Right now, more than 437,000 children in the United States are in the foster care system – and even more alarming is the fact that this number has increased by 10 percent since 2012 and continues to grow.

A new report released today, From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope, helps answer the question: “How do we as a country shift from focusing purely on academics to fostering young people’s social and emotional growth, too?”

How do you build systems that naturally incorporate physical and emotional wellness into learning? What types of conversations motivate people in different roles in a school community to understand that health is an important part of educational success?

America’s Promise Alliance, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and Peace First are partnering to create opportunities for more young people to be agents of change in their local communities.

Schools should foster an environment where students feel safe, trusted, and are focused on learning and growing. Making students feel as if they’ve done something wrong before they walk into the building diminishes that objective.

About one in 10 high schools in America graduates 67 percent or less. In more than 800 of these schools, graduating is a 50-50 proposition for students. And on average, nearly three of every four students in these schools are students of color.

Although racial inequity in student debt is a complex issue with no easy answers, education leaders and policymakers must take steps to reduce borrowing before students get to college, as well as to protect borrowers after they graduate.

Maybe blood will drip from the back of my knees, maybe the stain on my shirt will be seen, maybe God will come down and work this problem out for me and I can give Mrs. Smith all the answers she hopes to beat out of me.

Finding ways to better help young people succeed in life is a constant pursuit for communities, practitioners, and policymakers, and one that requires us all to take what we at the Center for Promise call a youth systems approach.

[Some] students report they are still being removed from their classes, even if those removals are no longer being called suspensions. By simply eliminating suspension without providing anything in its place, students aren’t given access to any additional support or resources, and teachers lose autonomy and control over their own classrooms.

Why does being suspended or expelled increase the odds that a student will drop out of school? A few months ago, my research team and I at the Center for Promise published a report about the impact exclusionary discipline policies have on students, which helped us answer this question.

Over the past few months, there have been a series of articles, books, and materials by thought-leaders both in and outside of the youth development sector that help underscore the centrality of relationships in a young person’s life.