There is a distinct difference between preventing a problem and promoting students' emotional and intellectual development. Today's schools, with their focus on standards and accountability, frequently use a risk-based problem-prevention approach in both policy and practice to address young people's drug use, delinquency, unsafe sex, violence, and academic failure. The challenges of risk-based prevention are essential to understand for two reasons. First, the evidence needs to be widely available for boards and administrators to make effective decisions. The National Academy of Sciences has noted, however, that studies showing a program's limited effectiveness often are difficult to publish. Indeed, they often remain unpublished. Second, scientifically sound alternatives to at-risk approaches do exist, in the form of strategic, resilience-based school interaction that dramatically bolsters young people's attainment and development. While acknowledging student diversity, one answer is to move from problem prevention and remediation toward promoting development. Direct efforts to building resilience by using staff/student strengths. Studies have shown that 70 to 80% of young people raised in severe hardship develop social competence, personal coping skills, stability, and happiness by midlife. Once resilience is seen as a "normative" part of human development--a trait existing naturally to some degree in nearly all people--policies and programs can focus on developing resilience as a skill in the school as well as the classroom.