The chatter of hundreds of high school students, teachers, mentors, and community volunteers fill the Lansing Convention Center in Lansing, Mich. with a hum of excitement.

BEST Kids is a nonprofit organization that provides one-on-one mentoring for over 150 youth in foster care in the Washington DC Metro area. We match caring and consistent adult mentors with youth to provide them not only the guidance and support they need to grow up, but also to help them navigate challenges specific to growing up in foster care.

Focusing solely on four-year graduation rates discounts students who may need just a bit longer to graduate and can further perpetuate the inequities that persist within and across school systems. 

We view readiness as a set of academic and life skills young people develop over time that supports their growth and can help them succeed in school, in their post-grad career(s), and life.

This story https://hechingerreport.org/a-cheaper-quicker-approach-to-social-emotional-learning/ was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality a

Focusing on academics alone is sufficient for young people’s success in school and life, we thought a good first step would be to review ESSA state plans to see how new accountability systems are shifting to reflect the high school experience.

On January 31, 2019, Child Trends released an impressive policy analysis examining the representation and coverage of the WSCC framework in state statutes and regulations. The report offers an extensive look at how the framework manifests nationally and includes detailed analyses for every state.

The opportunities for young people to do meaningful service and reap those benefits are inequitably distributed, just as are access to a multitude of caring adults, a healthy start in life, an excellent education and safe places to learn and grow. These are the promises that every child needs to thrive and we as adults need to provide.

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.