How can the collaborative improvement approach change the way communities work together to get to better results for every child? Heidi Black, StriveTogether’s senior director of innovation, collaborative improvement, shares what it means to change systems, how to get started in this work and her hopes for the future, including insights she presented at the…
Guest post by Melissa McCoy for StriveTogether. The data is stark: Our schools are not preparing every student to succeed in life. Seeking change, educators try programs and initiatives to improve outcomes for kids. These reform efforts often treat students the same, using widespread, one-size-fits-all approaches. But each student is unique and a few solutions…
Making systems more equitable is hard. It presents endless challenges with no known solutions. In the face of these challenges, imagine having a step-by-step process and tools to give you insight, clarity and early wins to show that your strategies are working. Through improvement science, that vision can be reality. I’m not saying that using…
In Salt Lake City, Utah, school staff and community partners are using improvement science to get better outcomes for kids and families. This week, I’m joining Tyler Asman from United Way of Salt Lake to share the story of this work at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education. The story started two years…
Guest blog post by Tracy McDaniel, Early Childhood Accountability Partnership coordinator at Cradle to Career Network member Mission: Graduate. It all started with a question that we heard over and over from service providers across Albuquerque: How do we talk with families about technology? Parents are busy, distracted and often checking their devices. Phone alerts and…
Guest blog post by Ida Thompson, director of national network and program affairs at Spartanburg Academic Movement. 2012 in Spartanburg, S.C.: Too many children were entering kindergarten not ready to learn. Access to developmental screening for young children was non-existent. Only a few educators and advocates kept early childhood issues front and center. The Children’s…
Guest blog post by StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network member Cradle to Career Partnership In Pima County, Arizona, the number of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in high-quality early education rose from 16.4 percent to 21.5 percent over two years. But nearly 15,000 kids still don’t have access to these programs. We need community leaders to…
The first three years of a child’s life are critically important to his or her future success. In those first few years, the brain grows to 80 percent of its adult size and decades of research have shown that a child’s earliest experiences impact his or her long-term well-being. In fact, early experiences and interactions…
Guest post by Kirstin Yeado of Higher Expectations for Racine County, a StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network community. Data is a tool that should be used as a flashlight, not a hammer. This is one of the many lessons Higher Expectations for Racine County has learned from the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network. Racine is…
Having a rigorous process for testing and implementing changes to get better results has always been deeply embedded in our work at StriveTogether. In fact, developing a culture of continuous improvement is one of the four principles in our Theory of Action. We know it is crucial for Cradle to Career Network communities if they…
Collective impact has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the social sector, and, unfortunately, the term gets used for a range of activities that deviate from the original intent: achieving results at scale. Our focus with the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network has been to establish standards for what this work really takes to…