Most Popular Publications

These publications are the most viewed resources on the website.

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20,688	Measuring Youth Program Quality: A Guide to Assessment Tools, 2nd Edition	Program quality assessment and improvement continue to be central themes in the after-school and youth development fields. In March 2007 we released the first edition of this report comparing the purpose, history, structure, methodology, content and technical properties of different program observation tools.
16,444	Measuring Youth Program Quality: A Guide to Assessment Tools, Second Edition	Program quality assessment and improvement continue to be central themes in the after-school and youth development fields. In March 2007 we released the first edition of this report comparing the purpose, history, structure, methodology, content and technical properties of different program observation tools.
14,890	Dropout Prevention Summit Planning Guide	The America’s Promise Alliance is supporting 50 state and at least 50 city Dropout Prevention Summits to be held by 2010. The purposes of the Dropout Prevention Summits are many, but the primary intention is to increase public awareness of the dropout and college-readiness crisis.
10,969	State Children's Cabinets and Councils Series	The State Children's Cabinets and Councils Series, a set of reports intended to capture and organize the decisions and experiences of more than 20 children's cabinets and councils and present them against an emerging set of expectations about what the public and policy makers could and should expect from them.
9,349	Building Effective Youth Councils: A Practical Guide to Engaging Youth in Policy Making	The guide is designed to help states and localities create or strengthen their own youth councils. It is a synthesis of theory and practice that provides a general framework for thinking about youth councils, explaining the principles for youth action and the importance of youth engagement.
8,407	Out of School Time Policy Commentary #14: "After School Grows Up: Helping Teens Prepare for the Future"	This commentary takes readers on a cross-country tour of after-school innovation – from northern and southern California to Chicago, New York and New Hampshire. In On the Ground we describe two very different school-based models in California.
7,931	Youth Today: Wanted: Youth Work Principles in Schools	By Karen Pittman, July 2008 Seven students recently joined me for breakfast in a windowless conference room in Des Moines to talk about “the high school dropout crisis.” They were experts: Five had dropped out. Another had come very close.
7,832	Out-of-School Time Policy Commentary #12: Unpacking Youth Work Practice	The Forum's OST Policy Commentary series is back! In this issue we discuss the implications of recent research led by Bart Hirsch, Reed Larson and Charles Smith. Each study helps deepen our understanding of youth work practice and can inform policy strategies aimed at developing a strong, stable, committed and prepared OST workforce.
7,579	Adding It Up -- Brochure, Rationale and Guide to Mapping Public Resources for Children, Youth & Families	Brochure: Offering the highlights of what a CYF resource map can do, and why a state or community might benefit from one, the brochure can help you make the case and spread the word about your efforts.
6,995	Out-of-School Time Policy Commentary #13: "Speaking in One Voice"	This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems, a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement.