My name is Pam Larson Nippolt and I am a University of Minnesota Extension Youth Development faculty member who works on a team of program evaluators in youth development. I also have consulted with and evaluated programs for over 15 years. I have found a recently-released resource for those of us who evaluate and study community learning programs for youth that is both practical and rigorous – offering something for evaluators and program practitioners alike.
Rad Resource: The Forum for Youth Investment, with support from the William T. Grant Foundation, recently released a reviewed collection of youth outcome measures of “soft skills” – communication, relationships and collaboration, critical thinking and decision making, and initiative and self-direction. The report cites the Preparing Students for College and Careers policy report that “according to teachers, parents, students and Fortune 1000 executives, the critical components of being college- and career-ready focus more on higher-order thinking and performance skills than knowledge of challenging content.” In my opinion, the concise review of eight measurement tools does four things very well;
1) it names outcomes that frame the niche of programs designed to build youth learning in community,
2) it calls on those programs to align their activities with outcomes – an underdeveloped “muscle” of the youth development field,
3) it lays out the measures in an easy-to-understand guide with details about reliability, validity, and costs associated with the use of the eight measures,
4) it issues a call to action to advance the field by designing practical studies that are also technically sound, and by improving and advancing the measurement of soft skills.
This is a tool that should be on the shelf of every program evaluator designing evaluations for youth programs.
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