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Moving Forward: The
Next Steps of Lucas County’s Aspire Program
By Mariah Hicks
Sojourner’s Truth Reporter
An
interactive community meeting was held last Monday at the
United Way of Greater Toledo for Lucas County’s Aspire
program. Members from the community assembled to discuss the
next steps of the program’s agenda for their Kindergarten
Readiness and Graduation Networks.
The
meeting consisted of highlights of the program’s efforts, an
update on the program’s assessment, overview of the data
collection process, examination of two areas from the data
and an engaging discussion of identifying problems and
solutions for those areas.
Aspire
was introduced to Lucas County in 2012 as an offspring of
Cincinnati's Strive Together program. In partnership with
Strive Together, about 70 cities throughout the country are
bouncing off of the program’s work in order to strengthen
the success rates in children’s education.
Aspire
was introduced to Toledo because community leaders realized
that residents continue to suffer educationally because of
poverty and lack of resources despite the efforts of
agencies intended to help families within the community.
Aspire
generally holds the same value as Strive Together, which is
to advance educational and economic outcomes for children
within the community. As stated on Aspire’s website, “Our
objective is to build transparency into the system to ensure
that we are doing the right things for our children and
families -- establishing the right support structure to
allow kids to learn, grow and thrive in Toledo.”
Aspire is
a collaboration of United Way of Greater Toledo, The Toledo
Community Foundation and Lucas County Commissioners.
A main
goal of the meeting, as noted by Aspire's Executive Director
Katie Enright, was to get people of the community to come
together and focus on common outcomes.
“You’ll
see the kind of expectations that’s become of the networks
is really how information coming from these assessments and
coming from some of the data that’s going to be gathered
here, and we’re really looking at where are the bright
spots, where are there gaps, where do we need help,” said
Enright. “Maybe there’s things we need to offer in terms of
parent engagement to lift the programs up, maybe there’s
things we need to offer in terms of cultural competency to
help lift programs up and in turn lift families up in the
community, so that’s kind of some of the work we’re going to
start doing today.”
A video
from Jeff Edmondson, founder and former executive director
of Strive Together, was displayed in order to highlight the
importance of taking personal action. “The number one
insight after 12 years is this: collective impact ironically
depends more on the individuals than it does on the
collective,” Edmondson said in the video.
Before
moving forward to the next part of the meeting, Enright
summarized Edmondson’s overall moral of the video, which she
described as asking oneself “What personal action can I
take?” and “What can I do to help drive something forward?”
Kristen
Kania, Aspire’s Data and Outcome Network Manager, then
discussed the assessment overview. Forty early childhood and
school-age programs participated in a voluntary assessment
where they were graded on four core secondary indicators;
program evaluation, parent engagement, cultural competency
and program supports.
As
explained in a Powerpoint shown by Kania, the used program
assessment tool was created to provide a clear, common
language for assessing outcomes, secondary indicators and
contributing factors while it relied on the use of
qualitative and quantitative data to measure results, direct
program improvement and inform overall decision making. The
assessment consisted of weighted questions, which affected
the overall performance of the programs.
“The
thought is, if we can lift up the programs and improve the
programs in meaningful ways based on best practices, based
on the qualitative data that we gathered here in this
community, then we will deliver higher level programming to
our kids and those outcomes that we’re looking at across
that cradle to career spectrum should start to improve,”
said Kania.
During
the joint meeting, attendees went over two areas of the
assessed data, which were parent engagement and cultural
competency. Out of the four core secondary indicators, these
were the areas that showed the largest gaps, as explained by
Enright. Definitions for the two areas were provided, as
well as the questions that the programs were assessed on and
the data that was collected in the process.
Each
question was graded on a color scale; green representing the
best practice, yellow highlighting the need to emerge and
red implementing the need to improve. Table leaders were
given the task of leading discussions after their table
observed the collected data.
The
working definitions for the two observed areas are shown as
follows:
Parent
Engagement
●
Tracking of parent
participation and efforts toward continuous improvement (at
least twice during the program delivery cycle; quarterly is
preferred)
●
Collection of parent
satisfaction data, used to improve the program
●
Evidence of parent inclusion
in a valued decision-making role (on agency board, program
oversight committee and/or parent advisory group)
●
Regular, two-way interactive
communication between the program and parents
●
Education of parents about
child development/parenting skills
●
Tools empowering parents to
participate in student learning at home (e.g., replication
of successful program strategies in home as applicable)
●
Parent social connection
opportunities
Cultural Competency
●
Agency policy that reflects
the value of cultural inclusivity, respectfulness and safety
●
Culture that fosters
inclusivity and positive identity development of
children/youth/families
●
Program evaluation,
including cultural competency assessment
●
Written staff development
plan that includes trainings, follow-up meetings, and
implementation to build multicultural competence in teaching
and/or social development and to address poverty, language,
and homelessness
●
Leadership team and staff
who are inclusive and representative of the population
served
●
Staff able to demonstrate
culturally appropriate responsiveness
●
Knowledge and responsiveness
to children/families regarding concrete supports
●
Flexibility required to meet
the needs of the population served
After
attendees concluded their observations and table
discussions, the room was brought back to a group discussion
led by Kania. Members of the audience were able to share
their thoughts on the assessed data of parent engagement and
cultural competency.
Many
people realized that in both areas, early childhood programs
were doing better at things that school-age programs were
slacking on, and vice versa. A general curiosity arose among
the attendees on how the programs could help each other
improve and participants wondered how they could bring the
programs together and get them to share what they were doing
in areas where they showed best practice.
Recognizing that there are successful programs and wondering
how to take the steps to tap into them was a factor that was
mentioned throughout the discussion. Multiple attendees
realized that though some programs had areas where they were
red and yellow, it didn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel
where there wasn’t much success when they could be looking
at the models of green that have been working in the
community already.
Concerns
arose as attendees pointed at areas where they located
problems and gave some of their ideas of solutions.
Many
people pinpointed parental engagement as an important factor
in being able to reach more children. Questions that arose
about the assessed data were if the programs supported deep
parental engagement or just surface requirements to the
level of engagement.
“Parent
engagement is a soft target, a soft thing to fund. But it’s
really powerful. And parents need to feel like they really
are a partner and we’re treating them like a partner and
we’re just not trying to tell them what to do. They don’t
need another person telling them what to do,” Enright said.
Cultural
competency showed questionable areas as well. Attendees were
concerned with the working definition provided for this area
and pondered on how to understand the operational meaning on
a groundwork level that could be applied within agencies.
Learning and understanding the difference between diversity
and the complexity of cultural competency was something that
people stressed needed to be implemented with agencies.
After
further discussion amongst the group, the meeting was closed
out as Kania announced the plans for the next steps. She
also provided a sign-up sheet for those who wanted to meet
with her with further concerns on Aspire’s work.
“What
we’re going to do is, we’re going to have more network
meetings obviously and focus on those indicators as well,
but now this will become where we have a network where we
can share those values, share those best practices about the
parent engagement. That’s an easier section. The cultural
competency is always going to be hard. It’s not comfortable
to tackle, but it is so needed. People are excited to see
that we’re going to tackle it and not leave it alone,”
Enright said.
Aspire
plans to have more joint network meetings in the future with
the understanding that parent engagement and cultural
competency are two factors that need to be observed on a
deeper level. To keep up with the program’s next steps, you
can visit their website at http://www.aspiretoledo.org/.
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