1. Promoting School Readiness and Early Grade Success in Neighborhoods: Findings from Nine Cities
Leah Hendey
G. Thomas Kingsley
The Urban Institute
Urban Affairs Association: Chicago, IL
March 6, 2009

2. Overview
Introduction to the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP)
NNIP School Readiness and Early Grade Success Cross-site Initiative
Objectives
Phase I Findings
Phase II Plans

3. National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP)
Started in 1996 as a partnership of local data intermediaries, coordinated by the Urban Institute.
Defining Functions:
Building and operating information systems with integrated and recurrently updated data on neighborhood conditions.
Facilitating and promoting the direct practical use of data by community and city leaders in community building and local policy making.
Emphasizing the use of information to build the capacities of institutions and residents in distressed neighborhoods.
2009: Partners in 31 cities around the country
#1: with funding from the Annie E. Casey and Rockefeller Foundations

4. NNIP School Readiness and Early Grade Success Cross-site Initiative
Competitive proposal process among partners:
Atlanta, Chattanooga, Cleveland, Denver, Indianapolis, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee and Providence were selected.
Goals:
Develop thorough understanding of school readiness and early grade success system as a whole.
Use data collected to promote collaboration and coherence on policy advocacy in this area.
Ready Child Equation:
Ready Families + Ready Communities + Ready Services + Ready Schools = Ready Children
Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation
School Readiness Resource Guide and Toolkit: Using Neighborhood Data to Spur Action
State Early Childhood Policy Technical Assistance Network (SECPTAN) and NNIP
Charlie Bruner
Ready Child Equation from School Readiness Indicators Project

5. NNIP School Readiness and Early Grade Success Cross-site Initiative
Phase I: (Oct. 07-May 08)
Scan local early childhood support system
Involve other local organizations
Complete school readiness and success brief
Phase II: (June 08-May 09)
Plan for future activity to address local priorities
Conduct a Community Children’s Policy Forum
Participate in cross-city research and advocacy
Brief: To describe key barriers to school readiness for low-income urban children

6. Phase I Findings (System Scan):
The state of school readiness systems varied considerably across sites, with sites typically having a high level of fragmentation.
Ranged from Miami and Cleveland (more of a system approach– still requires some integration) to Milwaukee and Indianapolis (little or no local engagement on the issue).
The system scan revealed that at the start of this initiative there was significant fragmentation in most sites in the school readiness system. There was little ability for these fragmented systems to come together and collaborate and to lobby effectively for policy changes.
High to Low:
Miami, Cleveland, Denver, Providence, Memphis, Chattanooga, Milwaukee and Indianapolis

7. Phase I Findings (System Scan):
System scan covered 9 domains
Availability of data varies by site and domain.
Least amount of data and integration with system: Home Visits and Family Support domain
Concerns about Head Start or the school district operating in “silos.”
Unresolved issues on obtaining data related to restrictions on confidentiality and HIPAA.
#1: Home Visits/Family Support, Foster Care/Child Protective Services, Registered Child Care, Head Start, State & Local Pre-K, Medicaid/SCHIP, Immunizations & Lead Screenings, IDEA, and Kindergarten Assessment.
#2 Data: Many sites have considerable data resources across domains, but others (especially cities without much coordination)
are still developing relationships and data.
#4 Silos: Political and territorial concerns (Denver, Cleveland, Providence) – less likely to share data with other parts of system or public
#5 confidentiality: road block for school data

8. Phase I Findings (System Scan):
Several sites have a county-level group or collaboration on early childhood and families.
United Way is involved in almost all sites.
Many sites have programs that operate in cities across the nation.
SPARK, Smart Start, Parents as First Teachers, HIPPY, Nurse-Family Partnerships
#1: Including: Atlanta, Denver, Memphis, Miami, and Cleveland: Invest in Children – integrated workgroups
Other sites like Chattanooga before this project stakeholders in the early childhood system had not met each other. Our partner there was able to form an advisory group for the project of these stakeholders and start important discussions for the community.
#2: United Way is involved in various ways in almost all sites
SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids),
HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters )

9. Phase I Findings (System Scan):
Many sites have a quality rating and improvement systems for child care settings or are working to implement them.
Almost all sites (except Milwaukee) have some type of Kindergarten Assessment tool, though the utility and reliability of tool vary.
#1: Some of the rating systems are better than others.
Many sites even if they do have a Kindergarten assessment do not have this data available at the neighborhood level. (often school-level).
Local Tool: Atlanta, Chattanooga, Cleveland, Denver, Memphis
National Tool: Denver, Indianapolis (Title 1 only), Miami, Providence

10. Phase I Findings (System Scan):
The scan attempted to lay out the elements of the school readiness system but did not evaluate the adequacy of the system.
Especially:
Home Visits/Parental Support, services ages 0-3 generally
IDEA services
Child Care Subsidies
#1: The scan helped to evaluate the overall framework of the system and how different parts worked together (first). It did not evaluate the adequacy of the system.
#2: There are many concerns about gaps in the level of services provision especially for…

11. Phase I Findings (School Readiness Briefs):
There are clear disparities between neighborhoods on risk factors for not being ready for school.
Almost all sites developed a risk or vulnerability index to map where the most at-risk children live.
Most indices included some data on birth outcomes
#1: All sites have demonstrated that…
Emphasizes need for neighborhood approach.
#2: These indices usually contained a number of variables, for example: % of low weight births, % of births to mothers without a high school degree, or % of children in poverty and then one way to create the index would be to assign census tracts or neighborhoods an index score to indicate how many risk indicators that each area scored in the top quartile of all neighborhoods in the city.

12. This is the risk index that our Cleveland partner - Center on Urban Poverty & Community Development at Case-Western Reserve University developed.
Neighborhoods with high risk scores (the darkest areas) are located in the city of Cleveland, though there are a number of neighborhoods with moderately high risk scores in the suburban areas of Cuyahoga County.
(1) births to teen mothers, (2) births to mothers without a high school diploma, (3) low birth weight births, (4) infant mortality, and (5) infants with a maltreatment report.

13. This map is a little small but our partner in Miami, The Children’s Trust also developed a School Readiness risk index that uses data representing each part of the Ready Child equation. The most at risk zip codes are in brown and orange.
• Hialeah (33010 and zip codes)
• Opa Locka/Miami Gardens (33054 and 33056)
• Model City/Liberty City (33143 and 33147)
• Florida City/Homestead (33034 and 33030)
Ready Families:
% of births to mothers under age 18, rate per 1,000 children under age 18 with verified or some evidence of maltreatment
Ready Early Childhood Education Services:
% of child care slots in accredited child care centers
Ready Health Services
% of births with adequate prenatal care, % of children birth to 5 lacking full health insurance
Ready Schools
% of elementary school students missing 20.5 or more days, % of 4th grade students at or above grade level on FCAT reading score
Ready Communities
% of children under 6 years old in poverty, % of youths (ages 10-17) arrested
Ready Children
% of kindergartners “ready for school” as measured by DIBELS ISF

14. Phase I Findings (School Readiness Briefs):
In many cities there have been demographic shifts in the neighborhoods over time.
The most at-risk children are typically in high poverty/high minority neighborhoods that are often not located near good schools or services.
Demographic shifts:
Growth of foreign-born population in some cities.
In many places the majority of young children are of minority race/ethnicity.

15. This is a density map of vulnerable children in Denver as calculated by our partner, the Piton Foundation.

16. This map shows in green the density of students who received a free or reduced-priced lunch in grades one – three – which you can see darker in the same areas where the “vulnerable” children identified in the previous map are. The red dots show the School Accountability Ratings, the larger the dot the higher the rating. There are few dots altogether in green areas and no schools that received a high or excellent score.

17. In this map produced by our Memphis partner – Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action at the University of Memphis
This partner completed an analysis of neighborhood changes including shifts in demographics and poverty.
The light red portion of the map in the central city shows classically distressed neighborhoods and the darker yellow portion that spreads out to the top and bottom of the light red represents more vulnerable swing neighborhoods that have seen recent increases in poverty levels. You can see on the map that many of the pre-k schools and accredited child care programs are located in the classically distressed neighborhoods and neighborhoods of choice (right side of map) – there are fewer assets in the swing neighborhoods were children are increasingly at risk of not being ready for school.

18. Phase I Cross-site Conclusions:
Initiative brought people together across the early childhood system to create forward momentum for a more coherent system supported by data.
Promising Practices: An integrated agency or organization that engages stakeholders, promotes system integration and uses data to support early childhood policy.
Invest In Children – Cuyahoga County, OH
This work needs to be continued – there is more to be done on developing a comprehensive and seamless approach to early childhood policy, programming and advocacy.
Special attention needs to be paid to transitions between periods, from 0-3 services to 3-5 services to services for school-aged children.
#1: Invest In Children – County agency that provides integration around early childhood issues. This agency is able to more effectively identify gaps in services (especially in home-visiting and parental supports) and to develop outreach programs to reach parents.
#Last: Many children are being captured by multiple parts of the system we need to promote integration across the system to make sure that these children are receiving the services they need – this is especially important for children with developmental issues.
An integrated system supported by data can lobby more effectively on children’s issues at both local and state levels.
Transitions between critical periods are particularly a concern for Atlanta, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Miami.
Miami – Ready Schools Miami Project
Support the efforts of Ready Schools Miami to lead the way in building bridges for children to make easy, seamless transitions from their child care and preschools to kindergarten. This includes building connections between child care sites and the public school system to align curriculums and ensure continued professional development opportunities for early childhood educators, as well as actively encouraging and assisting parents to become more involved in their children’s informal and formal educations. With these coordinated efforts it is expected children’s language skills and appropriate behavior will improve.

19. Phase I Cross-site Conclusions:
Neighborhood-based data system on school readiness indicators.
Considerable lack of evaluation of early childhood programs. Performance management measures are needed.
Gaps in outreach and public education on services.
#3: The scans and briefs revealed gaps in outreach about available services and a need for more public education on services.

20. Phase II – Future Plans
Partners working on memos detailing their future efforts on school readiness and success.
Examples from those already submitted:
Assemble and monitor data on school readiness over time
Collaborate with local agencies to address data gaps and use data to raise awareness of school readiness
Make sure local voices have a role in state policy discussions.
Mobilize or strengthen neighborhood-based strategies in support of children and families.
Create/identify instrument to assess school readiness

21. Phase II – Community Forums
One partner (Denver) has already conducted their forum:
Forum participants interacted and engaged with maps and report – really made clear that services are not located where vulnerable children are living.
Planned Forums – Capturing opportunities
Milwaukee - Engaging business leaders by framing school readiness as economic development driver.
Chattanooga - Working with local funders, their advisory committee and timing the forum to coincide with the legislative session.
Miami - Working to get all stakeholders “on message” with one agenda before holding their forum to reach out to neighborhoods and grassroots organizations.
Denver’s Forum Participants included: mayor’s office of education and children. Denver preschool program, Head Start, Denver Public Schools Early Learning Department, State agencies, Health care advocates, foundations, and political staff from city council and lieutenant governors office.
Denver had participants really work with the maps and data available from their brief in small groups and came back together as a large group to discuss the issues and obstacles to children being ready for school in Denver.
End – we hope to publish the cross-site results of both phases of this initiative in the spring.

22. Questions? Leah Hendey Research Associate The Urban Institute
Washington, DC