TAYSF Online Research Library

New research is constantly produced by TAYSF’s partners and other organizations. Check here for uploads and links regarding the most up-to-date, interesting and relevant research about the transitional age youth community, service delivery in : education, employment, health, housing, and non-profit advocacy

SAN FRANCISCO YOUTH

San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development:

Building Our Youth for the Future: Strengthening San Francisco’s Youth Workforce System (2011) This report lays out the actions and accomplishments of the Youth Council of the Workforce Investment Board of SF over its 18 months of existence in pursuing its three goals: develop recommendations for the City to help youth obtain education and workforce experience, work with City departments to prioritize investment for youth workforce, identify strategies and mechanisms for improving service delivery to young people

CALIFORNIA YOUTH

California Homeless Youth Project:

Struggling to Survive: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning Youth on the Streets of California (2011) This issue brief is to highlight the challenges faced by LGBTQ homeless youth in California, based on an in-depth review of existing research and a series of interviews conducted with LGBTQ homeless youth and service providers, and also to highlight the policy recommendations found in the literature.

Sierra Health Foundation:

Renewing Juvenile Justice (2011) The report was prepared to critically examine California’s juvenile justice system, and to specifically consider the potential role of private foundations in promoting systemic reform through a historical analysis of California’s Juvenile Justice system and its current form through site visits.

EDUCATION

Corporate Voices for Working Families:

A Profile of Young Workers (16-26) in Low-Income Families (2011) This report overviews the characteristics of low-income 16-26 year old employees and how the characteristics can influence their post-secondary degree achievement

Council of the Great Schools:

Today’s Promise, Tomorrow’s Future: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Hispanics in Urban Schools (2011) This study attempts to pull together achievement data specifically focusing on Hispanic students in urban schools. This document provides a reference point or baseline data to ignite and guide future work.

Civic Enterprises:

On Track for Success: The Use of Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems to Build a Grad Nation (2011) This report represents the first national assessment of Early Warning Systems (EWS) at the district, state, and national levels. It shares evidence from the latest research and best practices from the field so that parents, educators, administrators, business leaders, and legislators can be better equipped to keep children on track to graduate high school, prepared for college and career success.

Jobs for the Future:

Dollars and Sense: How “Career First” Programs Like Year Up Benefit Youth and Employers (2010) Explains the continued corporate participation in the Year Up-organized internships for low-skill, low educated youth, and the positive professional outcomes for youth participants. It also looks at how this “career first” model that encourages more employer involvement in career and training programs.

From Remediation to Acceleration: Early Lessons from Two Philadelphia Back on Track Schools (2011) This brief explores how the two pilot Accelerated Schools working with Jobs for the Future and the City of Philadelphia, revamped their instruction, the level of commitment required to sustain these practices, and the early lessons that emerged about adapting these instructional strategies in a “Back on Track” setting.

Mobilizing a Cross-Sector Collaborative for Systemic Change (2010) Jobs for the Future highlights a Philadelphia initiative to address and reverse the city high school dropout rate

 

 

Six Pillars of Effective Dropout Retention and Recovery (2010) This report is intended to help states evaluate each state’s dropout prevention and recovery policies to determine how well they currently support innovation for better student outcomes. It identifies six “model policy elements” that frame a legislative strategy for dropout prevention and recovery and assesses the extent to which recent state policy aligns with these model elements.

The Education Fund:

Priced Out: How the Wrong Financial-Aid Policies Hurt Low-Income Students (June 2011) Using Spring 2010 data from the U.S. Dep’t of Ed., the Education Trust analyzed the extent to the growing unaffordable cost of college for low-income students, and the insufficient financial-aid policies that are exacerbating the problem.

MDRC:

 

Building a Learning Agenda Around Disconnected Youth (2010) MDRC’s review of literature and site visits on how to reconnect high school drop outs to post-secondary education and employment, focusing on GED programs

 

 

National Collaboration For Youth:

The Impact of Youth Development Programs On Student Academic Achievement (2011) provides research of youth serving organizations outside of education institutions that have an underappreciated critical expertise to contribute to improving academic outcomes for American students.

National Youth Employment Coalition:

Building Roads to Success: Key Considerations for Communities and States Reconnecting Youth to Education (2011) This report cites organizations, including TAYSF, as a promising collaboration model to reconnect young adults with education.

 

Philadelphia City Council:

Multiple Pathways to Graduation White Paper (2008) Philadelphia Council’s recommendations to implementing multiple pathways for struggling students, disciplinary youth, and out-of-school youth.

Chapin Hall:

Midwest Evaluation of Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Outcomes at Age 21 (2007) Chapin Hall’s seminal findings that former foster youth whose services were extended to age 21 in the Midwest experienced a significant drop in the rates of homelessness, unemployment, unplanned pregnancy, and incarceration.

Harvard Graduate School in Education:

Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century (2011) This report contends that our national strategy for education and youth development has been too narrowly focused on an academic, classroom-based approach. The report advocates development of a comprehensive pathways network to serve youth in high school and beyond, based on three essential elements: develop a broader vision of school reform, ask nation’s employers to play a greatly expanded role, develop a new social compact between society and our young people.

University of California, Los Angeles

Dropout Prevention: Do Districts Pursue Best Practice Recommendations? (2011) This report focuses on the reality that the dropout situation is unlikely to improve as long as policy and practice fail to ensure students have a comprehensive system of student and learning supports. To highlight the intervention problem, the emphasis is on first comparing federal practice guidance recommendations for addressing the dropout problem with data about what schools are doing; then, stresses the need to embed dropout prevention into development of a unified and comprehensive component for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students at every school.

NON-PROFIT & ADVOCACY TOOLKITS

Child Welfare League of America:

Best Practice Guidelines for Serving LGBT Youth in Out-of-Home Care (2006) The report the social conditions of LGBT system involvement, the needs of the population, and gives direction to public agencies responsible for the care of LGBT youth in child welfare and juvenile justice out-of-home care.

National League of Cities:

Beyond City Limits: Cross-System Collaboration to Reengage Disconnected Youth (2007) This report describes how eight different cities have launched cross-system initiatives and waht they have accomplished through these new collaborations.

Municipal Action Guide: Supporting Foster Youth Transitions to Adulthood (2009) The National League of Cities provides research on trends in American cities and offers suggestions. The Municipal Action Guides provide helpful background information on various topics and provides more of a policy format.

The State of City Leadership for Children and Families (2009) The YEF Institute’s first-ever report on The State of City Leadership for Children and Families identifies the nation’s most cutting-edge city strategies to help children and families thrive.  A chapter on supporting youth in transition highlights the broad range of innovations and trends in municipal leadership.

The National Youth Law Center:

Improving Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System This report presents the organizational premises of the Alameda County established its own Juvenile Mental Health Court, called the Alameda County Juvenile Collaborative Court (ACJC), as well as the factors that control admission into the Court and the demographics of the youths who participate, what the participants have to say about the Court, and compares the Court’s results with its founders’ intent. Finally, the authors recommend improvements and examine the prospects for sustaining the Court at its current service level and expanding it to reach more youths.

The Forum On Youth Investment:

Don’t Stop Collaborating, Just Stop Creating New Collaboratives (2011) compiles seven recommendations for cities and communities to better utilize collaborations, councils, and task forces to serve youth, complemented by promising examples from the field.

Public/Private Ventures:

Priorities for a New Decade: Making (More) Social Programs Work (Better) (2011) provides recommendations in this report for ways to increase program quality and effectiveness through improving the practices in current program evaluation industry.

 

The Youth Transition Funders Group:

Talking About Youth Transitions (2009) The Youth Transition Funders Group highlights ways that transitional age youth organizations and advocates can be on point with message, talking points, and media efficiently and effectively.

 

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

American Youth Policy Forum

Key Considerations for Serving Disconnected Youth (July 2011)
This paper provides a description of the youth population that is disconnected from education and the workforce and describes a set of key considerations for improving outcomes for this population. Programmatic examples that demonstrate how effective supports for youth look in practice are discussed. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for serving youth at the federal, state and local levels.

The Adolescent Brain: New Research and its Implications for Young People Transitioning From Foster Care (2011)
The report reviews new findings in the field of neuroscience that reveals that in adolescence the brain experiences a period of major development comparable to that of early childhood. Based on this new data, this report lists a series of recommendations for service providers working with older youth in foster care in order for adolescents to move through emerging adulthood and become healthy, connected, and productive adults.

MDRC

Staying on Course: Three-year Results from the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Evaluation (2011) This report presents results from a rigorous evaluation of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, an intensive residential program that aims to “reclaim the lives of at-risk youth” who have dropped out, in which MDRC surveyed about 1,200 young people in the program and control groups an average of three years after they entered the study.

 

Nat’l Research Center for Youth Development

Transition Planning with Adolescents: A Review of Principles and Practices Across Systems (2010) This report is a collection of literature and review of best practices across child welfare systems consolidates through a series of recommendations for improved transition planning that is cognizant of adolescent development.

OTHER SOURCES

Child Welfare Dynamic Reporting System This data is pulled quarterly from the California Department of Social Services on child welfare and juvenile probation info, broken down by county

FindYouthInfo.gov This federal Web site provide interactive tools and other resources to help youth-serving organizations and community partnerships plan, implement, and participate in effective programs for youth

Fostering Connections Resource Center This online database provides state and local government, and service providers with academic reports, programmatic guidelines, and best practices to implement the federal law Fostering Connections Act of 2008

National Collaboration for Youth (NCY) The NCY coalition of national organizations committed to advocating on behalf of youth and research-driven “positive youth development.”

Youth Development and Research Fund This website offeres training products and research to improve the lives of at-risk youth via changes in policy and improving professional competency of youth service providers

If you would like to see your agency’s or a partner’s research here, send a blurb and URL to Justin@taysf.org with “resource library” in subject line