ABSTRACT
The progressive beginnings of social science and policy attention on adolescents established a network of private and public institutions that supported research and programs for youth, a tradition that has continued. In this chapter I focus on the ideas about adolescents of a major foundation, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, which is an arm of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development existed for ten years and concentrated on supporting policy-directed research. I examine the council’s first and last reports as a window into contemporary ideas on adolescents and their education. The first report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century, appeared in 1986 and offered programmatic recommendations for model middle schools, which were subsequently implemented with Carnegie Corporation money in 15 states, involving about 100 schools in the United States and Puerto Rico. The council’s final report, Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century, appeared in 1995 and concluded the council’s work. While these reports offer a partial view of contemporary reasoning around adolescents, the efforts of the council form some of the most visible and influential work on youth in the United States in that decade. They offer snapshots of the contemporary discourse on adolescence.
