Same contract across places
The first release uses four identically defined 2024 ACS five-year measures. Margins of error and source universes travel with every observation.
← National pilot overview
Public methodology · version one
Compare the evidence. Preserve the boundaries.
The contract determines which records may support a national comparison, which remain useful only locally, and when the honest answer is not comparable.
Effective October 5, 2026Machine-readableVersionedNo composite score
Core rule
Similarity in labels is not comparability
Every public measure must preserve its geography, population, denominator, reporting clock, source, and uncertainty. Missing evidence remains missing.
Deeper without pretending
School, safety, diversion, detention, care, and reentry records can inform one jurisdiction before they become suitable for a cross-jurisdiction comparison.
Evidence readiness
Name what the record can support
Plain-language status labels describe the record. They never grade a jurisdiction or label the worth, safety, promise, or supposed risk of a child or community.
- Comparable core
Definition, population, period, unit, source family, and geography treatment align. - Verified local
An official local measure is clear but cannot support a national comparison. - Contextual
Credible evidence has a disclosed coverage or interpretation limitation. - Not comparable
The interface explains the gap and makes no cross-place claim. - Pending
Source inventory or definition reconciliation is incomplete. - Suppressed
A source privacy or reliability rule prevents public display.
Two axes
Protective conditions and institutional response stay separate
This prevents difficult economic or neighborhood conditions from being treated as evidence about a young person’s conduct or about an institution’s response.
Conditions around young people
Economic and housing stability, school connection, safety and wellbeing, paid opportunity, and family or health support.
What institutions do
Diversion, detention, adult transfer, care and education continuity, family connection, reentry, and meaningful review.
Expansion gate
External review before scale
Three technically complete pages are not enough. Expansion requires documented review by youth or lived experience, research, service, and local-data participants.
Official foundations
Sources that shape the framework
The Beyond the Curve contract remains its own public method while learning from established child-opportunity and youth-justice systems.