Partnerships in the SUSTAINING gateway focus on using data in a continuous improvement process to identify improvements and interventions to impact an outcome, including: ensuring regular communication across the partnership, engagement of partners and practitioners to improve community level outcomes, and mobilizing resources to remove financial, operational, and political barriers that inhibit the impact.
Theory of Action - Sustaining
The Partnership regularly and consistently informs the broader community of the Partnership’s progress and communicates a common, consistent message across internal partners.
Quality Benchmark:
The Partnership regularly and consistently informs the broader community of the Partnership’s progress and communicates a common, consistent message across internal partners.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: All Hands Raised
All Hands Raised, a cradle to career partnership in Portland, OR, releases a monthly ‘Update from the Partnership’ to the Portland community via email and through their website and social media tools. The newsletter informs the community of the work of the partnership, including meeting recaps, important updates from ongoing conversations, the formation of new Collaboratives, and any progress made towards their goals. In addition, All Hands Raised engages a broad sector of the community through an annual Partnership event, an annual video telling the story of the work, and social media venues. Also important to note is their intentional strategy to annually present to the school boards in each of the six partner school districts, as well as municipal government leaders.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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In what ways is the Partnership regularly and consistently informing the broader community of progress?
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How are internal partners informed in a common and consistent way of the Partnership’s progress?
Partners take action to improve the community level outcomes/indicators, including but not limited to realigning their existing work and supporting the implementation of action plans.
Quality Benchmark:
Partners take action to improve the community level outcomes/indicators, including but not limited to realigning their existing work and supporting the implementation of action plans.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: The Strive Partnership
With research showing that fourth-grade reading is one of the biggest predictors of educational success, the Strive Partnership is launching Read On, an early grade-level reading campaign to significantly improve regional third-grade reading success and sustain that success through the fourth-grade. The Partnership, along with the Northern Kentucky Education Council and the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, brought together 70 cross-sector leaders to organize new or leverage existing work groups around key strategies. The leaders are also proposing a multi-year and multi-million dollar venture philanthropy fund of local and national dollars to invest in evidence-based strategies. This campaign will realign local funding and resources to strategies that are proven by data to improve third-grade reading.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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In what ways are partners, outside of the networks, individually or collectively taking action to improve community level outcomes/indicators?
The Partnership connects a narrative of the on-the-ground work of the collaborative action networks to the community level outcomes/indicators they are working to impact in the annual release of the report card. The Partnership establishes
standardized processes for releasing report card data and collaborative action narrative on an annual basis.
Quality Benchmark:
The Partnership connects a narrative of the on-the-ground work of the collaborative action networks to the community level outcomes/indicators they are working to impact in the annual release of the report card. The Partnership establishes standardized processes for releasing report card data and collaborative action narrative on an annual basis.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: The Strive Partnership
The Strive Partnership in Cincinnati, Newport, and Covington released their first report card to the community focused solely on reporting data for each of the community level indicators that the Partnership was tracking. The school district leaders involved in the Partnership pushed back on the exclusive focus on data, and urged the partnership to not just report on data that was already released by the local media, but to intentionally connect that data to all of the good work that was happening on the ground through the collaborative action networks. The Strive Partnership now includes a narrative of the on-the-ground work of the collaboratives around each community level outcome in their annual Partnership report. The Partnership is utilizing the Community Impact Report Card tool to establish a consistent and efficient process for releasing their report card data and collaborative narrative on an annual basis.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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In what ways have the collaborative action networks impacted the community level outcomes/indicators?
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How has the Partnership communicated the work of the collaborative action networks in the annual report card?
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What is the process the Partnership has established for releasing report card data and collaborative action narrative on an annual basis?
The Partnership enables the collection and connection of student service, demographic, and academic data and makes it available across systems and partners to enable continuous improvement.
Quality Benchmark:
The Partnership enables the collection and connection of student service, demographic, and academic data and makes it available across systems and partners to enable continuous improvement.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: The Strive Partnership
The Strive Partnership and its partners, Cincinnati Public Schools, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and others developed a student level data management system called the Learning Partner Dashboard (LPD) that enables the connection of student service, demographic, and academic data in one system. In 2010, Cincinnati Public Schools wanted to determine if tutoring programs set up during the school day, using volunteers in the community, were having any impact. With the use of The Learning Partner Dashboard, the school district was able to track the individual students who were paired with a volunteer tutor and their performance on the 2011 State Test. The state test score for students that were paired with a tutor was compared to their peers that didn’t receive a tutor. Preliminary data showed that students paired with a tutor made more gains than students without. This measurable data launched a city-wide tutor recruitment initiative and strategically placed 1,000 volunteers in schools where impact was inevitable.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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How is the Partnership enabling the connection of student service, demographic, and academic data?
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How is data made available to relevant partners in a timely manner to inform continuous improvement and planning?
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Collaborative Action Networks are formed or engaged around a community level outcome/indicator and are supported by the partnership per a value exchange.
Quality Benchmark:
Collaborative Action Networks are formed or engaged around a community level outcome/indicator and are supported by the partnership per a value exchange.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: Raise DC
Raise DC, the cradle-to-career partnership in Washington, DC, convened a group of community partners through the Design Institute process. These community partners helped to identify existing initiatives that were impacting one or more of the Partnership’s community level outcomes and to highlight current “gaps” where collaborative tables did not exist. This information helped to shape the basis for developing the membership of the change networks. Change networks are Raise DC’s collaborative action networks responsible for 1) Identifying initial contributing indicators and committing to integrating these indicators into individual program performance tracking; 2) Identifying successful strategies and committing to integrating into individual programs; and 3) Communicating progress, barriers, and opportunities to the Leadership Council. The roles of the partnership and the change network were outlined in a value exchange that articulated the supports of the partnership including hands-on facilitation, training and technical assistance and expectations of the network including developing and implementing a shared action plan to improve an outcome and sharing relevant program data and expertise to support the action plan.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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What Collaborative Action Networks are formed, please specify the community level outcome/indicator they formed around?
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In what ways is the Partnership supporting these networks per the value exchange?
Collaborative Action Networks use disaggregated local data in a continuous improvement process to develop a charter and action plan comprised of strategies and improvements to impact a community level outcome/ indicator(s) and eliminate locally defined disparities in student achievement.
Quality Benchmark:
Collaborative Action Networks use disaggregated local data in a continuous improvement process to develop a charter and action plan comprised of strategies and improvements to impact a community level outcome/ indicator(s) and eliminate locally defined disparities in student achievement.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: The Strive Partnership
In Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky, the Early Childhood Collaborative, led by United Way Success By 6, disaggregated kindergarten readiness assessment data by gender, race and income. They found that all three factors had a statistically significant impact on kindergarten readiness. They used this disaggregated data to inform their action plan in which partner programs target children of specific gender, race and income levels in order to narrow and close achievement gaps.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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How is disaggregated local data being used to inform the development of a Collaborative Action Network Charter?
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How is disaggregated local data being used to inform the development and implementation of a Collaborative Action Network action plan to impact a community level outcome/indicator and eliminate locally defined disparities in student achievement?
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In what ways are the Collaborative Action Networks are using a continuous improvement process?
Necessary stakeholders align & mobilize time, talent, and treasure towards improving overall community level outcomes/indicators and eliminating locally defined disparities in student achievement. The community is engaged and mobilized to take action to improve community level outcomes/indicators.
Quality Benchmark:
Necessary stakeholders align & mobilize time, talent, and treasure towards improving overall community level outcomes/indicators and eliminating locally defined disparities in student achievement. The community is engaged and mobilized to take action to improve community level outcomes/indicators.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: The Strive Partnership
Through an examination of their local data, the Strive Partnership found that one-on-one tutoring with the same child made a significant impact in their performance on the Ohio Proficiency Test. Using this knowledge, the Partnership launched the ‘Be the CHANGE’ community-wide tutoring campaign with the goal of making progress on their priority outcome of improving fourth-grade reading scores. The Partnership was able to engage over 30 corporate partners and close to 1000 community volunteers to tutor students in targeted schools and targeted grades.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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What time, talent and treasure has been aligned and mobilized by stakeholders to improve community level outcomes/indicators?
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In what ways is the community mobilized to take action to improve a community level outcome/indicator?
The Partnership aligns/realigns policy priorities and moves forward a collective advocacy agenda to change local, state, or national policy to improve community level outcomes/indicators and eliminate locally defined disparities in student achievement.
Quality Benchmark:
The Partnership aligns/realigns policy priorities and moves forward a collective advocacy agenda to change local, state, or national policy to improve community level outcomes/indicators and eliminate locally defined disparities in student achievement.
Partnership that Exemplifies Quality Benchmark: Commit!
Commit!, the cradle to career partnership serving Dallas County established a bi-partisan Advocacy Council to develop a policy agenda that supported the work of the Partnership. Specifically, the Council has created an agenda focusing on two pieces of legislation, both of which will improve Commit!’s ability to gather data that can be used to improve education outcomes. The first is a bill that will add a multi-dimensional tool to the approved list of kindergarten readiness diagnostic tools. This tool will expand the scope of traditional literacy tools and give districts the option of using state assessment funds to assess social-emotional development, language and communication skills and physical development. The second piece of legislation, which is still being drafted, involves strengthening the state’s Education Research Centers to better support the use of P-16 longitudinal data. Commit! Representatives testified at hearings during the legislative session with the full backing of the partners and has helped build momentum for moving these critical policies.
Key Questions for Your Partnership:
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What policies priorities are partners aligning/realigning to improve community level outcome/indicators and eliminate locally defined disparities?
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What is the collective advocacy agenda for the Partnership to improve community level outcomes/indicators and eliminate locally defined disparities?
STRIVE PARTNERSHIP
- STRIVE
- One W. Fourth Street
- Cincinnati, OH 45202
- 513.929.1145
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