California Thriving Youth Initiative - Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund

California Thriving Youth Initiative - Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund is sponsored by Stuart Foundation, California Community Foundation, and other partners. This fund aims to transform California's education systems to provide adolescents with better learning experiences, ensuring they have the conditions, climate, opportunities, and supports needed to thrive in high school and beyond.

Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund - Stuart Foundation Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund Photo by Isadora Kosofsky/CatchLight An initiative to reimagine the education experience of California’s adolescents to support their success in school, work, and civic life.

By focusing on engaged learning, critical thinking, and purposeful transitions into postsecondary education, work, and civic lives, we can ensure that the high school experience prepares all California students to pursue their goals and contribute meaningfully to their communities.

Peter Ross, Managing Director, YTL Fund Many high schools in California are relics of the past, designed for an industrial era and never intended to serve all students well.

Yet innovation has sprouted in pockets across the state, with authentic and engaging instruction, attention to multilingual and other diverse learners, connections to college and career opportunities, strong community partnerships, an awareness of how AI is transforming the skills required to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s workforce, and other practices that create the kinds of experiences that we know help young people learn and thrive.

This moment has captured wide interest: high schools are eager to evolve, colleges and universities are rethinking preparation and admission, and employers are signaling the need for something different as they adapt to the ubiquity of AI. We share a vested interest in learning environments that equip young people with the durable, deeper learning skills that will be needed to thrive in this rapidly changing world.

The state’s unprecedented investments—more than $5 billion in community schools, dual enrollment, and Golden State Pathways—plus a new secondary school redesign pilot, have accelerated this momentum. There is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to spread deep, authentic, equitable learning to all young people across California.

The Youth Thriving Through Learning (YTL) Fund was built for this moment: to provide philanthropic support to research, document, translate, and share learnings so the state and public education systems can enact effective, equitable, and widespread policy.

Bringing together a collaborative of 11 funders in new and nimble ways, our unique role is to create the connective tissue to quilt and weave efforts across the field, aligning strengths so that the sum of our work is greater than the individual parts.

We work to strengthen the connections between research, practice, and systems so that promising ideas can be implemented, sustained, and responsibly scaled in ways that better serve young people. The YTL Fund is focused on: Sustaining and strengthening momentum for secondary school redesign to spread innovation across the state.

Advancing more meaningful approaches to assessing learning to better signal and measure progress towards the skills and knowledge students need in today’s world. Supporting the evolution of college admission practices to incorporate more authentic evidence of student learning and more complete measures of students’ assets.

Understanding how artificial intelligence is reshaping learning, work, and well-being and supporting educators, schools, and cross-sector partners to adapt in ways that strengthen human skills—creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and empathy—across education and workforce pathways.

As part of its broader effort to reimagine the high school experience for California’s adolescents, the YTL Fund has: Supported alignment and coherence among community schools, pathways, dual enrollment, and school redesign efforts statewide. Convened a working group of grantees crafting a collective path towards sustained high school transformation.

Hosted a summit of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners and facilitated site visits to exemplary high schools that included policymakers, field leaders, and partners across the ecosystem. Commissioned research studies on high school redesign to inform and support policy and practice.

Invested in research and pilots exploring how innovative assessments and portfolios of student work can be incorporated into college admissions processes. The YTL Fund hopes to continue this momentum to support the alignment of philanthropy, state and local public education systems, practitioners, and community members to create a California where all students thrive in secondary schools, in college and careers, and in life.

A New Vision for Adolescent Learning and Well-Being In this study, Sarah Fine, Santiago Rincón-Gallardo, and Michael Fullan examine the pioneering work of six California education systems—Lindsay Unified, Oakland Unified, Fresno Unified, Shasta County Office of Education, Monterey Peninsula Unified, and Anaheim Union High School District—that leveraged an influx of state funding to drive systemic transformations in secondary education.

College and Career Pathways Community Schools Impact on Student Outcomes: Evidence From California Learning Policy Institute This study evaluates the impact of the California Community Schools Partnership Program on student outcomes, including attendance, suspensions, and academic achievement.

Up Close: A Conversation on Learner-Centered Education with Katie Martin and Devin Vodicka Katie Martin and Devin Vodicka discuss learner-centered education, the California Secondary School Redesign Pilot, and reimaging school systems to help students thrive.

California and National Funders Partner in California Thriving Youth Initiative Multi-year collaborative seeks to transform the high school experience, expand opportunities after graduation, and reassert the essential role public education plays in preparing young people as informed and engaged participants in civic life.

Adolescents in California: Creating the Conditions for Thriving Stuart Foundation President Sophie Fanelli introduces Adolescents in California: Creating the Conditions for Thriving, a celebration of young people in California and the many and varied contributions they make to their families, their schools, and their communities.

Up Close: An Interview with Peter Ross, Managing Director of the Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund at the Stuart Foundation Peter Ross shares about the Youth Thriving Through Learning Fund, including its work to reimagine learning experiences for California’s adolescents and prepare and support them for life after high school.