Forging Partnerships for
Youth Success

Planning for Youth Success What do we want for our youth? Academic success, for sure. Not stopping there, we're likely to add good health, positive relationships, useful skills, as well as personal competencies such as problem solving, social aptitude, self-esteem, and respect for others.

When the adults in a child's hometown work together to foster these qualities, the child will likely achieve them. Schools, one of the primary agents for youth development, can galvanize such partnerships between the adults in schools, families, and communities-bringing all the assets of a community to bear on helping youngsters reach their potential. But how does a school bridge the divide that often exists between the schoolhouse, the community, and students' homes?

To help schools launch partnerships, the Laboratory's cross-program School, Family, Community Partnerships Team developed a resource and training manual, Planning for Youth Success. The manual outlines how parents and community members can work with school staff and students to answer the questions:

How do we define youth success?
How can we measure youth success?
What community resources can promote youth success?
What project shall we undertake to promote youth success, and how can we engage the community and measure the results of this project?

Planning for Youth Success provides a positive structure for members of a school community to set standards for youth success unique to their community and to create a project around a shared goal. Together, they can:

Identify characteristics that are most important for youth to be successful in their community
Consider ways to determine that students are developing these characteristics
Identify resources and assets in the community that will help youth develop these characteristics
Plan and implement a project to promote the characteristics, then evaluate the effectiveness of the project and communicate this to the public

While recognizing the importance of standardized assessment and testing, Planning for Youth Success provides information to parents and community members about the appropriate and effective use of these assessments, as well as other ways to assess students on the success characteristics they believe are also critical.

"Planning for Youth Success does not replace the current and usual ways that students are assessed and schools are evaluated, but adds information for a broader, more accurate picture of a school's strengths and areas for improvement and shows how communities can contribute to and enrich education for youth," say authors Diane Dorfman, Randi Douglas, Debbie Ellis, Amy Fisher, Elke Geiger, Kendra Hughes, Lena Ko, and Steffen Saifer.

The process outlined in the manual enables school community members to ask themselves, "What do we have to build on?", and then helps them to design a project that builds on those strengths with support from the community's existing resources and assets.

To order Planning for Youth Success, see the Document Order Form.

| Next Article | Front Page | NW Report Index |

Forging Partnerships forYouth Success

Forging Partnerships for
Youth Success