W.K. Kellogg Foundation Announces New Family Engagement Initiative

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has announced a $5 million investment aimed at identifying and cultivating innovations in the growing field of family engagement that support children’s educational success from birth to 8 years old. Through the initiative, the foundation strives to support and expand on-the-ground family engagement efforts that include program design and implementation, service delivery, and/or policy development and implementation.

Applications are currently being accepted from public entities or nonprofit organizations that have developed effective family engagement models that address obstacles faced by low-income families. The foundation is particularly interested in proposals that outline effective teaching strategies, align early childhood systems in their communities, and focus on building family economic security and strong family engagement in education. 

Applications must be received no later than September 23, 2013. If selected, applicants will be invited to provide a full proposal in October 2013. Selected grantees will be notified of their awards in December 2013. Grant awards are expected to be up to $500,000 for one to three years.

Webinar: Using the New Poverty Data

Together, the Coalition for Human Needs, the Community Action Partnership and the Children’s Leadership Council are hosting a webinar about the upcoming release of survey data from the Census Bureau. The data, which will be released on September 17 and 19, will highlight key information about poverty, income, health insurance, housing and employment throughout the nation. As key data points, the “Using the New Poverty Data” webinar will highlight how advocates can use this information to identify needs and challenges that exist in states, regions and communities.

Webinar presenters will include:

• Jared Bernstein: What to Expect from the New Data. Bernstein is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and will help participants consider questions like, Is poverty likely to increase or decrease, and for whom? In the third year after the recession, was family income up or down? Are more people getting health insurance, or going without? 

• Deborah Weinstein: Using the New Data. Weinstein is the Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs and will help participants understand quick and easy routes to the information you need. You’ll learn how to find fast answers to questions like: how many children are poor in my state or locality? How many families spend more than a third of their income on rent? How many are lifted out of poverty by tax credits, unemployment benefits, or SNAP? How many have not finished high school? Who has health insurance? 

• Ellen Teller: Moderator. Teller is Director of Government Relations at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). 

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, September 10th from 2pm-3:30pm ET and will include time for questions. Click here to register.

Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge Application Released

Last week, the Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) released the application for the Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grants for FY 2013. RTT-ELC will provide approximately $280 million in competitive grants to states, with the aim of ensuring that all children enter kindergarten ready to succeed.

Since the program’s inception in 2011, nine states have been awarded grants to improve young children’s access to high-quality early learning and development programs and to close educational gaps for children with high needs. The program also supports states’ efforts to integrate their early learning and development programs and services.

The RTT-ELC competition focuses on five key areas of reform:

• Establishing Successful State Systems by building on the state's existing strengths, ambitiously moving forward the state's early learning and development agenda and carefully coordinating programs across agencies to ensure consistency and sustainability beyond the grant;

• Defining High-Quality, Accountable Programs by creating a common tiered quality rating and improvement system that is used across the state to evaluate and improve program performance and to inform families about program quality;

• Promoting Early Learning and Development Outcomes for Children to develop common standards within the state and assessments that measure child outcomes, address behavioral and health needs, as well as inform, engage and support families;

• Supporting A Great Early Childhood Education Workforce by providing professional development, career advancement opportunities, appropriate compensation and a common set of standards for workforce knowledge and competencies; and

• Measuring Outcomes and Progress so that data can be used to inform early learning instruction and services and to assess whether children are entering kindergarten ready to succeed in elementary school.

Applications are due from state governors’ offices on October 16, 2013, and a technical assistance planning workshop will be offered on September 10, 2013. More details on the workshop will be posted here as they become available. Grant awards are expected to be announced in December and, according to ED, will range from $37.5 million up to $75 million.

All-in Nation: An America that Works for All

The Center for American Progress and PolicyLink have collaborated to write “All-In Nation: An America That Works for All.” Making the case that strong communities of color - and other communities that have been left behind - are critical to America’s economic future, the book includes a series of essays that lay the groundwork for federal policies that can create an equitable economy where everyone has the opportunity to participate and thrive.

As the book illustrates, communities of color have continued to face substantial barriers and inequities when it comes to economic security, educational attainment, health and other critical outcomes. In the midst of our nation’s economic recession, black family wealth fell 31 percent between 2007 and 2010, with Hispanic family wealth falling by 44 percent. Yet, white family wealth fell by only 11 percent within the same period. The impact of our struggling economic climate has continued to intensify the disparities that have long existed in communities of color.

Highlighting the economic imperative of ensuring success in communities of color, “All-In Nation” uses economic indicators to demonstrate the how racial disparities perpetuate inequality. According to the book, if racial and ethnic disparities were eliminated, the average total personal income in 2011 would have been 8.1 percent higher and 13 million people would have been lifted out of poverty. As demographics shift across the nation – the book estimates that communities of color will be 53 percent of the population by 2050 - our policies must reflect the need to ensure that these communities have access to the tools, resources and skills needed to succeed.

“All-In Nation” explores a policy agenda that includes infrastructure, jobs, health care, education and workforce development, immigration, criminal justice and democratic participation – issues that many communities across the nation are working hard to tackle. For example, many low-income communities have limited access to healthy, affordable food options. However, the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative has spurred access to loans and funding for local grocery stores in an effort to increase access and, as a result, healthy food options. Milwaukee’s Fondy Farmers Market, for example, supports more than 36,000 shoppers and brings in nearly $500,000 in annual sales. Similarly, without access to reliable transportation, residents in low-income communities are often disconnected from jobs, as well as access to health care, education and other essential services. However, as the book suggestions, ensuring that transportation funds are invested in projects that increase mobility in marginalized communities can increase jobs and improve the well-being of children and families.

Want to learn more about “All-In Nation” and the policy agenda it explores? Click here.

Want to learn more about policy strategies that can improve outcomes for communities? Check out the PolicyforResults.org.

Recommendations for Successful District Summer Learning Programs

While summer is nearing its end, and kids across the country are heading back to school, it is not too early to start thinking about how your school district can plan a successful summer learning program. Earlier this month, the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit focused on public policy research and analysis, released a research brief entitled "How to Get the Most out of a Summer Learning Program" that presents a set of recommendations for making school district summer learning programs as effective as possible.

Research has shown that, over the course of the summer, students often lose some of the skills and knowledge they gained during the previous academic year. While this phenomenon, termed “summer learning loss”, affects most students, it can be particularly harmful for low-income students. Combined with the other challenges, such as a lack of positive activities, many children in low-income neighborhoods face during the summer, the presence of summer learning loss has led some school districts to look at how summer learning programs can reduce, if not reverse, summer learning loss.

The research brief draws on findings from a recently published RAND report entitled “Getting to Work on Summer Learning: Recommended Practices for Success."  That report is the second in a five-part series that is exploring best practices in summer learning programs by sharing the results of a demonstration project taking place in five large urban school districts: Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Duval County (Florida), Pittsburgh, and Rochester (New York).

Based on hundreds of surveys, interviews, and hours of direct observation of summer learning programs, the RAND researchers made several recommendations for school districts and organizations working to implement a summer learning program in areas such as planning, staff selection and training, and the tracking of program costs. Selected recommendations include:

• Commit to having a summer program by January.
• Establish firm enrollment deadlines and keep electronic student records.
• Develop a rigorous selection processes to recruit motivated teachers.
• Keep in mind that it is not necessary to disguise academics to boost attendance.
• Anchor the program in a commercially available and evidence-based curriculum.
• Operate the program for five to six weeks. 
• Schedule three to four hours a day for academics and focus on academic content during those hours.
• Put resources into tracking and boosting attendance.

While the researchers caution that these are not "proven practices" - the academic performance of the students in the programs they are studying through the demonstration project is currently being evaluated - they are evidence-based and provide the best guidance on summer learning programs that is available at this time.

For more information on this summer learning program research, please visit RAND’s website to view the research brief or the full report.

Leading for Results

Individual and organizational leadership is a key capacity in community change work. As described by the Building Neighborhood Capacity Program, “it’s one of the ingredients that help innovate, guide, govern, track and maintain the efforts that will bring about substantive and lasting change.”

What capacities do leaders themselves need to improve results for children and families? The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently published a report on lessons learned from its twenty years of work on leadership development, “helping people develop the skills, the behaviors and the relationships they need to lead organizations and public systems toward lasting improvements in child and family well-being.”

Leading for Results: Developing Talent to Drive Change identifies five core competencies of results-based leadership:

• Be results based and data driven, establishing clear goals and using data to assess progress and change course as needed.

• Use the self as an instrument of change to move a result, based on the belief that individual leaders are capable of leading from whatever position they hold.

• Bring attention to and act on disparities, recognizing that race, class and culture impact outcomes and opportunities for vulnerable children.

• Master the skills of “adaptive leadership,” which makes leaders aware of the impact of values, habits, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors associated with taking action to improve results.

• Collaborate with others, understanding that the capacity to build consensus and make group decisions enables leaders to align their actions and move work forward to achieve results.

The final competency, which focuses on collaboration, is core to the Casey leadership development philosophy. While the individual is key in driving change, the ability to achieve results requires “bringing diverse groups together that can work across race, class and ethnicity to create equitable opportunities and improved outcomes for children and families.”

The report highlights the State of Maryland’s efforts to bring together nonprofit and public agency leaders working to improve children’s school readiness. Through the inaugural Leadership in Action program in 2001, the foundation convened 40 mid- to-high level leaders to engage in a learning process about what it would take to create a state where all children are ready for school.

At the end of the ten months, the collaborative had developed a road map for collective action that was later adopted by the state legislature and served as a beacon to keep the diverse group of partners focused on achieving results. These initial efforts informed the creation of the Maryland Early Childhood Advisory Council. Now with a Race to the Top Early Learning grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the state is developing 24 councils who are working at the local level to improve school readiness.

Much of the foundation’s leadership philosophy can be summed up by seeking “high alignment, high action.” According to this goal, an effective leader is only capable of implementing the shared strategies necessary to achieve results when he or she is also working to strengthen relationships. In other words, leadership development is most durable when it occurs within the context of collaborative decision-making.

For more information on the knowledge, skills and attitudes of collaborative leaders, see this extract from the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s Handbook for Using Community Decision-Making to Improve the Lives of Children, Youth and Families.

From Input to Ownership: How Nonprofits Can Engage with the People They Serve

The Bridgespan Group recently published an article exploring the how nonprofits can engage with their constituents to deliver better results. Simply stated, constituent engagement is the way in which nonprofit organizations interact with the individuals, families and communities that they seek to serve. Using examples from existing nonprofits, From Input to Ownership: How Nonprofits Can Engage with the People They Serve to Carry Out Their Missions, highlights a range of constituent engagement forms - including input, co-creation and ownership – that can help nonprofits better understand both the aspirations and challenges that exist in the community, as well as the services and opportunities that can improve outcomes.

As the article points out, blending constituent feedback and perspective (“local knowledge”) with broader evidence and experience in a particular field (“technical knowledge”) can be achieved using multiple strategies across a spectrum that includes less intensive engagement strategies (resident input) to more intensive engagement strategies (ownership).  

INPUT
As the article points out, gathering information from constituents can be as easy as hosting a focus group. For example, Connected by 25 - a nonprofit in Florida aimed at helping foster care youth successfully transition to adulthood – used focus groups with youth to understand why so many foster care youth drop out of school. The powerful stories these young people shared led to a new idea for the organization – a guidance counselor specially trained to help foster care youth navigate school issues. Within two years of implementing the idea as a pilot program, high school graduation rates for foster youth increased by more than 50% and the percentage of students performing at or above grade level nearly doubled. As a result, the school system decided to permanently fund the guidance counselor position.

CO-CREATION
Some nonprofits take constituent engagement to the next level by incorporating constituents in the development of solutions. For example, Youth Build - a network of organizations that works with low-income, unemployed 16-24 year olds to advance their education and build leadership skills - was founded on a philosophy that young people must play a role in solving their own challenges in their communities. True to the values of the organizations, youth participants help run each local Youth Build affiliate organization and, in many organizations Youth Policy Councils, comprised of youth-elected representatives, meet weekly with each site’s director in order to discuss issues like program policies and hiring decisions. A 2009 study found that local YouthBuild affiliates with active Youth Policy Councils had better outcomes than affiliates who did not.

OWNERSHIP
Organizations that utilize ownership as an engagement strategy are motivated by a philosophy that constituents can and should be equipped with the power and resources needed to solve problems on their own, with the organizational staff in the background. The Family Independence Initiative (FII), for example, encourages low-income families to form groups that regularly meet for mutual support. FII recognizes that investing in people’s strengths delivers more powerful and sustainable outcomes. Thus, rather than providing services or offering specific advice to families, FII staff ensure that families have access to computers, matching funds for savings and other resources and, most importantly, other families that they can rely on for support. A recent evaluation found that, within two years of joining FII, approximately one of out every two families living below the poverty line when joining moved above the line, and household earned income increased an average of 27%.


CSSP RESOURCES FOR CONSTITUENT ENGAGEMENT
Want to learn more about constituent engagement? Check out the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s tools and resources below.

Customer Satisfaction – Work aimed at transforming residents in vulnerable communities into empowered consumers who demand quality services. This model borrows from the private sector, where customers decide which companies thrive, which goods and services are available and even how they are provided.

Resident and Youth Engagement Tools - Building leaders from within a community is a core part of the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s work. These tools and case studies highlight how encouraging community residents to engage and lead community change can spearhead better results for children and families.

“Making a Difference In Your Neighborhood: A Handbook for Using Community Decision-Making to Improve the Lives of Children, Youth and Families” - Based on CSSP’s work in communities throughout the past two decades, this handbook provides communities with the “how to” guidance that is needed to begin community change efforts, including how to engage residents and use constituent voice to inform revitalization work.

Building Neighborhood Capacity Program Resource Center – A federally-funded program, the Building Neighborhood Capacity Program (BNCP) is designed to help neighborhoods develop the knowledge, skills, relationships, interactions and organizational resources that enable residents, civic leaders, the public and private sectors and local organizations to create comprehensive neighborhood revitalization plans. The BNCP Resource Center provides neighborhoods with access to tools and best practices aimed at building capacity, including how to build robust resident engagement strategies.