Voices in Action: National Youth Summit

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How can we meet the President’s goal of leading the world in college completion by 2020?

ED hosted a national youth summit in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2011, to get ideas from student leaders.

Read blog posts about the summit and see photos.

Access the agenda (PDF, 504K). The summit incorporated technology using keypad voting to provide youth the opportunity to give feedback. Access a summary of keypad voting results.

If you weren’t able to attend the summit in person, you can now view the event’s livestream, but please note that these videos will be moved to the Department’s YouTube page in the upcoming days.

Background

President Barack Obama has set a goal that by 2020 the United States lead the world in college completion. Over the summer the United States Department of Education (ED) conducted a National Youth Listening Tour to engage youth in a conversation on what it will take to meet the President's goal. ED met with more than 1800 middle and high school students from across the country. You can read the National Youth Listening Tour Summary here. To close the tour, ED hosted "Voices in Action: National Youth Summit.

The purpose of the summit was to galvanize youth to shape strategies to provide pathways for all youth – those who are in middle and high school as well as those who are out of work, out of school and out of the mainstream – to be on track to achieve high school and postsecondary credentials. The summit shared what students have told ED to date, provided additional youth the opportunity to give input, provided opportunities to communicate their views and ideas directly to senior administration officials, and allowed students to plan ongoing youth-led, youth-directed efforts which will continue after the summit.

Summit Details