Since 1995, Dr. Scales has been Senior Fellow with Search Institute, and since moving to part-time status in 2016, a consultant on positive youth development research, policy, and programs. Over his distinguished career of more than 45 years, he has conducted numerous national and international research studies on child and adolescent development, and development of effective schools and healthy communities for young people. His studies have included:
- Landmark studies of the politics of sex education in 23 U.S. communities, and the effects of sexuality education programs (both for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control);
- The largest study ever conducted of teacher preparation for teaching young adolescents (with National Middle School Association);
- A national study of community service and service-learning in U.S. public schools (with National Youth Leadership Council, and Westat);
- A national study for the America’s Promise Alliance on how much 6-17 year olds experience 5 key “promises,” including effective education (with Child Trends and the Gallup Organization);
- A national study of America’s 15 year olds, examining how their relationships, opportunities, and deep personal interests or sparks are linked to well-being;
- National and local studies that were foundational in defining the field of adolescent thriving or optimal development, conducted in partnership with Harris Interactive, the Gallup Organization, Stanford and Tufts Universities, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the Thrive Foundation;
- A national study of developmental relationships and well-being among American families with children ages 3-13;
- A global study of youth spiritual development in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa, conducted for the Templeton Foundation;
- Studies of positive youth development in more than 30 countries worldwide, for the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Vision International, and Save the Children; and
- Studies of of how developmental relationships with teachers can fuel students’ motivation and reduce racial and socioeconomic inequities in school achievement, under prestigious grants from the Spencer Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences.
He was principal or co-developer of all major Search Institute surveys since 1995, including surveys on:
• School climate
• Student recognition
• Student motivation and perseverance
• Developmental relationships in families and schools
• Developmental assets of children, youth, and young adults in families, schools, and communities
• Out-of-school-time program quality
• Youth thriving
• Youth empowerment and voice
• Youth spiritual development
Before joining Search Institute in 1995, from 1989-1995 Dr. Scales was Deputy Director and Director of National Initiatives for the Center for Early Adolescence, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1993-1998, after moving to St. Louis to get married, he also was an Adjunct Professor of Psychology with Saint Louis University. During these years, he conducted significant research on teacher preparation for the middle grades, and advocated nationally for the developmental needs of young adolescents ages 10-15. For his efforts, in 1999, he was named one of the “Pioneers and Giants of Middle Level Education.”.
In the mid-late 1980s, he was Executive Director of the Anchorage Center for Families, Anchorage, Alaska, in which his advocacy efforts led to the state’s largest school district, Anchorage, banning corporal punishment in schools. He also served as Chair of Governor Steve Cowper’s Commission on Children and Youth, a body of citizens, state officials, and state legislators. In the latter capacity, he spearheaded efforts which in a time of state budget cuts succeeded in securing $20 million in new funding for children’s programs in Alaska and a heightened statewide priority for children’s issues. His work in these years led to the Association of Advocates for Children naming him one of America’s Visionaries for Children.
In the early 1980s, Dr. Scales was National Director of Education for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, New York City. He provided intellectual leadership for more than 190 affiliate education programs across the country. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was was widely known as a spokesperson for comprehensive sexuality education, appearing frequently in national media and in debates with those opposing sexuality education in the schools. Prior to his time in New York City, he was Director of the Colorado Adolescent Health Task Force in Denver, preparing a report to Gov. Dick Lamm that produced groundbreaking changes in how the state approached adolescent health. This initiative was the first of its kind in the nation and has been recognized by the federal Division of Maternal and Child Health as a “special program of regional and national significance.”
In the late 1970s, he was a Senior Social Scientist with the Mathtech Social Science Group, Bethesda, Maryland, a division of Mathematica. He was a senior member of the research team that, under a series of Centers for Disease Control grants, conducted the most extensive studies ever of U.S. sexuality education programs. His initial professional position was as Research Director of Syracuse University’s pioneering Institute for Family Research and Education, Syracuse, New York, where he worked from 1974-1977. During those years, he co-authored The Sexual Adolescent: Communicating with Teenagers About Sex, which became a standard reference on adolescent sexuality. These efforts, and his later work leading the education efforts of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, were instrumental in protecting and expanding comprehensive sexuality education programs in America, programs which decades later have been widely credited with contributing significantly to the reduction of the teenage pregnancy rate in the United States.
Dr. Scales has been a consultant and keynote speech-maker for more than 250 organizations including:
• National Governors’ Association
• American School Health Association
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• Association of Child Advocates
• Public/Private Ventures
• Children’s Television Workshop
• National Conference of State Legislatures
• National Council on Family Relations
• National Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting
• Ounce of Prevention Fund
• American Camp Association
• U. S. Catholic Conference
• YMCA of the USA
• Carter Presidential Center
Board and Editorial Service has included Chair of Alaska Governor’s Commission on Children and Youth, National Center for Service Learning in Early Adolescence, National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health, and the Freedom to Read Foundation Board of Trustees.
Has served as Consulting Editor for Family Relations, the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, Child Welfare, and Middle School Journal, and has been a manuscript reviewer for dozens of journals, including Developmental Psychology, Pediatrics, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, Youth & Society, the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, and Applied Developmental Science. Guest editor for November 1993 Journal of Health Education issue, “Addressing the Health Education Needs of Young Adolescents,” and guest contributing editor for Winter 1997 The Generator–Journal of Service-learning and Service Leadership, on service-learning and school reform.
Honors and Distinctions
Numerous grants. He has received education-related grants from the Spencer Foundation and U.S. Institute for Education Sciences (how student-teacher relationships fuel perseverance and contribute to reducing socioeconomic inequities in academic achievement), U.S. Department of Education (school-business partnership study), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (sex education studies), the DeWitt Wallace-Readers’ Digest Fund (strengthening teacher preparation for the middle grades), and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (impact of service-learning on academic success in middle school). He also has received numerous other grants, including those from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Carnegie Corporation of New York, W.T. Grant Foundation, and America’s Promise Alliance.
Media Appearances. Appeared and has been quoted in the print and electronic media in more than 200 U.S. cities, including national coverage in:
• The New York Times
• New York Daily News
• Boston Globe
• Washington Post
• Los Angeles Times
• U.S. News and World Report
• USA Today
• Sports Illustrated
• Glamour
• Seventeen
• Better Homes & Gardens
• Family Circle
• Newsweek,
• Features on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America,
• Regular guest appearances on KMOX (CBS network) Radio in St. Louis
• International coverage on the Voice of America and BBC Radio.
• Listed in numerous Who’s Who volumes, including the original Marquis Who’s Who in America, 2011.
Awards:
• 1982 “Outstanding Young Man of America” community leadership award, U.S. Jaycees.
• 1982 Michigan Legislature Resolution honoring “outstanding contributions to sexuality education.”
• 1988 U.S. Administration for Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Award for his work with the Governor’s Commission on Children and Youth in Alaska, honoring “exceptional efforts to prevent child abuse, and a spirit which is an inspiration to others.”
• 1989 Educational Press Association of America Award for “Excellence in Educational Journalism” (as an article contributor to “Sexuality Education” journal issue of Educational Theory Into Practice).
• 1998 Hedley S. Dimock Award from the American Camp Association, presented annually to an individual who has made “outstanding contributions to youth development from a field related to camping.” Past recipients include former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, former U.S. Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, and Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.).
• 1999 Named one of the “Pioneers and Giants of Middle Level Education” in the resource book, Preparing Middle Level Educators: Practicing What We Preach (New York: Garland, 1999, Eds., Samuel Totten, Charlene Johnson, Linda Morrow, and Toni Sills Briegel)
• 2001 Nominee, Social Policy Award, Society for Research in Adolescence, for his 2000 article on the factors that help adolescents thrive, published in the journal Applied Developmental Science.
• 2001 Lifetime Professional Service Award, Planned Parenthood of the Greater St. Louis Region (co-awardee with his wife, Martha R. Roper).
• 2011 listing in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America
Significant Publications
Dr. Scales has published more than 250 articles, chapters, books, and other publications, including more than 75 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Child Development, American Psychologist, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Youth & Adolescence, Power and Education, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, Journal of Health Education, Middle School Journal, Urban Education, the National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin, American School Board Journal, Research in Middle Level Education, Journal of Experiential Education, Journal of School Health, Teacher Education Quarterly, Journal of Primary Prevention, Journal of Early Adolescence, Applied Developmental Science, Research in Human Development, Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Positive Psychology, and numerous other publications, including thought-leader publications such as Phi Delta Kappan, the leading magazine for K-12 educators..
His op-eds have appeared in newspapers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newark Star-Ledger, Anchorage Daily News, and Denver Post. His article, “The Public Image of Adolescents,” was featured on the cover of the May/June 2001 issue of Society.
His numerous scholarly chapters include co-authorship of the first-ever chapter on youth development in the prestigious Handbook of Child Psychology: Positive Youth Development: Theory, Research, and Application. In W. William Damon and Richard M. Lerner, Eds. (2006), The Handbook of Child Psychology, 6th Edition, vol. I. (pp. 894-941). New York: Wiley (with Peter L. Benson, Scales, Steven F. Hamilton, & Arturo Sesma, Jr.).
Dr. Scales also wrote the invited chapter on the developmental characteristics of young adolescents for the NMSA’s seminal 2003 position paper, This We Believe: Successful Schools for Young Adolescents (and the 2nd ed., 2010), which NMSA (now the Association for Middle Level Education) calls the most widely used document on middle level education ever published.
His books include the best-selling Great places to learn: How asset-building schools help students succeed (Search Institute, 2nd ed., 2006, with Neal Starkman, Scales, and Clay Roberts); Growing pains: The making of America’s middle school teachers (National Middle School Association, 1994); Windows of opportunity: Improving middle-grades teacher preparation (Center for Early Adolescence, 1992); Boxed in and bored: How middle schools continue to fail young adolescents–and what good middle schools do right (Search Institute, 1996); A Portrait of Young Adolescents in the 1990s (Center for Early Adolescence, 1991); The Sexual Adolescent: Communicating with Teenagers about Sex (Duxbury, 1979); Developmental Assets: A Synthesis of the Scientific Research on Adolescent Development (2nd ed., Search Institute, 2004); A Fragile Foundation: The State of Developmental Assets Among American Youth (2nd ed., Search Institute, 2011); Other People’s Kids: Social Expectations and American Adults’ Involvement with Children and Adolescents (Kluwer/Plenum, 2003), and Coming Into Their Own: How Developmental Assets Promote Positive Growth in Middle Childhood (Search Institute, 2004).
Dr. Scales resides in suburban St. Louis with his wife, Martha R. Roper, a nationally-known high school health teacher, now retired, and their son, daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters. He has served in a number of citizen volunteer capacities for his local school district. He played a leadership role in the Parkway School District’s (Chesterfield, MO) Diversity and Discipline Review Committee 2004-2006, which was formed in the aftermath of a racial harassment incident, and subsequently served on Project Parkway, a strategic planning effort facilitated by Grant Wiggins to map out and implement strategies to achieve the district’s goals for 2011-2021, including the intersection of academic success and psychological and social well-being.
In 2013, Dr. Scales earned certification by the U.S. Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) as a Professional tennis teacher. Since 2008, he has worked directly with students as a tennis coach, including serving as the Head JV tennis coach for girls’ and boys’ teams at Parkway South High School, Manchester, Missouri, and as an instructor for the Parkway Summer Tennis Camp, and the Washington University in St. Louis Summer Tennis Camp, for students from elementary to college age. His articles on building positive youth development and mental toughness skills among youth tennis players have been published in the USPTA’s peer-reviewed magazine ADDVantage. His award-winning book, Mental and Emotional Training for Tennis: Compete-Learn-Honor, was published in 2019 by Coaches Choice.