Thriving as the Measure: Philip Steigman on What We Owe the Next Generation
October 2026 virtual gathering for CTIPP CAN
For October’s Community Advocacy Network (CTIPP CAN) call, Philip Steigman, a Doris Duke Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, joined us to walk the network through The Future of Thriving, the project he convenes (see also: LinkedIn newsletter).
A century ago this country made a bet: prepare young people for an industrial economy, build public education around that promise, and measure success in test scores and diplomas. The bet largely worked, and those measures still tell us something real.
Steigman is that they were never built to carry the full weight on their own, and the world they were designed for has changed beyond recognition.
Thriving as the foundation
Test scores, diplomas, and the other attainment measures we track are outcomes. They tend to follow when young people have what development actually requires: steady relationships, a sense of purpose, real responsibility, and the experience of mattering to someone.
Thriving is the name for those conditions. Make thriving the shared public definition of success from birth to 25, Steigman proposed, and attainment becomes something our systems produce rather than something they chase. In his framing, we need to make thriving “our shared definition of success.”
What makes the case persuasive is recognizable experience:
A teacher who sees potential in a student who has stopped seeing it in herself.
A coach who gives a struggling player a role his teammates depend on, and he discovers that he matters.
A first boss who hands a sixteen-year-old the keys and says, “I'm counting on you.”
A faith leader who brings two disagreeing teenagers into the same service project.
Those moments build the capacities this country needs next, and too many young people get them too rarely, if at all.
Conditions produce outcomes, and relationships do the work that programs get credit for. The upstream move beats the downstream repair every time.
It also picks up where our September CAN call left off. Adriana Leigh discussed the problem of the doorway word, the language that lets people into this work instead of putting them on guard. “Thriving” is exactly that kind of word. It asks nothing of a listener except agreement that young people should do well.
Steigman's framework holds that none of these works alone:
Narrative Change. Shift the public definition of success from test scores and diplomas to thriving.
Common Ground. Build a shared understanding of thriving from birth to 25, specific enough to measure, flexible enough to fit existing models.
Training & Practice. Work with the bodies that shape professions so the science lands in preparation, standards, and continuing education.
Funding & Policy Alignment. Work with the people who write the rules and control the money so the same science shapes funding requirements and program standards.
Pilots & Learning. Test what happens when all of it converges in one community. Measure adult practice, young people's experiences, and developmental progress.
Leadership & Long-Term Capacity. Build a permanent home for the movement.
Why the coalition matters as much as the content
The advisory group spans the American Enterprise Institute and the Learning Policy Institute, from Governor Wes Moore's office to Bob Wise, the 33rd governor of West Virginia. RAND, Johns Hopkins, FrameWorks Institute, and the National Indian Education Association. More than 1,000 conversations across geographies and ideologies went into the framing.
That breadth is the proof of concept. Steigman pointed to seatbelt use and tobacco reform as precedent. Public expectations and institutions changed together, and what was normal in one decade was unthinkable in the next. A shared definition of success for young people is a bigger ask, and the same mechanism applies.
“We have spent years making the case that what happens to young people shapes everything that comes after,” said Jeremy Fierstien, CTIPP’s executive director. “Philip is asking the country to agree on what we are building toward, not only what we are working to prevent. Those two questions belong together, and this movement should be in that conversation.”
Comments