An expectation for OYF Place-Based Partnerships is to complete the annual Collaborative Partner Youth Data Reporting (CPYDR) Tool.  This tool supports the process for the collection and reporting of summary collaborative partner youth data from the prior year by OYF collaboratives.  This includes providing:

1. Data from as many direct service partners as possible, particularly including large public systems partners such as school districts, colleges, and workforce investment boards.
2. Data that can specifically distinguish between young people that meet the technical definition of OY (or “disconnected from both work and education”), and those not technically disconnected, but receiving services to prevent disconnection.
3. Data about the numbers of youth being served, the numbers of youth becoming connected to K12 or postsecondary education, and the significant outcomes of those youth – particularly high school (or equivalent) completion, postsecondary completion, or workforce entry.

Aspen has requested aggregated partner youth data from OYF collaboratives since the launch of the network in 2013, and in the most recent year of data collection, over 80% of collaboratives were able to provide at least partial data on youth being served in their communities.

Understanding how many youth are being served in communities is valuable information not just at the OYF network level, but most importantly, at the site level, as it can play a critical role in making the case for increased funding, understanding who is being served (and who is not) by local service providers, raising awareness of the needs of opportunity youth, and coordinating the work of the collaborative.  As a network, understanding the total impact of OYF collaboratives helps us to understand our progress against the network’s goal of decreasing youth disconnection by 50% in 10 years.

Please note that  when we talk about collecting youth data, we mean only aggregated information on youth being served across all partners; Aspen will never request any individual – even anonymized – youth data.