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At the approach of a high-stakes election, voter turnout is top of mind for many, including which segments of the population are likely — or unlikely — to turn in a ballot in the coming days. Low rates of youth voter turnout often take center stage in these...
What is one thing the country’s largest private foundation has in common with nearly every other foundation in the U.S.? The need for feedback to ensure it is implementing the smartest version of its strategy. In fall 2022 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation...
The back-to-school scene as I dropped my daughter off for her first day of school this year was delightfully normal. For parents around the country, recent weeks marked the first back-to-school season since the end of COVID-19 as a public health emergency, and this is...
This post was originally published in July 2022. We re-share it now, not only because its message remains vital but because it continues to be critical that we listen to what students themselves share about their experiences and their needs. In the year since this...
Americans love a good success story and high school graduation season lends itself to tales of exceptional achievement as each spring brings a predictable stream of articles with clickbait titles like: “High school senior graduating two years early offered admission...
Alarms are ringing about a youth mental health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, school shootings, attacks on LGBTQ+ youth, and a worsening climate crisis threaten the future of young people. All of this has dovetailed with an ever-growing pressure on students to achieve...
This post was originally posted on the CEP blog in March 2021. Foundations and individual donors need to reconceive impact in a way that puts hearing firsthand the experiences of those they seek to help front and center. If any area illustrates this point, it is...
I (Jimmy) pulled the brim of my baseball cap down and turned as far as possible towards the airplane window so I could hide my tears from the man sitting next to me in 22B. I don’t think I succeeded. How could I? I was watching Netflix’s new hit show “Heartstopper,”...
As foundations with K-12 education strategies modify their approaches to support COVID-19 recovery efforts, funders would be wise to gather expert advice. And, frankly, there exists no better expert on what works and does not work in education than a student. So, what...
Foundations and individual donors need to reconceive impact in a way that puts hearing firsthand the experiences of those they seek to help front and center. If any area illustrates this point, it is education. After all, listening to students should not be a radical...
What 20,000 students have to say about their learning experiences this spring is critical to the path ahead. Education in the United States, as across the globe, changed dramatically when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools around the country to close this spring,...
With schools gone virtual and live conversations with students no longer possible, listening to students can feel harder than ever. There is always an inherent challenge for teachers, administrators, and education funders in authentically listening to students, given...
In the current sociopolitical moment, in which many with less power (or those who have been strategically disenfranchised) find themselves struggling to get those in power to listen, there’s broad agreement in philanthropy about the importance of constituent input....
Last fall, YouthTruth sat down with Dr. J. Michael Durnil, president and CEO of Simon Youth Foundation (SYF), to learn more about how listening to beneficiary voice has helped SYF in its mission to help high school students who are on the verge of dropping out...
How can we better listen to, learn from, and act on feedback from those we seek to help? The topic of listening to beneficiaries has received increasing attention in recent years. CEP research conducted in 2014 showed that most grantees of major foundations were...
Funders care about American education. Foundations of all sizes, locations, and ideological beliefs aim to improve education and support young people, and, in 2012, foundations spent $5 billion on education. With all of this investment, don’t we want to know whether...
At YouthTruth, we believe that the best way to understand how students experience school is to go directly to the source and ask the students themselves. Since CEP developed YouthTruth in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008, we’ve...
What would education funders learn if they spoke directly with those whose lives they seek to improve? What would students say when asked about their experiences in school? In 2008, those questions were the driving force behind the creation of YouthTruth. Eight...
This post originally appeared on LA School Report. There is a growing, and arguably overwhelming, array of ways to measure school performance. Many researchers and policymakers say that we’ve been measuring the wrong things and, in some cases, I think that...
This post originally appeared on Education Week's "Finding Common Ground" blog. Education is one of the few industries, perhaps the only one, in which everyone has a firsthand experience and a valid opinion. That translates into lots of ideas from various stakeholders...