People for Education is excited to have two new papers to add to our Measuring What Matters initiative. And in the New Year we're taking Measuring What Matters on the road - presenting at conferences in Cincinnati and Chicago, an international UNESCO/Brookings Institute conference in Kigali, Rwanda, and closer to home, in Ottawa and Toronto. Stay tuned for more research, events, and public dialogues in the New Year. In the meantime, have a great holiday.

From all of us at People for Education:
Annie, Jacqui, Dave, Conrad, Megan, Laurie and Dan

Why citizenship education matters

In the 1970's and 80's, the vast majority (more than 80%) of 18 to 24-year-olds voted in federal elections. In 2011, only 39% voted.

In a new paper released this week, University of New Brunswick professor Alan Sears argues that the "weak and fragmented" state of citizenship education in our schools may be one of the reasons for the plummeting voter rate. He says that developing clearer goals and success measures for citizenship education would help to turn around growing citizen disengagement among young people.

Citizenship is one of five new domains that People for Education is proposing should be added to broader goals and measures for our public schools.

To read the paper and join the conversation, click here.

Strong school health programs = Long term success

A new paper from Bruce Ferguson (SickKids) and Keith Power (Memorial University), shows that strong mental and physical health programs in schools have broad and long-lasting individual, social and economic impacts. But they say that despite the evidence, comprehensive school health programs are rarely implemented and are often squeezed out by other priorities.

Ferguson and Powers review a wide range of programs and measurement tools and their findings provide strong support for broader measures of success that include physical and mental health.

To read the paper, click here.

Join the dialogue

Your opinions, thoughts, knowledge and experience are vital to this initiative. Please take at look at the Measuring What Matters site, and add your comments, suggest new research, or tell us what we've left out.

To join the discussion, click on any of the domain links.