Communities
Schools belong to their communities. Even as the day of the neighborhood school gives way to a time when education is not defined by location, the well-being and prosperity of our local communities are tied to the success of their children. At the same time, children’s health and accomplishments rely on the adults around them.
In Cincinnati, our community-based strategy Strive is building a strong foundation across all sectors of the urban area and seeing results in student achievement.
“All educational institutions and non-profit organizations have to see themselves as partners on the same team. This is what Strive is all about.”
— Jim Wiseman, VP, Toyota
Strive in Greater Cincinnati
More than 300 organizations in Greater Cincinnati – local school districts, colleges and universities, nonprofit organizations, social service providers and businesses – have come together to form the Strive partnership.
That kind of broad collaboration is itself a game-changing outcome for education in Cincinnati. But Strive does much more than unite a diverse group of partners to champion data-driven education reform. In its quest to help each child in the urban core succeed from birth through some form of college into a meaningful career, Strive has:
- Published a series of annual community report cards that chart progress on more than 50 indicators of education success as a way to encourage shared accountability for outcomes.
- Created an endorsement process that encourages service providers working in overlapping areas to form networks. Seven networks have been endorsed for their common goals, measures and data-driven action plans.
- Developed an open source dashboard to track academic and nonacademic student support data for use in stronger collaboration and better decision making.
- Forged a local College Compact with four universities to align college access, scholarships and retention efforts to better support students.
- Developed Strive Six Sigma, a rigorous continuous quality improvement model for use in the social sector.
- Established a local innovation fund to support high impact and data-driven strategies.
These efforts are paying off for Greater Cincinnati students. Strive’s 2010 report card noted:
- Larger numbers of children enrolling in public schools arrive ready for kindergarten.
- Student performance in math is improving in all three local public school districts.
- College enrollment rates are on the rise.
- More students are college ready and retention rates are increasing.
