Just for Kids

In 1995, Just for the Kids (JFTK) founder Tom Luce, a board member of the Buford Foundation, wrote Now or Never - How We Can Save Our Public Schools, a book that defined his educational philosophy and outlined a preliminary plan for educational reform that called for broader support for public education. He expressed the need for school communities to unify around higher standards of student achievement and set academic stretch goals. He founded Just for the Kids to accomplish this plan.

Just for the Kids began leading school communities through discussions to identify school improvement goals. After conducting field tests, JFTK concluded that student achievement data should drive these discussions because without a common picture of a school's academic condition, communities would be hard-pressed to agree on academic priorities. By 2000, more than 1000 Texas schools had received training in the JFTK school reports.

Just for the Kids' key initiatives are:

To identify and investigate schools that show consistent high performance over time to learn what is causing their academic success.
To identify each school's potential by comparing its academic achievement to that of the highest-performing schools serving equally or more disadvantaged students.
To provide training in the JFTK school reports and best practice framework so educators and the public can use this information in their local school improvement efforts.
To provide information and training that enables foundations and policymakers to evaluate the impact of their efforts.