The Campaign for Youth has developed a national strategy outlining opportunities for federal investment in disconnected youth. These two documents--the full strategy document and its accompanying executive summary--have been circulated to all 2008 presidential candidates.

A Collective Responsibility, A Collective Work: Supporting the Path to Positive Life Outcomes for Youth in Economically Distressed Communities by Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt. This paper presents a picture of risk and challenge for youth in distressed communities and outlines how these communities can band together to create a continuum of supportive activities to bolster youth’s success in school and life.

As youth grow and develop, individualized support and exposure to new experiences has a significant impact on their life trajectory. Youth in economically distressed communities deserve to have access to these types of opportunities, which are much more readily available to their peers in other communities. This investment in youth can have a positive effect on academic success, future life earnings, family stability, and the livelihood of the community.

This paper may be helpful in guiding a community’s thinking about how to get started in creating a sustainable support system for all of its youth.

CLASP facilitates the work of the Communities Collaborating to Reconnect Youth (CCRY) Network. The CCRY Network empowers communities to create effective, innovative partnerships among local youth-serving systems; and it promotes collaboration and peer-to-peer networking among communities across the country in order to share ideas, challenges, lessons, and best practices for reconnecting youth.

It's never too early to start teaching children big words. Teachers at Lee Academy are teaching their pre-school students sophisticated words, sometimes exceeding the vocabulary level of college students. A growing body of research and classroom practice show that building a sophisticated vocabulary at an early age is also key to raising reading success—and narrowing the achievement gap. Laura Pappano describes research-based strategies to improving children's vocabulary.

Today, a leading children’s group is praising improvements to made to the House health reform legislation that would guarantee coverage for children’s unique developmental health care needs. Read more from First Focus.

The Nonprofit Risk Management Center's 2009 Risk Management and Finance Summit is an educational event that draws nonprofit leaders from across the country who assist and support nonprofits. The Summit offers a time and place for nonprofit executives, managers and other leaders to network and discuss hot topics and trends that affect the governance and operations of their organizations. At the Summit a spotlight is focused on the topics of risk management, finance and human resources-three disciplines that play a significant role in creating and sustaining a firm foundation on which an effective nonprofit organization can deliver its mission. The Summit is an event for those who want to strengthen the foundations of their organizations, fine tune risk management practices, and thereby enable greater focus and resources to be devoted to mission fulfillment. Sunday to Tuesday, September 20-22, 2009, Austin, TX.

Last month the Section 8 Voucher Reform Act was introduced in the House. H.R. 3045 would streamline and make improvements to the Housing Choice Voucher program and authorize 150,000 new vouchers in fiscal year (FY) 2010.

A new report from the Center for American Progress explores how policymakers can strengthen the nation's postsecondary education program to help working adults who need additional education to get ahead. It suggests increasing class-schedule flexibility, offering credits and credentials in addition to traditional degrees.

By providing state Medicaid programs with $87 billion in fiscal relief, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is likely to be effective in preventing many large Medicaid cutbacks. Targeting 35% of assistance to states with particularly high unemployment rates, ARRA will provide more "bang for the buck" in preventing state cutbacks and stimulating the economy than did fiscal relief legislation in 2004, which gave all states the same level of help.

A bill introduced by Representative John M. McHugh would suspend taxes on unemployment benefits for two years. This legislation would amend the Internal Revenue Code to suspend the taxation of unemployment benefits for the 2009 and 2010 tax years.