YouthREX Research Summaries ask Just Six Questions of research publications on key youth issues. These summaries get at what the youth sector needs to know in two pages or less!

1. What is the research about?
This research focuses on the pressures placed on youth workers and youth programs to adopt deficit-based narratives when framing Black youth to compete for funding. Deficit-based refers to a perspective that focuses on describing Black youth mainly in terms of ‘problems’, ‘risks’ or ‘failures’, rather than recognizing their strengths and capabilities – positioning Black youth as a group that needs to be ‘saved’ or ‘fixed’.

The study explores how funding structures and education systems shape the way Black youth are imagined and constructed, and how this influences the support they receive in after-school community-based youth programs. There is a particular focus on neoliberal education policies, which emphasize competition, privatization, and measurable outcomes such as test scores and graduation rates.

The study also highlights the complex ways youth workers challenge deficit-based views to create a more humanizing approach to youth work.

2. Where did the research take place?
This research took place at Educational Excellence, an after-school community-based college completion and youth development program founded in 1989 in an urban community in the Northeast United States. Staff intentionally hire youth workers who share the program’s asset-based approach to youth work and who reflect the demographic of youth served (primarily Black and Latinx youth from low-income communities). Educational Excellence’s urban context, reliance on private funding, and competition with charter schools made it a strong setting to study how race and broader education policies influence youth work practice.

3. Who is this research about?
This research focuses on 20 youth workers employed at Educational Excellence and their experiences working within a youth sector shaped by neoliberal policies. The participants were predominantly Black: 16 identified as Black/African American, 2 as white, 1 as Latina, and 1 as biracial (Afro-Latina). Five participants were men and 15 were women, ranging in age from 24 to approximately 65 years. Their involvement in the organization ranged from 2 months to 10 years.

“I think that we’ve really struggled with articulating youth development in a way that resonates with funders, because they want to know how many kids didn’t get pregnant or [are] not on drugs. There’s a lot of deficit language in the youth development world. … Funders want to know how many people did you save. And guess what? We’re not saving anybody; people save themselves. I believe that” (p. 462).

4. How was this research done?
The study utilized a critical ethnographic approach, which is a qualitative research method that examines people’s experiences within their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. Ethnography involves extended observation and engagement in a real-world setting to understand everyday practices and meanings. The researcher spent 13 months in the field collecting data through participant observation, individual semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions, three focus groups, and analysis of program materials and organizational documents. The open-ended questions allowed the researcher to actively examine the language youth workers used to describe and define Black youth in the program.

5. What are the key findings?
The research found that youth workers experience significant tension between their commitment to holistic youth development and the demands of neoliberal funding systems.

Key findings include:

• Youth programs face pressure to frame Black youth as deficient to attract funding, political support, and public recognition.
• Social and emotional development, such as confidence, identity formation, and empowerment, are difficult to measure and therefore harder to fund.
• Academic success metrics often overshadow the broader developmental work that youth workers believe supports young people’s long-term success.
• Programs sometimes reduce or sacrifice leadership and identity-based programming (for example, Youth Leadership Development) to prioritize test preparation.
• Competition with charter schools further limits funding opportunities for community-based programs.

Despite these pressures, youth workers actively resist deficit narratives by using asset-based language and practices that emphasize youth strengths and potential.