Request for Information on Strategies for Improving Outcomes for Disconnected Youth (Draft)
The 2013 President’s Budget requested new authority and funding targeted at improving services for disconnected youth. Specifically, the Budget requested a total of $20 million in the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services for activities focused on disconnected youth and a government-wide general provision to implement a limited number of Performance Partnership Pilots. These pilots would grant a select group of states and localities flexibility to blend and braid Federal discretionary funding streams serving disconnected youth in exchange for strong accountability for results.
Development and Purpose of the RFI
The Interagency Forum on Disconnected Youth (IFDY) was established in March 2012 as an outgrowth of the 2013 budgetary proposals. In the short-term, the IFDY was charged with identifying how Performance Partnership Pilots would be implemented, should the authority be enacted. Performance Partnerships, which build on a strategy implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency, allow states and localities to pilot better ways of using Federal resources by giving them additional flexibility in using discretionary funds across multiple Federal programs in exchange for greater accountability for results.
As a result, the IFDY, through the Department of Education, released an RFI in June 2012 to gather information on how states and localities could use the proposed Performance Partnership Pilot authority as well as existing best practices for serving this population. The IFDY will use the responses to the RFI to assess the best use of Performance Partnership Pilot authority (if enacted) and of other resources requested in the 2013 Budget for disconnected youth.
Process for Reviewing RFI Responses
After the RFI closed for public comment on July 31, 2012, a team composed of staff from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Department of Education (ED), and Domestic Policy Council (DPC) reviewed and analyzed the comments. The RFI yielded 171 responses from a wide range of organizations and individuals, and can be broken out as follows:
- 2% Foundations
- 4% Business
- 8% Higher Education, Academia, Think Tanks, and Education Consultants
- 9% State/Local Education Agencies
- 10% Local Government
- 10% Youth and Other Individuals
- 13% Advocacy Organizations or Individual Advocates
- 44% Associations, Community-Based Organizations, Non-profits, and Unions
The RFI responses identified a list of existing policy barriers, highlighted promising ongoing initiatives and best practices, and offered recommendations for effectively serving this population and administering Performance Partnership Pilots. In order to fully digest the responses, the OMB-ED-DPC staff team summarized the RFI responses thematically. The identfied themes include:
- Data issues
- Evaluation
- Interim Indicators and Outcome Measures
- Partnerships
- Alternative Pilot Designs
- Targeted Subpopulations
Download and view the full summary of responses by theme.1 (PDF, 15 pages)
Please send your thoughts on the RFI on Disconnected Youth summary to DisconnectedYouth@omb.eop.gov.
1 Please note that this document represents the ideas and opinions expressed in the RFI responses. It is not a policy document intended to reflect the policies or views of the Administration or any of the Federal agencies mentioned in the responses. Any questions on the RFI process or the Overview document should be directed to Annie Blackledge, Casey Family Programs Fellow, Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, at annie.blackledge@ed.gov or 202-245-7819.