Document Descriptions and Links

One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities
By Paul Barton, Policy Evaluation and Research Center, Policy Information Center Educational Testing Service: February 2005
Recent efforts by the President, the nation's governors, and the business world's top CEOs have put high school reform front and center in the education reform movement. A higher level of student achievement is the prime objective, and rightly so. But another major objective should be dealing with the fact that one-third of those who enter our high schools do not graduate. This report is about this one-third of our nation who does not complete high school, about the fact that this situation has gotten worse in most states during the last decade, and about the factors in students' lives that are closely associated with dropping out of school. The report identifies several approaches to increasing student retention that evaluations have shown to have positive results.

Prepared Remarks by Bill Gates to the National Governors Association
By Bill Gates, National Education Summit on High Schools:  February 2005
Calling American high schools "obsolete" and "outdated," Bill Gates urged governors and business leaders to redesign the nation's educational system so all students - regardless of race or income - can graduate prepared for college and work. Gates delivered the keynote address at the 2005 National Education Summit on High Schools.

Ready? Set. Go! Getting it Done: T en Steps to a State Action Agenda
National Governors Association: 2005
The National Governors Association has identified ten steps governors can take to quickly put states on the path to redesign their high schools. These steps will hopefully lead many states to system-wide reform, so that "Redesigning the American High School" becomes a national reality.

Open to the Public: Speaking Out on "No Child Left Behind"
Public Education Network Summary of Nine Hearings: May - October 2004
Public Education Network (PEN) held a series of public hearings around the country in mid to late 2004, and conducted an online survey to gauge Americans' reactions to NCLB. The purpose of these hearings was not to hear from government leaders or professional educators entrusted to manage the nation's schools, but to hear from people from every walk of life - parents, students, civic leaders, service providers, and voters - about how NCLB has affected their communities, and what is going well or needs to be improved in the implementation of the law. This report summarizes the hearings and survey.

Massachusetts Work-Based Learning Plan
Boston Private Industry Council: September 2001
The Work-Based Learning Plan is a skills assessment document designed to help students master work place tasks. Students that are placed in jobs by Boston Private Industry Council (PIC) staff will benefit from participating in the Work-Based Learning Plan process. During this process, the student, the work place supervisor, and the PIC staff member meet to discuss the student's progress, and to set goals for further achievement.

Engaging Workplace Partners: Organizational Quality Characteristics
Framework and Narrative: New Ways to Work - Updated 2005
Organizations that do a good job of engaging employers and other workplace partners in their work share five common quality characteristics. These organizations are effective in bringing partners to the table as supporters or advisors and directly involving them as classroom speakers, career mentors, tutors, presenters, and as participants at career and job fairs. These partners also provide work-based experiences such as internships and job shadows for youth at their place of business and serve as potential placement sites for entry-level jobs. Effective organizations all view the workplace as a primary customer, maintain a strong customer service and sales orientation, target resources to the engagement effort, embrace a systems approach, and practice continuous improvement.

Engaging Workplace Partners: An Engagement Specialist's Quick Guide
New Ways to Work: Updated 2005
Engaging workplace partners is a critical part of building a successful youth-serving initiative and making real connections for youth. Engagement Specialists - those charged with the task of recruiting and engaging employers and other workplace partners in the work of the intermediary - have many tools to work with and people on the Intermediary team to help make it happen. This Quick Guide describes four easy steps to the successful engagement of employers, labor, government, community organizations and others to support intermediary priorities.

Workplace Partner Guide to the Work-Based Learning Plan and Evaluation Tool
New Ways to Work, Excerpt from the Kansas City Work-Based Learning Toolkit: 2003
The Work-Based Learning Plan and Evaluation tool is the document used in the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools to plan and measure student learning in the workplace. Students enrolled in internships or participating in service learning projects use this as a guide in connecting their learning at work to their learning at school. This Workplace Partner Guide to the Work-Based Learning Plan provides instructions for workplace partners on how to help students involved in internships or service learning projects write learning objectives. It also provides guidance on how to evaluate student performance based on those objectives.

Creating Quality Work-based Learning; Narratives, Frameworks and Tools
New Ways to Work, Excerpts from the Kansas City and California WBL Toolkits: 2001 - 2004
The Creating Quality Work-Based Learning Guide is an introduction to the principles of Quality Work- Based Learning and lays the foundation for developing any work-based learning experience. The Seven Simple Guidelines presented focus on the "must-haves" for quality experiences. This guide is part of The Quality Work-Based Learning Toolkit, which provides teachers with everything they need to create quality, safe and legal work-based learning experiences for students.

Quality Work-Based Learning: "Taking it to the Next Level"
New Ways to Work, Worksheet Excerpted from the Kansas City, Kansas WBL Toolkit: 2003
This one-page worksheet is designed to assist organizations in increasing the quality of any work-based learning experience.

New Strategic Vision for the Delivery of Youth Services under the Workforce Investment Act
Employment and Training Administration, US Department of Labor: 2005
Training and Employment Guidance Letter (TEGL) 3-04 was released on July 17, 2004 to all State Workforce Agencies and State Workforce Liaisons describing ETA's new vision for youth services.   The TEGL appears here in booklet format and informs states and local areas of the Employment and Training Administration's new strategic vision to serve out-of school and at-risk youth under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998.

Connected by 25: A Plan for Investing in Successful Futures for Foster Youth
Youth Transition Funders Foster Care Work Group with the Finance Project: 2004
This document is an investment plan that calls for government, foundations, community organizations, and individuals to mobilize their energy and resources with a greater focus on the future of foster youth and those aging out of foster care. This is not to deny the urgent need to provide basic protections for those in care. Rather, it is to emphatically assert that it is not enough to address risks and remediate problems; it is also essential to build on individual strengths and develop personal assets in order to help young people acquire the motivation and the means to be successful throughout their lives. Accordingly, this plan outlines five strategies aimed at helping foster youth to achieve economic success, which is a critical building block for future success in a number of fundamental aspects of adult life, including housing, family stability, safety, health, and social well-being.

Making the Connections: Growing and Supporting New Organizations: Intermediaries
The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) of the US Department of Labor (DOL)
Full Version
Excerpts Only
Recognizing the need for more effective linkages between the supply and demand sides of workforce development, DOL is testing a new organizational strategy - intermediary organizations - that is designed to align and broker multiple services across institutional and funding sources in order to improve employment outcomes for youth with disabilities. This paper provides information to assist states and communities that are involved in developing these intermediaries to conduct their work.

Barriers and Promising Approaches to Workforce and Youth Development for Young Offenders
Brown, DeJesus, Maxwell and Schiraldi for the Annie E Casey Foundation: 2004
This report begins by providing a brief history of the juvenile justice system in the United States, followed by a review of the existing research on the linkage between employment and youth delinquency. The report discusses the commonalities of promising programs, policy initiatives and funding approaches. Attached as an appendix to the report are (35-40) in-depth profiles of the programs and policies that were reviewed. These profiles will be especially useful to practitioners in the field who are looking for new approaches to integrate workforce and youth development. Additional information can also be found on the Casey Foundation website at: www.aecf.org.

Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG)
Youth Transition Funders Group: 2005
This site provides up-to-date information to the public at large about young people making the transition from adolescence to adulthood - with a focus on individuals who are out of school and out of work... sometimes called "disconnected or vulnerable youth.”

Locating the Dropout Crises - Which High Schools Produce the Nation's Dropouts?
Where Are They Located? Who Attends Them?
By Balfanz and Legters, Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University:
June 2004
It is hard to find a critical social or economic issue that does not ultimately intersect with the American High School. It is central to long-term health of the U.S. economy. It is vital to Justice O'Connor's hope that the need for affirmative action will recede within 25 years. It is paramount to meeting the 50-year-old promise of Brown vs. the Board of Education to provide equal educational opportunity to all. It is the missing cornerstone of central city renewal and a potentially powerful tool in reducing crime and promoting positive youth development. This report examines the dropout crises in the US and its relation to our inner city schools.

Ready By 21
Forum for Youth Investment: 2004
The Ready by 21 Campaign aims to not only help individual young people beat the odds, but to actually change the odds faced by countless disadvantaged young people by engaging corporations to join forces with key national nonprofits and public agencies to: Launch a campaign to change priorities for public and private investment. Each year, the Ready by 21 Campaign will identify and support a small number of state and local leaders prepared to make a public commitment to implement a Ready by 21 agenda.

Federal Youth Coordination Act: Fact Sheet
National Collaboration for Youth: February 2005
The Federal Youth Coordination Act would improve communication among federal agencies serving at-risk youth, assess their needs, set goals for helping them and establish best practices for improving services. The Act grows out of the recommendations of the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth, which found that about 10 million teens in this country are at serious risk of not becoming productive adults. However, the Task Force found that programs to address the problems facing these young people are spread across 12 federal departments, with little communication or coordination among them.

Elements of a Comprehensive Youth-Serving System: Frameworks and Narrative
New Ways to Work: 2000 - 2005
Five Quality Elements guide the work of California's State and Local Youth Councils, Foster Youth Transition Action Teams, ITOP Intermediaries, and other youth-service professionals and educators as they seek to serve special populations in the context of the "All Youth - One System" approach. The Quality Elements have been modified and updated over the past 12 months though a series of stakeholder meetings of practitioners and policy makers to reflect the needs special populations of youth, including those in the foster care system and youth with disabilities.  

USDOL Guidance to Governors regarding two-year WIA plans: Youth Excerpts
USDOL-ETA: 2005
The Employment and Training Administration issued a paper providing guidance to governors for the transition period to an assumed reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act.   The questions and guidance related to youth services have been excerpted here, and provide an interesting set of questions for intermediaries and practitioners to explore as they seek to provide services to special populations in the context of a broader system.