Helping leaders support our youth

Karen Pittman, a sociologist, has spent the past 50 years working to bring research on how youth learn and develop, and how adults can support them, into policy and practice at the national, state and local levels. No small feat. 

As co-founder and senior fellow of the Forum for Youth Investment, a national nonprofit focusing on the development of youth, Pittman is committed to ensuring all young people are ready, by the age of 21, for college, work and life. 

Pittman is one of 22 education leaders who will be featured at the Next Education Workforce Summit 2022, hosted by Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, in February. The virtual event, which will take place over a day and a half, will bring together education leaders, practitioners and experts, and provide the opportunity to collaboratively redesign the education workforce. 

Here, Pittman shares how her work at the Forum for Youth Investment connects to the Next Education Workforce. 

Q: What is one thing would you most like to tell readers about your work?

Pittman: In February of this year, I stepped down as the CEO of the Forum for Youth Investment, which I co-founded with Merita Irby in 1998, to commit fully to youth development and youth success — in all communities and systems — but most specifically in K–12 education systems that are doubling down on their commitments to equity and excellence and looking for deeper, more authentic ways to leverage the power of all learners, all adults, all settings and all learning approaches. I’m doing this by activating a cluster of senior fellow and senior advisor roles with organizations and initiatives like the Next Education Workforce. 

The Next Education Workforce is a big idea. It's about teams of educators coming around students to deliver on the promise of deepening and personalizing learning for ALL students. What connections do you see between your work and the Next Education Workforce?

I see many connections, but the most promising ones center around the opportunities to redefine the education workforce. For me and my colleagues, that means not starting with calls for schools to partner with out-of-school or after-school time providers. Instead, it starts with the acknowledgment that if learning happens everywhere (which it does) and all learning is social and emotional (which it is), then schools and school districts have a responsibility to take a fresh look — not just at teaching and policy-related structural shifts to classroom instructional time — but also how to leverage the 50% of the K–12 workforce that is not in the classroom and the temporary staff, such as substitute teachers, who step into classrooms.  

These adults, and the settings they manage, are often discounted because they cannot replicate academic classroom experiences. They should be leveraged for the possibilities they can create for broader, lower-stakes, experience-driven, relationship-based learning that can: 1) help students feel more connected to their schools, 2) contribute insights to student success planning and 3.) help assure academic teachers that young people are coming into their classrooms from experiences that reinforce their confidence as learners.

People frequently talk about equity in education, and sometimes it seems they are not talking about the same thing. What do you think we SHOULD mean when we talk about equity in education?

This is a very complex topic to which I will give a very cursory answer. 1) The science of learning and development assures us that, whatever our learning goals for youth, youth success is enhanced when young people feel known, accepted, engaged, challenged, supported and guided.  2) Science also tells us that all relationships and contexts matter, and that young people carry positive and negative experiences with them across settings. 3) Equity in education, too often, becomes a math game focused on reducing between-group gaps in student outcomes or school resources. Rarely, in my experience, does it focus on improving quality and engagement levels as experienced by the students, or on assessing differences in quality and engagement experiences by race, class, gender, etc.  4) Even more rare are examples of where the learning experiences outside of the classroom and school are taken into account.

Enjoyed the conversation? 

Hear more from Karen Pittman at her featured expert sessions at the Next Education Workforce Summit on Feb. 2, 2022.