Rallying a Community to Solve a Problem: 5 Local Efforts

Overhaul Juvenile Justice

Goal: Fix New York State’s ineffective juvenile-justice system

Who’s leading the work: Representatives from nonprofits, state agencies, probation offices, and others formed a committee to oversee multiple activities.

Strategy: Get a complex network of public and private agencies to agree to collaborate and share data for the first time and to use those data to drive decision making.

Results: From December 2010 to June 2013, the number of youths in state custody dropped 45 percent.

Curb Poverty

Goal: Reduce poverty for 1 million Canadian citizens in 100 cities by 2020

Who’s leading the work: Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement

Strategy: Regional collaboratives bring together businesses, government, nonprofit organizations, and low-income residents to develop local strategies to reduce poverty in an effort called Vibrant Communities. Tamarack aggregates the regional data so successful strategies can be shared throughout the network.

Results: An earlier effort that ended in 2010 improved the lives of 203,000 Canadians by measures like income; access to food, shelter, and transportation; and increased skills and knowledge.

Provide a Better Education

Goal: Improve educational outcomes, ranging from kindergarten readiness to college completion, in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky

Who’s leading the work: Strive Partnership

Strategy: Strive is one of the first “cradle to career” education efforts that starts with early education and continues through the time a person enters a job or college. It works with school officials, early-childhood educators, nonprofit and business leaders, and city officials to identify indicators of student success and use data to send dollars to programs that work.

Results: 89 percent of indicators, including kindergarten readiness and fourth-grade reading proficiency, have shown signs of improvement, but some measures of progress among older students, including ACT scores and postsecondary readiness, haven’t improved as much.

Promote College and Jobs Schooling

Goal: Double by the year 2020 the proportion of students in seven low-income school districts in the Seattle area who are on track to graduate from college or earn a career credential

Who’s leading the work: Community Center for Education Results

Strategy: The Road Map Project is similar to the Strive Partnership and includes schools, philanthropists, housing authorities, health systems, and community-based organizations.

Results: The proportion of students in the region who earn a college degree or credential within six years has risen from 24 percent to 35 percent since the project started in 2010.

Keep Kids in School

Goal: Reduce dropout rates in Philadelphia

Who’s leading the work: Philadelphia Youth Network

Strategy: Project U-Turn works with the mayor’s office, school officials, service providers, court and welfare systems, and local grant makers to share data and get everybody working toward a common purpose. The effort seeks to provide more support for students in foster care and create more educational opportunities for students in the juvenile-justice system.

Results: The graduation rate in the School District of Philadelphia now stands at 64 percent—up 12 percentage points from when Project U-Turn started eight years ago but still far below the state’s average of 84 percent.

Sources: Chronicle reporting, FSG, Bridgespan Group