Focusing on Early Childhood in the Windy City

By Reuben Jacobson, Senior Associate for Research and Strategy

Marty and I headed to Chicago this week for a convening of practitioners from schools, districts, cities, counties, states, and nonprofits to discuss what a birth through third grade system might look like. Community school leaders from Multnomah County, OR, Evansville, IN, Cincinnati, OH and Tulsa, OK spoke about the community school as the vehicle to support deeper connections between the early childhood community and schools. Strengthening the continuum of supports across the grades into early childhood continues to be a growing area of work for community school systems around the country. You can read about some of these activities on the Coalition’s Linkages to Learning page.

While we were there, we presented at the Illinois Federation for Community Schools’ Stakeholder Symposium on Linking Community Schools to Early Childhood Programs. The Federation assembled coordinators, lead partners, and early childhood representatives to learn more about how to connect community schools to early childhood opportunities in order to improve student learning. We spoke about the growing work around early childhood/community schools linkages, specifically around transitions, curriculum/pedagogy alignment, family engagement, building a continuum of services, access, expanded learning opportunity, use of data, and co-location and integration. Attendees started a great community conversation about how they can better organize to support these linkages, how to overcome barriers, and how to align instruction. Federation Associate Director Melissa Mitchell indicated to the group that the rich conversation was just the beginning. We look forward to learning and sharing more about Chicago’s efforts to support its youngest students as they continue to develop their strategies.

Community Schools: Proving 'Collective Impact' Works

By Martin J. Blank, Director of Coalition for Community Schools

There comes a time when many fine examples of how to improve learning and life conditions for our children and young people hits a ceiling. They cannot get to scale because, as exemplary as they may be, they have an “isolated impact” on the issues. While collaboration may be part of their strategy, they often fall short of achieving deep changes in prospects for the young, especially those who are poor.

That is why some funders and community leaders are retiring their search for a silver bullet for an approach called “collective impact.” A recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review describes collective impact and how it works. The elements of collective impact are consistent with what those of us supporting the growth of community schools have been practicing for a long time. We agree with the article’s authors that “fixing one point on the educational continuum – such as better after-school programs – wouldn’t make much difference unless all parts of the continuum improved at the same time.”

Indeed a comprehensive understanding of the problems we face in educating our children is at the heart collective impact strategy. At the Coalition for Community Schools, we see the challenge of educating our children as a collective responsibility. School systems alone cannot deal with the myriad of factors that influence student learning.

Currently, some people engaged in the debate about what more it will take to educate our children often seem to push only one and at best two levers to improve education – teacher effectiveness and testing. We argue that our children surely need strong teachers and principals and an engaging curriculum, but they also need a range of opportunities from prenatal care to college and career readiness, the sort of support that enables all children to succeed. To do this we must act collectively.

The five basic elements of collective impact go far beyond collaboration and do not call for additional funding, but, rather, efficient use of what is available. Cincinnati’s community schools movement, which in fact began 8 years prior to the advent of Strive, as well as efforts in Tulsa, Evansville, Multnomah County (OR) and other communities, have put these elements into practice, and they are seeing results. In their well-organized efforts, local community school leaders have:

· Agreed on a common agenda. Leaders from across sectors – schools, health and social service agencies, youth organizations, higher education, faith-based and neighborhood groups and business/civic groups – let go of their individual agendas, and built a shared vision for improving achievement through community schools.

· Used shared measurement systems. For community schools, this means much more than academic achievement. Their metrics consider many factors that influence student success including: attendance/chronic absenteeism; health indicators such as asthma and obesity; student motivation and engagement; and parental involvement.

· Organized mutually reinforcing activities. Collective impact in community schools demands quality instruction in the schools, complemented by a set of opportunities from other sectors. These may include health and mental health services, after-school programs, mentoring, internships and apprenticeships. Families and neighborhood residents participate in adult education classes, ESL programs, job training, leadership development and cultural programs.

· Emphasized continuous communications. In community schools, the voices of those who have a stake in the outcomes – students, parents, educators and the community – are respected and given formal and informal means for being heard. These stakeholders, and the public, learn about the work and its results through newsletters, community meetings, websites and the media.

· Organized backbone support organizations. A collective impact initiative requires dedicated staff to coordinate the effort. Community school systems have an analogous approach, using intermediary organizations to drive their joint work. The intermediary could be a school system, or just as often local government, a United Way or another non-profit agency plays this role. A similar arrangement occurs at the school site where community partner organizations often hire community school coordinators to glue together the work of the school and its partners.

The fact that community school strategy involves work at both the school and at the community levels is particularly important. Collective impact in education does not happen just because community leaders and partners articulate a set of desired metrics. It happens when community leadership see schools as primary places for joint community action; when they empower educators and community partners to create the conditions for learning together; and, when they hold people accountable for results.

The Coalition’s new guide, Scaling up School and Community Partnerships, demonstrates how building a system of community schools can lead to collective impact. It makes clear that the place to begin marshaling communities behind schools is by setting a powerful shared vision, the first tenet of collective impact. It argues that collective trust among school and community partners is the fuel for the joint enterprise.

Cincinnati created a shared agenda in 2000 under the leadership of then school board member and former Governor John Gilligan. His idea for community learning centers (aka community schools) has led to a cross-boundary leadership team that includes educators and leaders of community partners who focus on many aspects of a young person’s life at Cincinnati’s schools. That vision is getting results and now aims to make every school a community learning center. That would be a collective impact worth replicating everywhere.

The Voice of an Experienced Community Educator

Haywood Wadsworth, a junior at Michigan State University is an intern with the Coalition for Community Schools. His grandmother was a community educator in Flint in the 1960s and 70s. Haywood spoke with her about her experience. Here is his summary of her thoughts.

Odena Wadsworth was hired by Flint Community Schools in 1951 as an elementary school teacher. After twelve successful years of teaching, with mounting environmental and racial problems, she was transferred from instruction to pupil personnel to work with the community using the Whole Child approach. This was a major challenge considering the surrounding economic and social environment, but it gave her the chance to work with problems that hindered the academic and social growth of children. With additional training, knowledge, and skills she became a social service field worker with the Title I program. This enabled her to link resources within the neighborhoods using the school as a community hub.

The first strides of community education happened in Flint, Michigan in 1935. Its purpose was to give young people an opportunity for supervised recreation. School buildings were used for recreation after school hours through a grant from the Mott Foundation of $6,000 to fund programs in 5 Flint schools. This brought children and young people in off the street and involved them in constructive activities within the school. Recreation programs grew to include children and adults in all schools across the district, paving the way for growth and continued programs and services. These expanded programs were not only recreational but were also educational, cultural, social, and medical. In 1950 a large scale building project began with a need for extra classrooms and more space to launch a community education initiative.

Flint school district then became known as the community schools district. During this time, Flint was transforming thanks to major migration from the south and other states from people looking for employment in the auto manufacturing industry. This caused rapid population growth resulting in the development of various urban issues and disparities. Prior to the 1970’s, students were exposed to conditions and possessed attitudes that needed to be checked before reaching unsolvable proportions. Flint became overwhelmed with community, social, and economical problems.

Carpenter Road Elementary School, the community school Odena worked in, was situated in a very diverse area with a significant lack of parental involvement. To carry out the goals of the Flint Board of Education Odena focused on implementing the following core values:

1. Student preparation and total community development; organizing a parent group to open channels of communication for diverse members of the school community.

2. Work towards positive human and race relations; incorporate after school activities to expose students to different forms of diversity.

3. Utilize all available human and financial resources to ensure economic, civic, and social growth.

One strategy that Odena used to achieve these goals, she had parents of different ethnic groups take a month out of the school year to provide each with individual an opportunity to learn about, understand, and appreciate the values, customs, and history of his/her own culture. This increased staff and student morale leading to a rapid increase in parental involvement along with community engagement within the school.

The community school atmosphere continued in this building until Odena left the social service field worker position to work as a district wide social worker. Sadly to say, without leadership and active community participation, the community began to deteriorate and parental involvement decreased. According to Odena, “Educators must stay active and transition with the times in which we live. The community school strategy was very successful at this time because Flint was undergoing many social problems due to migration of diverse backgrounds to the area for the manufacturing industry. In current times, educators must learn that engaging and connecting community with the school is essential to helping students reach their maximum academic, social, health, and civic functions. Lack of leaders in the community that are willing to use the school as a community hub is the largest issue.”