Chapter 9: Just Quality: How Youth Justice Programs Can Inform Program Quality Efforts to Support Equitable Learning & Development Ecosystems

While working at HighScope Education Research Foundation twenty years ago,¹ we convened teen leaders and staff from out-of-school time (OST) programs across Metro Detroit and from Kalamazoo, Michigan for four-day retreats we called Youth-Adult Training Institutes (YATI). The participating programs varied in mission, catchment, size, and budget, and represented much of the ecosystem supporting youth outside the school day: libraries, social service organizations, museums, diversion programs, support groups, civic engagement, and creative arts initiatives. Participants from those diverse programs lived together at High-Scope’s camp facility for four days of learning-in-community. They participated in a range of activities designed to promote team building, problem-solving, and leadership development. The goal of the YATI was to prepare participants to experience and adapt positive youth development practices for use with other young people in their OST programs. These same practices later became the foundation for the Youth Program Quality Assessment, or Youth PQA, the training and continuous quality improvement framework created by the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality (Weikart Center; see www.forumfyi.org/weikartcenter).