HE‘E Meeting with Pat Brown of Strive
July 15, 2011
1:00-3:00pm
YWCA Fuller Hall
Attendees
- Karen Ginoza (FACE)
- Wendy Kekahio (McREL)
- Gordon Miyamoto (DOE)
- Patria Weston Lee (Consuelo Foundation)
- Maria Monsell (Hawaii P-20)
- Lesli Yogi (Hawaii P-20)
- Nick Nichols (DOE Facilities)
- Mary Weir (FACE)
- Rosanna Fukuda (DOE)
- Malia Taum-Deenik (Zero to Three)
- Shawn Kana’iaupuni (Kamehameha Schools)
- Dennis Tynan (DOE)
- Caroline Hayashi (PPS)
- David Tom (GBA)
- Melissa Pavilicek (HPPA)
- Jamie Moody (GBA)
- Karen Lee (Hawaii P-20)
- Takashi Ohno (DOE)
- Jennifer Dang (GBA)
- Craig Chong (Fresh Leadership)
- Pamela Young
- Pat Brown (Strive)
- Kathy Bryant (HE‘E)
- Cheri Nakamura (HE‘E)
Meeting Started 1:20pm
Welcome, Acknowledgement of Kamehameha Schools
Cheri Nakamura gave a brief welcome and introduced Dr. Kana‘iaupuni
Introduction of Strive
Dr. Shawn Kana‘iaupuni gave some background on Kamehameha Schools Leeward project, the Ka Pua Initiative. Kamehameha Schools was interested in learning about Strive and their process, so they invited Pat Brown to Hawaii.
Pat Brown Personal Background
Pat Brown started by giving some of her personal background. She comes from a family of nine, and is a first generation college graduate. In the 7th grade, a math teacher gave her the confidence to pursue her education. She graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee. She then spent ten years at P&G as a chemical engineer. After P&G she remained in Cincinnati and formed a non-profit with a church group to help build a community center. There, she helped developed successful programs for the community. She learned about the importance of getting the right skills and resources, as well as goals and measures and using a process to move the needle.
Pat next moved to Knowledgeworks, of which is a Strive is a subsidiary, supported by Ohio philanthropies. Knowledgeworks incubated the Strive initiative. Local CEO leaders were included. Accountability structure was set up.
Strive Cradle to Career Civic Infrastructure
Pat reviewed presentation “Strive Cradle to Career Civic Infrastructure.” Highlights included:
- Indicators-report card 40 out of 53 indicators are moving in right direction
- Early childhood preparedness—sponsored by United Way +9%
- College Access 10-40% Target schools seeing dramatic increases in college enrollment
- Public/Private Partnership $28.5 million dollars leveraged to sustain and scale focus on data, transparent
- Developed Learning Partners Dashboard, which pooled data
- Formed Urban Educator Academy—quality teachers are working with those with the greatest academic needs. Support excellent teachers—teachers don’t feel appreciated
- Student Roadmap to Success was two systemic initiatives—together we will make a difference to our kids. All the leaders came together—some of them were educators, philanthropist—at the end of 12 months started to say “aha.” Early childhood preparedness–continuum—cradle to career. Roadmap galvanized community. It was a vernacular that they could understand.
- Community Report Card was a way to make sure we are in the right direction.
Find the measures. Find the baseline. Don’t let the enemy be the perfect of good.
- Pursued high impact strategies. Early childhood readiness scores were dismal, so focus went to home visitation and quality early childhood education. Importance of having high quality teachers in classroom—Teacher and Principal Excellence Initiatives were started. They also made sure lowest performing schools were getting resources they needed.
- For College Access & Retention—looked at data—appeared that they were graduating a lot of kids. However, when they arrived in college, the students had to do an average of 1.5 years of remediation. Students were also dropping out. We are not retaining them so something is not right. More rigor in high school education was necessary. Higher education institutions had to report their data. They also had to disaggregate data in ethnicity.
- When building the Conceptual Framework, there were a lot of silos so they had to work from common game plan. They made sure community measured themselves in the same way.
- Developed Continuous Improvement Process-define, measure, analyze, improve, continuously improve.
- Campaigns for Community Engagement—BE THE CHANGE initiative for recruiting tutors on behalf of the district. STAND FOR KIDS—Unions were in negotiations and negotiations had stalled. Community rallied to say “keep talking”
- Strive’s National work based on local work. Living Cities Grant taps banks and foundations. Focus is on systemic change.
- 5 demonstration sights. Cincinnati, East Bay, Richmond, Houston, Portland, Boston and Seattle. National momentum-improving civic infrastructure.
Pat continued by commenting that funding sources need to be aligned too, that the funding focused their direction. They chose strategies based on data.
Next, sustained community engagement/communications, and a shared community vision—anchor leaders across many sectors were necessary.
The evidence–baseline report card launched identified at least three key strategies based on high priority needs. As for collaborative action-networks and actions plans were true and transparent. Finally, investment in staff was necessary to help support work in community.
Strive’s goal is to develop 20 Cradle to Career communities by 2015. Currently 8 completed, 16 emerging and 24 exploring.
Because of the community-based nature of the audience, Pat reviewed some important points about community engagement.
10 principles authentic community engagement
- Involves all sectors of the community
- Asking community to engage on important questions and acknowledges their views and contributions
- Involves the community early in the process–ownership
- Connects with those who influence official decisions
- Opportunities for people to gather at convenient and comfortable locations and a variety of convenient times
- Holding more than one meeting
- Is not agenda driven-rather focuses on aspirations communities hold for their future
- Allows for sustained involvement by community stakeholders
- Has a learning component that helps build community awareness and knowledge around the issue
10. Allows time in the process to make informed judgments
Questions and Answer
Q: For public campaign “Be the Change,” were there fees for campaign? Were tutors paid?
A: No fees and the tutors were there on a volunteer basis.
Q: How do you collect data from so many organizations?
A: Professional staff collects on multiple levels. Providers come together and decide that they are going to use a particular method/spreadsheet.
Q: Working with policy makers, because there are so many critical issues to deal with in K-12, they often do not view early learning as not a priority. Any suggestions?
A: Leaders have to believe that early learning is important. That is why it is importance of having the “leadership table,” where systemic conversation can occur as well as a discussion on data.
Q: How large are the districts your work with?
A: In Cincinnati, we have 35,000 kids, which is not small. This is why building Civic Infrastructure is so important—it is big systemic work. In Cincinnati, where we are looking at a district across state lines, we must pool the state data in one place. We do have staff to do this. Our work is clustered around priority strategies.
Q: Do you work with local P-20 groups?
A: Yes, a local P-20—morphed into this initiative. Now we are turning to national initiatives.
Meeting adjourned at 3:00pm.