UPCOMING AYPF EVENTS
2018 Halperin Lecture & Youth Public Service Award (Wednesday, March 21, 2018 from 9:15-10:30am ET)
The lecture and youth award, hosted by the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) and Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL), serves as an ongoing tribute to our founder Sam Halperin, who dedicated his life and career to improving youth education, workforce, and policy outcomes. This year’s lecture will be presented by Dr. Ronald Ferguson, an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
AYPF RESOURCES AND PUBLICATIONS
Forum Brief: Learning for Careers: The Pathways to Prosperity Network
In 2012, Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), in collaboration with states and regions across the country, launched the Pathways to Prosperity Network to reimagine how the education system partners with employers and prepares youth for postsecondary success. This forum provided an update of the work of the Network and explored how one state in the Pathways to Prosperity Network, Delaware, is building a career pathways system with multiple partners to serve an increasing number of students.
Webinar Recording: Supporting Students with Disabilities through Personalized Learning
Personalized learning has inherent benefits for students with disabilities, but there are also inherent challenges. This webinar focused on the emerging efforts to use personalized learning approaches to better serve students with disabilities, tools that are designed to help policymakers and practitioners, and strategies to help build the capacity of schools to use this approach.
Policy Brief: How ESSA and IDEA Can Support College and Career Readiness for Students with Disabilities: Considerations for States
Despite advances in improving college and career readiness for students with disabilities, there is still a great deal of work needed to help more students achieve their full potential. This brief examines how two federal laws, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), can promote meaningful pathways to postsecondary opportunities by ensuring all students are college and career ready.
Whitepaper: Afterschool and Workforce: Opportunities for System-Level Alignment
Employability skills like communication and critical thinking are among the most desired by employers, but evidence suggests a gap in those skills among young workers. To address this gap, youth development leaders, including those in the afterschool sector, have worked to provide high quality skill-building experiences inside and outside of the classroom. Similarly, the workforce sector has sought to narrow the gap by providing programs and services to help job seekers attain and demonstrate these skills. This white paper explores the ways in which the workforce sector’s goal of developing a better-prepared and highly skilled workforce is aligned with the mission of the youth development field: to prepare young people to succeed.
New Resource Hub: Alternative Education
As conversations among educational leaders and policymakers about alternative education continue, AYPF has launched a new alternative education resource page. Housing major publications and other materials, including information on accountability in alternative education settings, this new resource page offers a deep dive into alternative education.
Please visit our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/amyouthpolicyforum for video clips of events, interviews and more.
- Policy Associate, Jenna Tomasello, discusses the challenges juvenile justice facilities face when it comes to education, ESSA and accountability. Read More
- Executive Director, Betsy Brand, looks back on 2017 and offers this message of optimism as the New Year approaches. Read More
- Executive Director, Betsy Brand, provides the context for AYPF’s work and new strategic plan in 2018. Read More
- Executive Director, Betsy Brand, highlights the first of four AYPF policy pillars—career pathways. Read More
Click here to view all AYPF publications
Click here to view AYPF’s resource pages
RECOMMENDED READING AND RESOURCES
Check these out – recommended reading from the AYPF staff:
The Wallace Foundation: Kernels of Practice for SEL: Low-Cost, Low-Burden Strategies
This brief examines how “kernels” or concentrated strategies that target a specific behavior could be taught quickly in various settings to maximize the impact of social and emotional learning.
iNACOL: Rethinking State Accountability to Support Personalized, Competency-Based Learning in K-12 Education
This policy brief shares state policy recommendations and resources for policymakers who are ready to rethink state accountability systems to support student-centered learning.
iNACOL: Fit for Purpose: Taking the Long View on Systems Change and Policy to Support Competency Education
The purpose of this report is to spark conversation and provoke thought about core concepts that policy will need to address to achieve sustainable systems transformation to personalized, competency-based education. Additionally, this report explores and reflects on the ideas that state policy needs to address in the long-term to support a transformation of K-12 education systems.
The Aspen Institute: Opportunity Lost? Maximizing Large Federal Funds to Support Opportunity Youth
This new report investigates the ways in which the existing federal funding streams of WIOA, TANF, SNAP (Food Stamps) Education and Training, and Pell Grants are challenging to use and hard to combine, even when it would be in the best interest of the young person and the community to do so.
Annie E. Casey Foundation: The Economic Well-Being of Youth Transitioning from Foster Care
This brief examines Opportunity Passport participant data to reveal the education and employment barriers that young people often face when leaving foster care. Additionally, the brief also highlights effective policies and practices that supply the resources, relationships and opportunities needed to help these young people successfully transition into adulthood.
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels.
AYPF events and publications are made possible by a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Andrus Family Fund, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and others.
