this article should be addressed to Sarah W. Freedman, School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. Electronic mail may be sent to freedman@berkeley.edu

graciously sponsored the survey, and Briggs McAndrews at NYSCOSS provided significant help with all aspects of the survey. Deborah Cunningham, Charles Szuberla, Johanna Duncan-Poitier, Nancy Willie-Schiff, and Joe Porter of the New York State Education Department (SED) reviewed the survey and provided helpful comments. Brenda Budka at SED provided the teacher certification data, and patiently answered our many questions about this data. Dan Goldhaber and Michael DeArmond of the University of Washington had a number of valuable suggestions on both the content and design of the survey. Willow Jacobson at the University of North Carolina, Pat Ingraham at Syracuse University, and Mark Robbins and Bill Simonsen, at the University of Connecticut, critiqued the survey instrument, and proposed a number of revisions to reduce length and improve clarity. We also want to thank Jeff McLellan, Kim Kirsch, and Bob Bifulco for their comments on preliminary draft of the report. We appreciate the willingness of Robert Strauss of Carnegie Mellon University to allow us to borrow from his survey on teacher hiring practices in Pennsylvania. Errors and omissions are, of course, solely the responsibility of the authors.

the New York State Board of Regents, and education scholars, researchers and policymakers from New York and around the country. By bringing education researchers together with policymakers, the Consortium seeks to address critical questions about the state of public education in New York. The Consortium’s mission is to foster an exchange of information and ideas that informs education policy decisions, assist education policy decision-makers in identifying issues that require initial or further study, and produce quality and timely research that contributes to the development of sound education policy. The Consortium is housed in the Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany – SUNY. Condition reports are written using education data compiled by New York State agencies and from data independently collected by the researchers. Consortium researchers work closely with agency staff to identify and analyze trends in school district spending, school staffing and student performance. The condition reports describe various characteristics of New York State's public school systems and also identify potential areas for further study.

Acknowledgements: This project would not have been possible without significant help from a number of

he idea for this paper grew out of a body of innovative work in the fields of high school reform, youth engagement, and youth development that has been funded over the last several years by both Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Surdna Foundation. The goals of this work have been to recognize and understand the importance of engaging young people in their own learning and in educational reform initiatives. However, despite the success of much of this work, the lack of a research base to support its efficacy has made it extremely difficult for practitioners (all those doing the work both inside and outside of schools) to advocate or raise funds for “youth engagement” initiatives in an education climate driven by empirical data and test scores. and experience of several experts and the authors would like to thank Jean Thomases, Peter Kleinbard,

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