A bold question is being asked in communities across the country.
What happens when a core group of community leaders abandon their individual agendas and work together to address a complex concern such as how to better educate the community's young people?
More and more, efforts that deal with complicated issues are finding significant positive results in the power of Collective Impact -- many people working toward a single but multi-faceted goal -- reports the Stanford Innovation Review.
Over the past year these findings have proved seminal as The Learning Network of Greater Kalamazoo
looked for ways to achieve its goal of making sure all children across the county are ready for school, college, the world of work and beyond.
In two reports,
"Collective Impact" and "
Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work" Stanford researchers spell out what's working and what keeps it working. The successful process they identify has influenced The Learning Network as it developed a way to move forward.
Communities and organizations using the Collective Impact process have brought about changes that are as vast as a program initiated by the United Nations to reduce malnutrition and improve the health of 1 billion at risk people in the developing world or as focused as reducing teenage drinking and marijuana use in a community of 88,000 in Western Massachusetts.
At a time when positive results of education reform have proven stubbornly elusive and innovative, successful programs cannot be duplicated in ways that raise the educational standards of all, communities are turning to a Collective Impact process to bring about change.
Cincinnati, with a program it calls
Strive, has become a leader among communities working to improve education using a Collective Impact process. The Stanford team says, there, more than 300 leaders of local organizations agreed to participate, including the heads of influential private and corporate foundations, city government officials, school district representatives, the presidents of eight universities and community colleges and the executive directors of hundreds of education-related non-profit and advocacy groups.
“These leaders realized that fixing one point on the educational continuum -- such as better after-school programs -- wouldn't make much difference unless all parts of the continuum improved at the same time. No single organization, however innovative or powerful, could accomplish this alone. Instead, their ambitious mission became to coordinate improvements at every stage of a young person's life, from 'cradle to career,'" say researchers in the article "Collective Impact."
Strive and Collective Impact programs that are influenced by its process establish metrics that they believe indicate progress toward a specific goal. Metrics are based on the needs and circumstances of a given community. Programs that support achievement of those goals are supported while those that do not are tweaked to bring them in alignment with programs that are meeting specified outcomes. The efforts continually evolve as those pursuing the common goals determine what works.
Much of the work is done in action networks, groups of parents, students and educators who use data and a process of continuous improvement to identify and adopt practices that will move the community toward its goal and collect the data that demonstrates goals are being met.
The action networks are part of a specific structure that provides the networks with data and other support they need and also monitors the data the networks collect to see if goals actually are being accomplished.
In a recent breakfast meeting, members of the community got an introduction to the framework of work proposed and were invited to indicate what part of the process they would be willing to work on.
Superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public Schools Michael Rice outlined the roots of The Learning Network, tracing it to the announcement of The Kalamazoo Promise in 2005. He cited programs that already are in place in the community and are growing to promote literacy and a college-going culture, including 10 literacy centers that will operate throughout the summer break.
He also pointed to the $11 million that has been committed toward achieving a college-going culture of young people who are able to benefit from The Promise because they are ready for higher-education when they get there. The
Kalamazoo Community Foundation board of directors has committed $5 million over five years and the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded $6 million over three years.
Carrie Pickett-Erway of the Kalamazoo Foundation discussed plans for the community to move from aspiration to action through establishing action networks and Randy Eberts of the W.E. Upjohn Institute talked about the need to establish metrics that will demonstrate whether steps are being taken to meet specific outcomes. After learning more about the process, the crowd of nearly 150 broke up into smaller groups to find out some details of what needs to be done at various developmental levels for young people in school.
Others stayed for a question and answer period with Suprotik Stotz-Ghosh, of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and director of the Backbone Team serving the networks.
"All across the country people realize we have to do education differently," Stotz-Ghosh told the group. "We can't wait for Washington or the state capital to figure it out. Are organizations willing to work together to do what we can do locally to improve outcomes? We have what we need if they are."
Some in the audience had questions about how their organization would fit into the new framework. Others seemed up for the challenge.
Tom McNally of MRC Industries, which serves individuals living with developmental or learning disabilities, described the process as breaking down silos that nonprofits and funders have created -- they operate separately and each has their own different materials or resources.
“This is a shift of what we have known," McNally says. "It's a new beginning to view education holistically. … It's confusing, scary and exciting."
Kathy Jennings is Managing Editor of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave. She is a freelance editor and writer.
Upcoming meetings
Over the summer, The Learning Network will be forming Action Networks that will be working on community-level outcomes or goals. The Action Networks are intended to take existing efforts and align them with new partners and new processes in pursuit of community outcomes that raise the education level of all young people.
The next steps for the formation of Action Networks are:
• June 29 -- The Learning Network will distribute an invitation countywide to form Action Networks focused on addressing the community-level outcomes spelled out in a Community Scorecard.
The invitation will clarify:
-- The supports The Learning Network can provide to the Action Networks to as they work to meet the community-level outcomes. Supports include facilitators, data analysis, communications and advocacy; and
-- The expectations of Action Networks in order to receive support, such as data sharing, outreach to new partners and identifying and adopting practices that impact the community-level outcome.
• July 12–13 and 19–20 -- The Learning Network will convene informational sessions to answer questions about the invitation.
• Aug. 6 -- Deadline for submitting plans to form Action Networks.
• Aug. 13 -- The Learning Network Executive Team will review and analyze the proposed Action Network plans.
• Aug. 14-31 -- The Learning Network will respond to all Action Network plans submitted and mutually determine the next steps with the proposed Action Network partners.