| Staff Expertise, Careful Communications to Parents Fuel Successful SEL Efforts | GP0|#890cbc1f-f78a-45e7-9bf2-a5986c564667;L0|#0890cbc1f-f78a-45e7-9bf2-a5986c564667|Social and Emotional Learning;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>Growing up in a home with domestic violence, Byron Sanders remembers afterschool programs being a refuge for him. In football, track and theater, the president and CEO of Big Thought in Dallas said, he could be a “happy, effervescent kid.”</p><p>“Afterschool was also my pathway to opportunity,” he told the audience of 150 educators and youth development leaders at an October forum in Chicago hosted by The Wallace Foundation and America’s Promise Alliance. Still, his afterschool experience fell short of its potential, he said, because the social and emotional skills he needed weren’t intentionally taught. That’s still too often the case in afterschool programs, he observed. “How many kids do you know of today,” he asked, “who can access that power, which is what social and emotional learning truly is?”<br></p><p>Social and emotional skills—which can include working productively with a group, managing feelings and resolving conflicts—are increasingly recognized as a key to success in the modern workforce, along with academic learning. A recent <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w21473" target="_blank">study</a> by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that jobs requiring high levels of social interaction made up a growing share of the U.S. labor force, while the percentage of jobs not requiring social skills declined. </p><p>Accordingly, efforts to integrate social and emotional learning (SEL) with academic and out-of-school time have grown exponentially in the past decade. The day-long forum, designed as a pre-conference in advance of the inaugural SEL Exchange hosted by The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), which drew approximately 1,500 participants, aimed to build on that momentum. Youth development leaders, researchers and educators attending the pre-conference event discussed the latest SEL research and two of the field’s biggest challenges—developing the ability of adults to teach SEL skills and communicating the importance of those skills to the uninitiated.</p><p>“Sometimes it's hard to communicate successfully to people who are skeptics, non-believers or just not yet dialed into this channel,” said John Gomperts, president and CEO of America’s Promise Alliance. Here are highlights from a few of the panel discussions. </p><p><strong>The neuroscience of SEL</strong><br>
Deborah Moroney, managing director at American Institutes for Research and a leading researcher on social and emotional learning, remarked on how far the field of social and emotional learning in out-of-school time has come. In the 1990s, researchers began to quantify the effect of afterschool programs on young people’s lives, including long-term outcomes such as finding employment and avoiding incarceration, she said. “We didn’t call it ‘social-emotional learning’ at the time, but the studies were there.”<strong></strong></p><p>The catalyst that linked SEL with out-of-school time, Moroney believes, came in 2007 when Roger Weissberg and Joseph Durlak released a pivotal study of existing research, <em>The Impact of After-School Programs that Promote Personal and Social Skills.</em> “They found that when young people participate in high quality programs defined as—you can say this with me,” she told the audience, “SAFE: sequenced, active, focused and explicit—that they experienced social-emotional growth linked to academic outcomes.” </p><p>Some of the latest SEL research comes from neuroscience. Karen Pittman, president and CEO of Forum for Youth Investment, shared findings from a series of articles by the Science of Learning and Development Project. “What they said wasn’t new,” she noted, “but how they said it was important.”</p><p>Optimal conditions for learning exist, scientists found, in the context of strong relationships, a sense of safety and belonging, rich instruction, individualized supports, and intentional development of essential mindsets, skills and habits, she said. </p><p>The catch is, “we can’t just pick some of these things,” Pittman said. “At the point where we’re not doing all of these things at a threshold of doing good, we actually could be doing harm.”</p><p>For instance, she explained, “we can’t just say, ‘We have to do social-emotional skill-building, let’s bring in a curriculum,’ if we haven’t paid attention to relationships and belonging.”</p><p>But when learning experiences are optimal, she said, “you can actually undo the damage of adversity."<br></p><p><strong>‘Who you are changes kids’</strong><br>
Successfully incorporating SEL skill-building into academics or youth programs depends on having staff competent in using those skills themselves, noted Ron Berger, chief academic officer at EL Education, which provides professional development to a national network of schools. “Who you are is what changes kids—what your staff models.”</p><p>To model strong SEL skills, staff need more than training, Berger said. “There is no way you can build in a couple of days a week of professional learning and assume that’s going to change them. You have to create cultures in schools that are engines for professional growth.”</p><p>That means creating norms for social interaction, such as for dealing with conflict or addressing racial or gender bias, he said. In one school he worked with, the principal inherited a toxic culture. To lay a foundation for new norms, Berger worked with the school on building relationships among adults. “We spent two days as a staff having conversations,” he said. “The whole staff had never been in a circle before. They had always faced the principal. They had never talked about their personal lives, their professional vision. It was hard.”</p><p>BellXcel, a national nonprofit offering afterschool and summer programs, takes a similarly holistic approach to developing SEL skills in adults and kids, said Brenda McLaughlin, chief strategy officer. In addition to professional development, its approach to culture-building includes agreements between staff and students on how to interact with each other and daily “community time” for students to reflect on social and emotional learning. The BellXcel curriculum has language in each lesson for building students’ “growth mindset,” or the belief that their abilities are not fixed but can grow with effort. Cultural norms are continually reinforced, McLaughlin said.</p><p>“Having structures in place over time will change the culture,” she explained. “If you’re not willing to write up your culture and bring it up in staff meetings, people are going to act how they’ve always acted.”<br>
</p><p><strong>When ‘grit’ is a dirty word</strong><br>
Parents are essential allies in developing children’s SEL skills. Yet the way that practitioners talk about those skills can be confusing to parents, said Bibb Hubbard, president of Learning Heroes, a national nonprofit that provides resources for PTAs, schools, and other organizations to help educate parents.</p><p>A large-scale national study by Learning Heroes found that while K-8 parents agreed on the importance of some SEL competencies such as respect, confidence and problem-solving, they didn’t give much weight to others, including growth mindset, executive functioning and grit, because they didn’t understand them, said Hubbard. “Many folks in out-of-school settings use ‘grit.’ For parents, it sounds negative, dirty, like a struggle. And parents are not comfortable with their kids struggling. They think, ‘I’m not doing my job if they’re having to struggle.’”</p><p>When communicating about the importance of SEL, Hubbard explained, it’s important to carefully define unfamiliar terms and illustrate them with real-life examples.</p><p>Higher Achievement, a national nonprofit with a year-round academic enrichment program for middle school students, partnered with Learning Heroes to pilot an approach to discussing SEL with parents. Lynsey Wood Jeffries, Higher Achievement CEO, explained that those conversations need to be carefully framed. “Families feel, ‘It’s my responsibility that my child become a good human being,’ so training on social-emotion learning for families can come across awkwardly.”</p><p>To overcome that obstacle, Higher Achievement talks about SEL in the context of a goal the nonprofit shares with parents: preparing students to enter college preparatory high schools, Jeffries explained. “To get into a good high school takes a whole host of social-emotional skills. It takes self-efficacy, to feel, ‘I can get into the school and I’m going to take steps to do it.’ It takes executive function, getting all the materials in on time . . .”</p><p>While OST practitioners need to take care in how they communicate about SEL with families, Hubbard said, the good news is that “parents are eager and interested to learn more. So there’s great opportunity there.”</p><p><em>The Wallace Foundation will release a full report on the </em>SEL + OST = Perfect Together<em> forum early in 2020.</em></p>
<br> | | Staff Expertise, Careful Communications to Parents Fuel Successful SEL Efforts | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Preparing-Adults-Careful-Communication-Key-to-Successful-SEL-Efforts.aspx | 2019-11-06T05:00:00Z | Your source for research and ideas to expand high quality learning and enrichment opportunities. Supporting: School Leadership, After School, Summer and Extended Learning Time, Arts Education and Building Audiences for the Arts. | | |
| Missouri’s Ongoing Effort to Develop Principals Pays Off | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 |
<div><p>Eight years ago, officials at Missouri’s state education department reflected on all they’d accomplished with principal preparation—a highly-regarded leadership academy, mentoring for new principals—and wondered where they’d gone wrong.</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/missouri-ongoing-effort-to-develop-principals-pays-off/Paul-Photo.jpg" alt="Paul-Photo.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:190px;height:266px;" />“Why weren’t schools getting better?” they wanted to know, said Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “Why were principal retention rates low? What were we missing here?”</p><p>In the end, they determined that there was nothing amiss with the content of their effort. “But it was being done at a scale that didn’t have any real measurable impact,” Katnik said: Only 120 out of 300 new principals got mentoring each year. The 25-year-old Leadership Academy served only 150 principals annually out of 2,200 in the state. “We thought, we need to rethink this. We need something big and systemic.” </p><p>In 2016, when Missouri launched one of the nation’s most comprehensive statewide principal development initiatives, that something big happened. The
<a href="https://dese.mo.gov/educator-quality/educator-development/missouri-leadership-development-system" target="_blank">Missouri Leadership Development System (known as “MLDS”)</a> now offers professional development to every principal in the state—aspiring to retiring—based on a common set of leadership competencies. Today, 45 percent of Missouri principals participate annually, and the retention of early career principals is rising.
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</p><p>Since 2018, the year-to-year retention rate for Missouri principals in their first three years on the job has grown steadily from 82 percent to 87 percent in 2021. And retention rates for those enrolled in the professional development system is even higher—a remarkable 98 percent annual retention rate over the past three years.
<br></p><p>“When you’re a new principal, it’s a whirlwind, and in Missouri, we have a large number of rural districts so there’s really no one else to talk to,” said Michael Schooley, executive director of Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals. “MLDS gives them a knowledge specialist and a peer support network which is critical, so they don’t get overwhelmed.” </p><p class="wf-Element-Callout">“Our principals have had an incredibly tough job the last couple of years. We are going to be helping educators deal with the aftermath of the pandemic for a while.”<br></p><p>Nationally,
<a href="/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/New-Research-Points-to-a-Looming-Principal-Shortage.aspx">concerns over a principal shortage</a> are growing. The National Association of Secondary School Principals recently released a report finding that 4 in 10 principals planned to leave the profession in the next three years, many citing political tensions and other stressors related to the pandemic as reasons. At the same time,
<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/how-principals-affect-students-and-schools-executive-summary.aspx">rigorous research</a> points to the principal as key to improving academic achievement schoolwide. While teachers have more influence on the learning of their own students, studies find, principals with strong instructional leadership skills can help improve learning in every classroom. Such research was the impetus behind MLDS, said Katnik, whose state participated in a years-long effort, sponsored by The Wallace Foundation, to assist teams from 11 states in developing and implementing plans to use federal dollars to support effective school leadership efforts. </p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/missouri-ongoing-effort-to-develop-principals-pays-off/2Y8A9277.jpg" alt="2Y8A9277.jpg" style="margin:5px;" />
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<br>Today, Missouri is fueling an expansion of MLDS with American Rescue Act Plan funds, on top of other federal sources as well as state funding it had already applied to the system. “Making ourselves even more available to principals in the state is a great use of money” said Katnik. “Our principals have had an incredibly tough job the last couple of years. We are going to be helping educators deal with the aftermath of the pandemic for a while.”
<br></p><p class="wf-Element-Callout">“How do you keep a tent from blowing away in the wind? You put stakes in the ground.”<br></p><h2 class="wf-Element-H2">Staying Power<br></h2> Thoroughness may be one key to the Missouri Leadership Development System’s success—and its staying power. School leaders throughout the state are invited to 15 hours or more of professional development annually offered through nine regional centers. Learning is provided at four levels—“aspiring” for those in education administration degree programs ; “emerging” for principals or assistant principals in their first two years on the job, which for principals comes with mentoring; “developing” for those in at least year three; and “transformational” for the most experienced. Early on, the state also aligned its principal certification requirements to the same set of competencies as its professional development. More recently, university education administration programs were encouraged to adopt the aspiring principal curriculum. Districts are encouraged to use a principal evaluation form aligned to those same competencies. And the statewide principals associations now offer 15 online, self-paced “micro-credentials” based on the competencies that count towards advanced state certification.
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</div><div>“How do you keep a tent from blowing away in the wind? You put stakes in the ground,” quipped Katnik, an official in a state that has had its share of stormy weather; the education commissioner lost her position in 2017 under a new governor but was reinstated a year later when the political winds shifted. Through the turmoil, the Missouri Leadership Development System endured. “When it’s embedded in that many places, it becomes ‘That’s just what we do here,’” he said. “That’s how you sustain it.”<br></div><div>
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<br>The collaboration that went into the system’s design is another key to its success, according to Katnik. “When we first started, we said, ‘Everyone who works with a leader has to be a partner in this or it won’t work.’”
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</div><p class="wf-Element-Callout">“You’re in people’s turf and people had their own good ideas. We just kept bringing it back to the vision. Do we believe that we need a statewide system? If we do, we have to figure this out.”<br></p><div>
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</div><div>The partners who began their efforts in 2014 in a windowless basement conference room in Jefferson City included the statewide principals and superintendents associations, the Missouri Professors of Education Administration, and representatives from the state’s nine regional professional development centers.</div><div>
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<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/missouri-ongoing-effort-to-develop-principals-pays-off/Jim-Photo2.jpg" alt="Jim-Photo2.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:179px;height:228px;" />If anyone had said a decade ago that the principals and superintendents associations would be working that closely with the state education department, “people would have laughed,” remarked Jim Masters, a former superintendent and now the education department’s coordinator of educator evaluation and training. “The department was seen as compliance driven and less of a partner in helping schools get better,” he explained, so coming together “was a little bit of a leap of faith.”</p><p>Collaborating wasn’t always easy, Katnik said. “You’re in people’s turf and people had their own good ideas. We just kept bringing it back to the vision. Do we believe that we need a statewide system? If we do, we have to figure this out.”</p><p>Within a year, the team had agreed on 41 principal competencies organized into five domains: visionary, instructional, managerial, relational and innovative leadership. All were aligned to the
<a href="https://www.npbea.org/psel/" target="_blank">Professional Standards for Educational Leaders</a>. </p><h2 class="wf-Element-H2">Hands-on Learning<br></h2><p>Crafting the professional development for each level was the next challenge. Busy principals needed engaging and relevant content, not “50 people in a room and a PowerPoint presentation,” said Mike Rutherford, a consultant who led the curriculum design and later trained the regional facilitators, all of them former principals. “From the outset, we thought about the experience that principals would have just as much as what kind decision-making model or what kind of theory of [school] change to include.”<br></p><p>
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</p><p>The content was also designed “to be put in the hands of people who have had experience with adult learning, motivational learning and instructional design,” Rutherford added, with enough flexibility to tailor it to the needs and interests of participants. “I can’t emphasize enough that the results that MLDS is getting is really due to that design.”<br></p><p>Content-wise, MLDS didn’t break much new ground, he said. Topics for emerging principals included strategies for getting the school year off to a strong start, such as by communicating expectations and leading effective meetings. New principals also delve into how to build relationships, shape school culture, develop effective instruction, manage time and make good decisions. But learning was active with readings, discussion, writing exercises, brainstorming, roleplay and field experiences, such as touring a school with peers to observe and analyze school culture.
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<br>Travis Bohrer, now superintendent of Dixon R-1 School District, enrolled in MLDS the summer before he became a high school principal. “That first meeting was transformational,” he recalled. “I went from feeling anxious to feeling confident that I had the tools for that first day, first week and first month of school.</p><p>“That was just the tip of the iceberg,” he continued. “It became this really powerful network of mentors facilitating the learning and the network of colleagues attending these meetings who are experiencing the same challenges.”<br></p><p class="wf-Element-Callout">“It [MLDS] had a profound impact on the culture of my own building when we started telling teachers, ‘You do this well and kids learn from it, and I hope you’ll share it with your team later today,’<span style="color:#2b92be;font-size:24px;">”</span> said Bohrer.<span style="color:#2b92be;font-size:24px;"></span><br></p><p>One of the most valuable experiences, he found, were the Coaching Labs. Small groups of principals visit a school with their regional facilitator, observe and analyze classroom instruction and then take turns providing teachers with “30-second feedback,” describing how the teacher’s instruction had a positive impact on student learning. </p><p>“While you’re doing this, your cohort and coach are listening to you,” he said. The group would offer on-the-spot feedback, such as, ‘This phrase is effective,’ or ‘You’re trying to give affirming feedback and you just canceled it by saying that.’”</p><p>The goal of 30-second feedback is to draw teachers’ attention to promising practices they can build on, according to Rutherford, who developed the technique based on research about effective coaching for teachers (which is timely and specific) and positive psychology, which focuses on developing strengths. Principals are taught to use the technique to build trust and open the door to more extensive craft conversations about instruction, another topic the curriculum covers. </p><p>The idea is to spread effective practices schoolwide. “It had a profound impact on the culture of my own building when we started telling teachers, ‘You do this well and kids learn from it, and I hope you’ll share it with your team later today,’” said Bohrer.<br></p><p>
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</p><p>Gabe Burris, an elementary school principal in Harrisburg, Missouri, credits both the Coaching Labs and the roleplaying of difficult conversations during workshops for strengthening his communication with teachers. “I was able to be successful at some things as a first-year principal that I wouldn’t have been without that resource,” he said. “From the first meeting on, it has been a tremendous experience.” </p><p>Mentoring during his first two years also improved his instructional leadership, said Burris. While mentor principals receive online training videos and a handbook with content to cover, they will still tailor their guidance to each new principal’s interests and needs. At his request, Burris went to his mentor principal’s school to observe how the problem-solving team tackled student learning and behavioral challenges. </p><p class="wf-Element-Callout"> “MLDS keeps us grounded in the work of being an instructional leader,” which helps participating principals keep from getting swept up in “the day-to-day logistics of managing a building.”<br></p><p>Now in his third year, Burris said the mentoring continues informally. “I talk to him to this day. ‘I have this discipline situation, I’m going to handle it this way what do you think?’ or ‘How would you handle it?’”</p><p>Tabitha Blevins, an elementary school principal in St. Joseph, Missouri, said that “MLDS keeps us grounded in the work of being an instructional leader,” which helps participating principals keep from getting swept up in “the day-to-day logistics of managing a building.” </p><p>Currently she is working on developing a more “data-driven approach” for grade-level teams to analyze and strengthen instruction using an approach from a recent MLDS workshop for developing principals. She let her teachers know that their professional development was a byproduct of her own: “I am essentially modeling that we are not stagnant in our professions and we should be seeking out the shared knowledge of our peers.” </p><p>
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</p><h2 class="wf-Element-H2">Getting More on Board</h2><p>Partly because of the pandemic’s disruption to schooling and testing, it’s unclear whether the system has yet made a measurable impact on student learning—although annual external program evaluations find the system gets high marks for quality and relevance. </p><p>And not everyone across the state is on board with MLDS. “Many large suburban districts think they can do their own thing better,” said Schooley of the Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals, noting that some districts prefer to tailor training to local practices. And while some urban districts have signed on, including St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, rural districts are the most likely to seek out the support. Still, he said, “There are more and more districts participating because they find out its good stuff.”</p><p>To expand professional development to more districts, the state education department tapped newly available federal COVID-19 relief, which paid for increasing the number of regional trainers from 18 to 27. The 2021
<a href="/News-and-Media/Blog/pages/making-a-wise-investment-in-principal-pipelines.aspx">American Rescue Plan Act</a> provides more than $126 billion for K-12 schools and additional funding for early childhood and higher education that states can tap into. Other blended federal funds that help support MLDS include Title I and Title IIA funds, depending on district eligibility, and early childhood funds. </p><p>Katnik’s team is also working to win over university education administration programs. Beginning in fall 2020, MLDS provided training for directors of educational leadership programs across the state interested in adopting the aspiring principal curriculum.<br></p><p class="wf-Element-Callout">“Why reinvent the wheel when they could take it [MLDS] from us and tweak it? I think our system could be a great launching pad for any state that was thinking of doing something like this.”<br></p><p>“They actually did some activities as if it was a class and we were students,” said Jane Brown, director of the educational leadership program at Missouri Baptist University who participated in the curriculum development. She knows of at least five programs that have formally adopted the curriculum and others that done so to some degree at professors’ discretion. “Since it was designed collaboratively, I think a lot of people understood it and took it back to their universities,” she said.</p><p>MLDS is beginning to reach superintendents, too. As principals trained through the system move into district leadership, they are looking for a similar professional learning experience, said Katnik. In response, the MLDS team recently wrote new competencies for superintendents aligned to those for principals. This school year it piloted executive coaching for superintendents and also revised the rules for superintendent certification to align with the new standards. </p><p>“I’m not sure we’ll ever be done,” said Katnik, whose team often dreams up new ways to improve and expand the leadership development system. </p><p>For states wanting to get started, Schooley observed that all MLDS content is in the public domain. “Why reinvent the wheel when they could take it from us and tweak it? I think our system could be a great launching pad for any state that was thinking of doing something like this.”<br></p><p>
<em>Photos courtesy of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education</em> </p></div></div> | | Missouri’s Ongoing Effort to Develop Principals Pays Off | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/missouri-ongoing-effort-to-develop-principals-pays-off.aspx | 2022-05-17T04:00:00Z | Your source for research and ideas to expand high quality learning and enrichment opportunities. Supporting: School Leadership, After School, Summer and Extended Learning Time, Arts Education and Building Audiences for the Arts. | | |
| Keeping a Focus on Equity as Schools Reopen During the Pandemic | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a harsh spotlight on the inequities that fester in almost every sector of our nation, including K-12 education. Recently, we spoke with Hal Smith, senior vice president of education, youth development & health at the National Urban League, about how districts and state departments of education can address those inequities as they move into a new school year and face the unprecedented challenge of educating students while keeping schools safe during a pandemic. Smith is a member of the steering committee for Wallace’s ESSA Leadership Learning Community, a group of staff members and chiefs from 11 state departments of education, leadership from urban districts and Urban League affiliate CEOs. The group is considering how federal education law and the resultant state and local policies and investments could be used to promote evidence-based school leadership practices focused on achieving educational equity. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.</p><p>
<strong>What did we learn about remote learning after school buildings closed last spring, and what lessons should districts be applying in the coming school year?</strong></p><p>
<img class="wf-Image-Left" alt="Hal_Smith.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Keeping-a-Focus-on-Equity-as-Schools-Reopen/Hal_Smith.jpg" style="margin:5px;width:245px;height:184px;" />Nobody was prepared to move online. That’s not a criticism—nobody could have anticipated it—but the quality of instruction varied widely. You had very few prepared to do in-person instruction that transferred easily to online settings. And some never attempted to move instruction online, and education became a series of workbooks and cobbled-together approaches done on the fly. </p><p>This year, as the school year opens, we should have had time to prepare for remote instruction. That would mean professional development for teachers and support for parents to take advantage of remote learning. Even if you provide the broadband internet access and devices that we’ve clamored for, there is still a question as to how families, caregivers and students themselves can use digital and remote learning to greatest effect. It’s one thing to turn on the computer and sit in front of the screen; it’s another to know how to best take advantage of digital learning and platforms. How do you grow and maintain relationships in a virtual environment? </p><p>Also, how do you understand screen time not just as a passive experience where you are pushing buttons, but as time to do serious inquiry into what interests you as a learner? While there is certainly a need for instruction, there is certainly room for student-led inquiry into what is happening in the world around them. Their interests, their hobbies, the things they wanted to know more about—all of those things should be acknowledged as we return to more formal instruction this school year. We are hoping that districts are thinking of students as more than passive recipients of digital learning, [and seeing them] as co-creators of their learning, of their sense of inquiry and development. That was not happening in in-person instruction either. So this was an opportunity to think differently about students and their own learning and development. </p><p>
<strong>Are urban schools prepared to reopen?</strong></p><p>Right now everyone’s plans seem to hit the high notes in general terms because they’re not asked for specifics. But the next six weeks will bear watching. Publicly released plans focus on children’s safety and wellness. But we also want to know your strategy for reaching high school students who never logged on in the spring, in the summer, and have no ability or intention for logging on in the fall. Those strategies are not clearly articulated in reopening plans. Those plans assume that everyone will show up every day, and that’s not the case. </p><p><img alt="COVID-19-Costs-to-Reopen-Schools.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Keeping-a-Focus-on-Equity-as-Schools-Reopen/COVID-19-Costs-to-Reopen-Schools.jpg" style="margin:5px;" /><br> </p><p>
<strong>How should districts and schools approach social and emotional learning during this school year?</strong></p><p>Every district named social and emotional learning as an important part of their CARES Act plan [<em>the federal relief package that has provided funding for, among other things, public education</em>]. Is it real or is it political speak that doesn’t change the way we invest in public schools? It’s very common now for social-emotional learning to be dropped as a marker of educational care. You have to have it there. The language doesn’t mean you changed a single way that you operate. We’ll see that play out in the investments, the partnerships, the staffing decisions, the scheduling. Do you have room in your schedule for one-on-one and small group contact with young people, or have you simply replicated your block schedule online? </p><p>There was certainly trauma, financial uncertainty, but we want to acknowledge that young people are thoughtful and resilient and did some things outside the building we call school that will contribute to their education and growth. Having adults that can help them process what happened is important. </p><p>We had young people in Urban League programs who were essential workers. They worked in retail, they worked in fast food, and they were asked to take that on at 16, 17. That’s ripe for learning and reflection—the inequities in experience, the maturity that was accelerated by that. What have we learned in this moment about ourselves, our society? </p><p>
<strong>What inequities has the pandemic laid bare and how should districts address them? </strong></p><p>There is no hiding the impact of inequity on education now. Inequity of food security, of housing, social economic status, racism, access to laptops and high-speed internet access—those have been made clear. These are not things that all cities, all communities were paying attention to in a connected manner. We are in a different place in that people have acknowledged these inequalities exist. I don’t know as we are in a different place as far as doing things differently.</p><p>We think it’s necessary for people to envision a longer-term set of solutions [that address] remote and distance learning, that upend inequity and establish a more high-quality education for all students. There will be a tendency [in the coming year] to focus on remediation and not acceleration. Some students need to catch up. But this doesn’t mean we have to stay there for the whole year. Because they missed four months of instruction doesn’t mean they are incapable of higher-level work. I do not believe that the highest-achieving students in the highest-achieving schools are going to receive a basic education. So the same kinds of imagination and energy that are going into educating high-achieving students, why not give that to all students? </p><p>I also think there’s a real of parents, caregivers and community stakeholders. I say funded very specifically because sustained engagement costs money. The funded nature means there are some resources dedicated to make sure it’s robust. You structure meetings, you structure people’s professional time, so someone is responsible for getting parent feedback and include them meaningfully in your strategy and planning. Anything that’s sustained has to have resources dedicated to it.</p><p>Often engagement is understood as a communications effort: We are going to make sure that everyone hears the message, that the tweet, the flyer goes out there—but that’s not engagement. You really want to engage parents and stakeholders around what you want to happen and anticipate pushback and questions as you shape what your priorities and your strategies are [for remote or hybrid instruction]. Having parents, caregivers, stakeholders and even students themselves, where possible, be a part of the planning, the implementation, and most importantly a part of the reflection, is essential. </p><p>
<strong>You've talked about regarding this school year as one that lasts 18 months, through summer 2021. What would that look like?</strong></p><p>We should think of summer 2020 through summer 2021 as one school year, one educational time period, rather than parse out our plans in three distinct time periods, so that we have time to think about recovery and acceleration and some new innovation. The investments we made this summer and what we learned are going to be applied to this school year. And the things we learn this school year will certainly shape what is necessary next summer. So rather than create artificial barriers, there’s an opportunity to think about an 18-month period where we are going to work with parents, children and educators in a more connected way compared to the typical school year. </p><p>I do look forward to what this fall will bring. We have very talented educators in this country and there will be no shortage of new approaches. I think much of what we will learn will dramatically shape what school looks like after the pandemic. Maybe we’ll no longer accept 40 kids in a classroom. Maybe more teachers will take on a hybrid approach where student projects live online. I don’t imagine education going back to the way it was before. </p><p><em>"What Will It Cost to Reopen Schools?" image is reprinted with permission of the Association of School Business Officials International® (<a href="https://www.asbointl.org/">www.asbointl.org</a>) and is non-transferable. Use of this imprint does not imply any endorsement or recognition by ASBO International and its officers or affiliates.</em>
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</p> | | Keeping a Focus on Equity as Schools Reopen During the Pandemic | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Keeping-a-Focus-on-Equity-as-Schools-Reopen.aspx | 2020-08-25T04:00:00Z | The Urban League’s Hal Smith sees pitfalls and, yes, educational opportunities—including more student-led inquiry | | |
| How Seven Foundations Bolstered Afterschool, Summer Programming as COVID Raged | GP0|#ff9563e3-b973-45a7-8ac3-c9f4122f9a13;L0|#0ff9563e3-b973-45a7-8ac3-c9f4122f9a13|Summer Learning;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 |
<p>In the frantic early days of the pandemic, afterschool program providers went into overdrive. While schools shut, many programs stayed open, delivering meals, helping families meet basic needs, moving youth programs online, or launching all-day learning centers for the children of essential workers.<br></p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/Cover_EmergingVoicesSeries_Brief.png" alt="Cover_EmergingVoicesSeries_Brief.png" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:212px;height:275px;" />For seven philanthropies, the heavy load shouldered by youth programs was a crisis to address. It also presented an opportunity—to heighten awareness among policymakers and others of the importance of the out-of-school-time (OST) sector, which includes afterschool, summer and other beyond-the-school-bell programs. Their response, organized through Grantmakers for Education, was to pool $1.5 million to invest in a range of projects to help national organizations both advocate for OST programs
<em>and</em> provide guidance to their members and affiliates scrambling to meet pandemic-created needs. </p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/jodi-grant.jpg" alt="jodi-grant.jpg" class="wf-Image-Right" style="margin:5px;width:161px;height:201px;" />It was a move perhaps unprecedented for OST donors. “In 18 years, this is the first time I’ve seen this kind of collaboration with funders,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, one of the first four of the eight Afterschool and Summer Recovery and Opportunity Fund grantees in 2020 and 2021.</p><p>Personal stories can be influential with policymakers, Grant noted, and so her group used a portion of its grant to fund its Afterschool Ambassadors and Youth Ambassadors programs, which train providers and young people to speak publicly about their experiences with afterschool programs. Ambassadors are of diverse races and ethnicities and represent all regions of the country and communities in urban, rural, and suburban areas, Grant said. “Getting all those people to be seen and heard is key.”</p><p>She thinks similar communications efforts by a number of grantees helped lay the groundwork for the approval in federal pandemic relief packages of significant funding to bolster out-of-school-time efforts. “To date, we believe about $5 billion in federal COVID dollars have been used to support afterschool and summer learning programs,” she said. “Normally the federal budget is $1.3 billion for afterschool, so we’re talking about more than tripling that.”</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/GinaWarner.jpg" alt="GinaWarner.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:125px;height:167px;" />Amid the protests surrounding George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, social justice became a focus for the fund. The National AfterSchool Association, for one, used its grant in part to develop the <a href="https://naaweb.org/all-documents/41-the-ost-leaders-guide-to-equitable-hiring-and-staff-development-practices/file"><em>OST Leader’s Guide to Equitable Hiring and Staff Development</em></a>, a resource to help its 32,000 members establish more equitable workplace practices. While many nonprofits post equity statements and have good intentions, they often lack needed plans of action, such as strategies for attracting a more diverse applicant pool and reducing bias in interviews, according to Gina Warner, the association’s president and CEO. “I don’t think it’s a lack of interest,” she said. “It’s a lack of awareness and understanding, and access to resources for how to do it.” </p><p>In partnership with another grantee—Every Hour Counts, a coalition of organizations that coordinate communitywide out-of-school-time efforts—the group also led “equity strategy sessions” for more than 500 afterschool leaders, including those heading statewide or citywide program networks.</p><h3 class="wf-Element-H3">More Diverse Perspectives Needed</h3><p>The first four grantees, which included the National Summer Learning Association, met through video conferences with the philanthropies to share information from the sector and discuss how funders could most effectively respond, especially in communities of color hardest hit by the pandemic. Yet it was evident that more diverse perspectives were needed, recalled Grant. “We were all very aware that we were four organizations led by white people even though the communities we serve are much more diverse.”</p><p>The second group of grantees—the National Urban League, the National Indian Education Association, UnidosUS, and the Coalition for Community Schools—had deep expertise with K-12 education in communities of color as well as experience supporting OST initiatives.<br></p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/EmergingVoicesBrief_Graphic3.png" alt="EmergingVoicesBrief_Graphic3.png" style="color:#555555;font-size:14px;margin:5px;" /><br><br></p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/Claudia-DeMegret.jpg" alt="Claudia-DeMegret.jpg" class="wf-Image-Right" style="margin:5px;width:194px;height:217px;" />“The idea was to diversify and strengthen the national out-of-school-time community,” said Claudia DeMegret, a senior program officer at Wallace, one of the funders. “We laid the groundwork for that to happen.”</p><p>Like the first four grantees, the members of the next cohort were given flexibility to spend their grant dollars on projects they believed would have the most impact.</p><p>The National Urban League wanted to spotlight a problem raised by its local affiliates—the number of young people who pulled back from school during the pandemic. In a powerful series of 13 short films titled <a href="https://nul.org/event/emerging-voices-pandemic-students-speak-out" target="_blank">Emerging Voices from the Pandemic: Students Speak Out</a>, teens interviewed peers about the circumstances that had led to their disengagement and solicited ideas for improving learning and student well-being in schools. The need for more emotional support emerged as a theme.<br></p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/EmergingVoicesBrief_Graphic4.png" alt="EmergingVoicesBrief_Graphic4.png" style="margin:5px;" />
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</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/Horatio-Blackmanv1-Headshot.png" alt="Horatio-Blackmanv1-Headshot.png" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:200px;height:200px;" />“In our conversations with national policy tables, staffers on the Hill, and local advocates and our affiliates, people have told us that they’ve seen those videos and that they impacted their thinking on how to support youth,” said Horatio Blackman, vice president of education policy, advocacy, and engagement at the National Urban League. “I think it helped push the national conversation on social-emotional learning and whole child support.”</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/Diana-Cournoyer.jpg" alt="Diana-Cournoyer.jpg" class="wf-Image-Right" style="margin:5px;width:175px;height:175px;" />The National Indian Education Association used its grant to conduct a study of the characteristics and availability of afterschool programs in Native American communities nationwide. “I wanted to shine a light on these issues that don’t always get talked about in afterschool learning,” said Executive Director Diana Cournoyer.</p><p>Among other findings, nearly 36 percent of native parents surveyed did not enroll their child in an afterschool program because of lack of program availability or accessibility. For many Native American students in rural communities, commuting to and from school can take 90 minutes to four hours a day, Cournoyer explained. Running extra buses for afterschool programs, she said, is an expense rural school districts often can’t afford and grantmakers typically don’t cover.</p><h3 class="wf-Element-H3">A New Direction for Wallace</h3><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/GrantmakingPracticesOSTRecoveryOpportunityFund10-7-22-1.jpg" alt="GrantmakingPracticesOSTRecoveryOpportunityFund10-7-22-1.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:195px;height:252px;" />As a culminating activity, the eight grantees <a href="https://www.edfunders.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/GrantmakingPracticesOSTRecoveryOpportunityFund10-7-22.pdf" target="_blank">wrote a report</a> with recommendations to out-of-school-time funders. Suggestions included allowing nonprofits more flexibility in defining grant outcomes that meet their own priorities, getting community input into foundation initiatives, and putting longer grant cycles into place.</p><p>Gigi Antoni, director of learning and enrichment at Wallace, said that the foundation is using what it learned from the grantees’ feedback and its experience with the pooled fund to rethink its approach to out-of-school-time grant making.</p><p>For example, instead of soliciting grant proposals only from selected national nonprofits, which is typical for a national foundation, she said, Wallace recently put out a broad call for first-round applicants to a forthcoming, one-year venture. The hope is that this will lead to a more diverse applicant pool from which to draw finalists.</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged/Gigi-Antoni.jpg" alt="Gigi-Antoni.jpg" class="wf-Image-Right" style="margin:5px;width:158px;height:167px;" />“We’ve talked to hundreds of communities in the last couple of months,” Antoni said, “and now have 1,700 applications from rural, suburban, and urban communities in every state in the country.”</p><p>The other contributors to the Afterschool and Summer Recovery and Opportunity Fund were the Bezos Family Foundation, S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, New York Life Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, and Susan Crown Exchange.<br><br><br></p> | | How Seven Foundations Bolstered Afterschool, Summer Programming as COVID Raged | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/how-seven-foundations-bolstered-afterschool-summer-programming-as-covid-raged.aspx | 2023-01-24T05:00:00Z | Novel fund supported pandemic guidance for youth programs and efforts to raise awareness of their importance | | |
| What ‘Extraordinary Districts’ Do Differently | |
<p>What do districts with extraordinary gains in achievement for low-income and minority students have in common?<br></p><p>“They lead with high-quality education rather than programs and interventions that situate the student as the problem,” observed Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, reflecting on the first season of the Education Trust’s podcast series,
<em>ExtraOrdinary Districts</em>.</p><p>To kick off the
<a href="https://edtrust.org/extraordinary-districts-season-2/">second season</a>, host Karin Chenoweth visited Chicago to talk with Jackson about three areas that effective districts prioritize for improvement—school leadership, early literacy and equity. They were joined by University of Michigan professor and literacy expert Nell Duke and Harvard University lecturer, economist and equity expert Ronald Ferguson. The podcast was taped at the University of Illinois at Chicago at an event hosted by the university’s Ed.D. program and its Center for Urban Education Leadership. Here are a few key points from the discussion:</p><p>
<strong>Raise the bar for school leadership</strong><br> Ferguson said he listened to last season’s
<em>ExtraOrdinary Districts</em> feature on Chicago, and what stuck with him most was that although local school councils selected principals, they were required to choose them from a pool of candidates the district had vetted and declared eligible. “There has to be evidence that you can lead adults,” he observed.<br></p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/What-Extraordinary-Districts-Do-Differently/DSC_5587.jpg" alt="DSC_5587.jpg" class="wf-Image-Right" style="margin:5px;width:499px;height:332px;" />Jackson explained some of the backstory to Chicago’s procedure. While “the state was churning out a lot of principal licensures,” she said, many holding that credential “were not at the level we thought they needed to be to lead our schools.” The district decided to adopt a set of principal competencies—such as being skilled at managing school change—that aspiring principals are trained in. Principal candidates are then screened for these competencies, and local school councils are trained to use them to select principals who best meet school needs. </p><p>How future principals are prepared is an important ingredient in their development as effective school leaders. The RAND Corporation released a
<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/principal-pipelines-a-feasible,-affordable,-and-effective-way-for-districts-to-improve-schools.aspx?gclid=CjwKCAiA8K7uBRBBEiwACOm4d73ZIUFhnjDY99UCF7-_oSXJ3fwlfpGFcwBrtJXacsYBOIEFA7eo2BoCKAkQAvD_BwE&ef_id=CjwKCAiA8K7uBRBBEiwACOm4d73ZIUFhnjDY99UCF7-_oSXJ3fwlfpGFcwBrtJXacsYBOIEFA7eo2BoCKAkQAvD_BwE%3aG%3as">report</a> last spring found that six large districts in a Wallace-supported initiative were able to outperform similar districts in student math and reading achievement by improving how they shaped their principals, including raising the quality of preservice training. “Between Chicago and the six districts Wallace funded, can we start to think about principal development as a serious lever for district improvement?” Chenoweth asked.</p><p>Ferguson observed that
<a href="/News-and-Media/Blog/pages/the-long-and-winding-road-to-better-principal-preparation.aspx" target="_blank">Illinois had come to that realization</a>—it required reauthorization of all the state’s existing principal training programs after instituting more rigorous requirements for principal certification in 2010. “I’ve been so impressed that the state learned from Chicago [about] the qualities of leadership that matter so much,” he said.</p><p>“That was a huge deal,” Chenoweth agreed. “We know principal preparation programs are cash cows for universities—you take in the tuition money, you spend a little bit on adjuncts and you send the rest over to the engineering program.”</p><p>“That the state learned from Chicago,” said Ferguson, “is proof that systems can change to bring about more effective leadership.”</p><p>
<strong>Put the strongest teachers in the early grades</strong><br> Chenoweth played a clip from a podcast episode that told the story of a superintendent, a former high school teacher, who believed that early childhood educators were essentially babysitters and that real learning started later. “That superintendent’s ‘aha!’ moment came,” she said, “when he went to a more successful district and realized that district was successful because it took early reading instruction really seriously.” Indeed, schools often put their weakest teachers in the early grades and place their best in grades with standardized testing, according to Duke, the literacy expert. </p><p>Having begun her own education at a Head Start program on Chicago’s South Side, Jackson described why early education is crucial. “Much of how you think about yourself as a learner happens in that early stage,” she said. “If we miss an opportunity to start with that strong foundation, we’re going to spend the next 15 years trying to make up time.” At the same time, she acknowledged that while Chicago principals have been urged to put their strongest teachers in the early grades, “I would be lying if I said that we’ve been successful in making that shift.”</p><p>But Chicago is taking early education seriously, she said: The city is investing hundreds of millions in early childhood education, and by fall 2021, plans to offer free, full-day preschool to all four-year-olds in the city.</p><p>
<strong>Set ‘non-negotiables’ for literacy instruction</strong><br> Chenoweth said that she has interviewed educators who pay attention to all the elements of reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, building vocabulary and background knowledge. “That’s not work that is done in all districts,” she said. “I wonder why?”</p><p>
<img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/What-Extraordinary-Districts-Do-Differently/DSC_5566-2.jpg" alt="DSC_5566-2.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;width:450px;height:387px;" />During her years as a teacher and principal in Chicago, Jackson saw many reading initiatives come and go—including one with the components Chenoweth described—because they weren’t well-implemented.
<br></p><p>The biggest problems with literacy instruction are basic, she believes. She recalled hearing about a study some years ago that found that students in Chicago Public Schools read, on average, less than a couple of pages a day and wrote less than a page each day of authentic text. “And CPS is not an outlier in that,” she said. “We can create these complicated and sophisticated programs and invest millions in teaching teachers how to do it, but it’s really as simple as how often we require students to read in our classes for a sustained period of time and to create authentic knowledge through writing.”</p><p>Those simple tasks can be challenging to carry out, but there are ways to make it happen, she said. “I don’t think it’s a revolutionary program that we pull out of the sky that’s going to help our students.” </p><p>One high school that Ferguson worked with on literacy required every teacher in the building to give at least one serious writing assignment and grade it with a rubric. “And then teachers had to sit with their supervisor and get feedback on how well they used the rubrics,” he said.</p><p>Duke commented that both Ferguson and Jackson seemed to be saying that leaders needed to make a few things “instructional non-negotiables.” </p><p>And getting people to carry out those non-negotiables? Not an easy task, Chenoweth said, underscoring the need for strong school leadership. </p><p>
<strong>Use data to root out inequities</strong><br> A clip from Chenoweth’s Season One podcast highlighted the types of inequities that are pervasive in school systems nationwide. In an interview, a school superintendent in Lexington, Mass., described his shock at finding that 49 percent of the district’s African-American high school students were in special education. The disparity “was a moral affront to him,” said Ferguson, who consulted with the superintendent.</p><p>The superintendent eventually found the root of the problem in early reading instruction, Chenoweth said. “If kids encountered any issue in learning how to read in kindergarten or first grade, there was really no help for them except for special education services.”</p><p>After persevering for years to change school practices, the district saw gains: African-American 10th graders reached a proficiency rate of 96 percent in math and 100 percent in English on state exams, according to Ferguson. “It was about figuring out how to diagnose their students’ learning needs, organizing relentlessly to address those needs and making life uncomfortable for the adults who didn’t want to come along,” he said. </p><p>Chicago Public Schools found it had a similar problem with over-enrolling English learners in special education, according to Jackson. Digging into the issue, the district realized those students were being pushed out of bilingual programs too quickly. A revised policy lengthened the time students could spend in bilingual programs so that they had more time to learn English and hone skills in their home language, she said. Her takeaway? “Districts can learn a lot by looking at data and looking beyond the surface.” </p><p>Season 2 of the
<em>ExtraOrdinary Districts</em> podcast is available online
<a href="https://edtrust.org/extraordinary-districts-season-2/" target="_blank">here</a> and through most podcast hosting services. </p><p>
<em>Lead photo (from left to right): Karin Chenoweth (podcast host), Janice Jackson (CEO of Chicago Public Schools), Ronald Ferguson (Harvard University lecturer in public policy), Nell Duke (University of Michigan education professor), Shelby Cosner (director of UIC's Center for Urban Education Leadership)</em><br><em> Interior photo 1: Ronald Ferguson, Nell Duke </em>
<br>
<em>Interior photo 2: Karin Chenoweth, Janice Jackson, Ronald Ferguson</em></p> | | What ‘Extraordinary Districts’ Do Differently | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/What-Extraordinary-Districts-Do-Differently.aspx | 2019-12-17T05:00:00Z | Education Trust podcast points to principal leadership, equity and early literacy as levers for improvement | | |
| Cross-sector Collaborations for Education Show Promise, Face Challenges | GP0|#b804f37e-c5dd-4433-a644-37b51bb2e211;L0|#0b804f37e-c5dd-4433-a644-37b51bb2e211|Afterschool;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61;GP0|#ff9563e3-b973-45a7-8ac3-c9f4122f9a13;L0|#0ff9563e3-b973-45a7-8ac3-c9f4122f9a13|Summer Learning | <p>Complex social issues must be solved with a comprehensive approach. That’s the idea driving a recent surge in cross-sector collaborations anchored in communities and aimed at improving local educational outcomes, especially for low-income students. In one study, researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University
<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/collective-impact-and-the-new-generation-of-cross-sector-collaboration-for-education.aspx">found 182 such place-based collaborations nationwide</a> working to improve students’ readiness for and success in early childhood, K-12, and post-secondary education. </p><p>A companion study (also from Teachers College),
<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/building-impact-a-closer-look-at-local-cross-sector-collaborations-for-education.aspx"><em>Building Impact: A Closer Look at Local Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education,</em> </a> now examines eight collaborations, which often include philanthropies, school districts, businesses, higher education and social service agencies. Prior to the study's release, Carolyn Riehl, an associate professor at Teachers College, presented a few of the findings at a Collective Impact Convening in Chicago. She was joined by Will Miller, president of The Wallace Foundation, and Danae Davis, executive director of Milwaukee Succeeds, one of the collaborations featured in the study. </p><p>
<img class="wf-Image-Left" alt="Panel-photo-1.1.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Cross-sector-Collaborations-for-Education-Show-Promise-Face-Challenges/Panel-photo-1.1.jpg" style="margin:170px 5px;width:442px;" />While cross-sector collaborations were often overly optimistic about their initial goals, there’s reason for “cautious optimism” about their future, Riehl told a crowd gathered at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. They will likely take “more time than the usual window of opportunity social programs are given for making an impact,” she said, but they are bringing together partners who have rarely cooperated before, soothing local political tensions and making steady progress. </p><p>Here we highlight some key questions posed by the panel and preview findings from the upcoming report, which Miller called, “one of the most in-depth studies of the cross-sector collaboration approach.”</p><p>
<strong>Can local collaborations mount comprehensive change?</strong></p><p>Several of the eight collaborations studied set out to provide supports from early childhood through post-secondary education, but only one—Say Yes Buffalo—has come close to meeting that promise so far, the study found. That group convinced the city to provide “a broad menu of wraparound support services” for students, Riehl said. “The ‘carrot’ that enticed the city to commit was that Say Yes promised college scholarships for all eligible public school graduates in the city. The stick was that if the city reneged on the support services, there would be no more scholarships.”</p><p>Other collaborations studied had expanded services on a more gradual and limited scale and not yet met their goals. Obstacles included getting participants to agree on strategies and a shortage of funding and organizational capacity. Still, the vision to provide comprehensive services “seems to give people a sense of purpose and significance, a horizon to reach for,” she noted. </p><p>
<strong>How do collaborations address education?</strong><strong><br></strong><br> “The politics and pragmatics of collaborations working closely with school districts turned out to be much more complicated than we might imagine,” Riehl said to appreciative laughter. The initiatives studied often supported instructional improvement by launching afterschool programs or by backing a district’s strategic plan, but appropriately refrained from trying to drive instructional reforms. </p><p>But districts also were often hesitant to work closely with cross-sector collaborations, the study found. One reason, Riehl said, seemed to be a desire to avoid expensive, complicated and politically challenging work. Pressure to focus on immediate testing and accountability concerns may have played a role. Districts also commonly want to be viewed as the “source and motivator” of their own improvement, she noted, and working with an external collaboration might imply that the district couldn’t manage improvement on its own.</p><p>Collaborations did make one significant contribution to core education reform, the study found: they calmed entrenched interests and tensions that often surround urban school systems. They reduced “the sense of frustration and urgency,” Riehl said, and created “an environment more conducive to school system stability and productivity. This may not be the kind of ambitious change implied in the rhetoric of collective impact, but it did count for something in local contexts.”</p><p>
<strong>How do collaborations address equity in their systems?</strong><strong> </strong></p><p>Most collaborations were motivated by the desire to end disparities in academic performance for students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. Yet at their start, they refrained from naming the problem directly or addressing other inequities that affect education, such as housing, employment, community safety and services. But over time, collaborations have become more explicit and intentional about equity, the study found. Researchers attributed that in part to the influence of national networks supporting collaboratives and growing national attention to class and race disparities, especially in the wake of the 2016 presidential campaign. <br><br> Still, collaborations generally continued to be made up of community leaders, “often without involving the people most impacted by inequity and poor education,” she observed. The original idea was to involve “powerful decision-makers in systemwide change” but that approach, she said, might ultimately fail to galvanize widespread support, including from those they intend to serve. </p><p>
<strong>What can influence sustainability in a collaboration? </strong></p><p>“Goodwill and enthusiasm for the idea of collective impact gave these initiatives their start and seem to be boosting them along,” Riehl reported. Other factors aiding sustainability include effective “backbone” organizations to manage the collaboration, leaders with strong interpersonal skills, and national networks providing technical assistance, networking, strategies, funding and other supports. <br> Davis of Milwaukee Succeeds, which belongs to the national StriveTogether network, said that her collaborative has sustained itself since 2011 despite launching amid local education politics “that had been toxic for 25 years.” The city’s education landscape included a high-poverty school system struggling to raise student achievement, a large number of independent charter schools and private (mostly religious) schools enrolling students with vouchers. </p><p>Keeping all three education systems working together through the collaborative, she said, “is no small feat.”</p><p>She attributes their commitment to a shared desire to benefit children, a refusal to allow the collaborative’s forum “to be hijacked for political reasons,” such as elections, and insistence among the five major foundations funding the work that the three education systems show evidence of partnership. “That sends the message that you want to stay in the tent,” she said.</p><p>Early on, the collaboration also realized that it would get more traction if it placed school system priorities at the forefront, she added.</p><p>While Milwaukee Succeeds had to scale back on its ambition to tackle the whole “cradle to career spectrum” at once, it has had some wins, Davis said. After a technology manufacturing company promised the county 13,000 jobs, the collaborative helped to convene 18 local two- and four-year colleges and universities to come up with a workforce development plan that included raising college enrollment and completion. </p><p>“That was a huge deal,” she said. “I don’t know how many of you have worked with higher ed—it’s worse than the Titanic in terms of turning it around. And they are moving with great speed.”</p><p>In another win, they convinced state legislators to fund a statewide expansion of a tutoring program for early readers that the collaborative had brought to Milwaukee. Business partners in the collaborative made the request, backed by data, she said, and philanthropic partners promised funding for a quarter of the cost.</p><p>
<strong>What does the immediate future look like for collaborations?</strong></p><p>Davis said she regrets that the collaborative neglected grassroots involvement at the start and so is not well-known in the wider community. Eight years in, they are working to forge those relationships. An important step, she said, will be finding ways to support grassroots agendas. To build community buy-in, she advised “don’t bring them to your table, go to their table.” </p><p>Miller added that in his own personal experience, he’s found that a cross-sector collaboration needs support both from elites to bring resources to the table and from grassroots participation to give the effort legitimacy. Some collaborations he’s participated in, he said, owed their success in large part to “a lengthy, exhaustive process” for identifying where the interests of each overlapped. </p><p>Riehl and Davis agreed that sustaining cross-sector collaboration long-term will depend on the skill of “backbone” organizations like Milwaukee Succeeds to forge and manage diverse relationships and become more representative of the communities they serve. </p><p>“This process takes a long time,” Riehl said. “People get bored and stop coming, they argue, there’s conflict, factions develop, so it really takes a steady hand to get everyone rowing in the same direction.”<br><br> But, she said, “we’ve seen lovely instances where partner agencies have changed their strategies because they want to be part of the action.”</p><p><em>To learn more about the Teachers College study of cross-sector collaborations in education,</em> see <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/putting-collective-impact-into-context.aspx">Putting Collective Impact Into Context</a> <em>and</em> <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/collective-impact-and-the-new-generation-of-cross-sector-collaboration-for-education.aspx?_ga=2.17155889.962354234.1561754504-1014093728.1520357385">Collective Impact and the New Generation of Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education</a>. </p>Photo: Will Miller, president, The Wallace Foundation; Danae Davis, executive director, Milwaukee Succeeds; Carolyn Riehl, associate professor, Teachers College<br> | | Cross-sector Collaborations for Education Show Promise, Face Challenges | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Cross-sector-Collaborations-for-Education-Show-Promise-Face-Challenges.aspx | 2019-06-18T04:00:00Z | Your source for research and ideas to expand high quality learning and enrichment opportunities. Supporting: School Leadership, After School, Summer and Extended Learning Time, Arts Education and Building Audiences for the Arts. | | |