, "we never destroy the system, take away the buildings." Youth programs must always fight for more. Clinton provided $4.5 Billion for college and $250 million for disadvantaged youth. Little says that more and more business leaders are realizing the seriousness of the need to help young people, as their own children reach high school age and bring home tales of how bad it is "out there."

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