high school graduation

AT&T/United Way Worldwide Grant Kick-Off Meeting Facilitation

The Challenge 

AT&T and United Way Worldwide (UWW) awarded twenty sites nationwide with a Family Engagement for High School Success Grant, which supports its initiative to help parents and caregivers get more involved in their child’s education, leading to high school success and workforce readiness.

UWW needed to support these sites with the initial planning and awareness building around family engagement in their local communities.

Our Approach 

UWW teamed up with Collaborative to facilitate this initial conversation. Bringing in our expertise on not only effective facilitation, but also extensive experience with family engagement, we guided these sites through the initial planning phases and helped them design effective strategies for their outreach. 

Our Impact 

By providing extensive support from the onset, these sites are equipped with the necessary knowledge and tools to engage families in their communities. The Harvard Family Research Project will be providing an ongoing evaluation of this project, which allows sites to understand the effectives of their strategies. As sites improve outreach, they support the UWW’s long-term goal of cutting the high school dropout rate in half by 2018.

Date Added: Mar 31, 2010
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The Alliance for Excellent Education

Type: 
Associations
Overview 

The Alliance for Excellent Education is a national policy and advocacy organization that works to make every child a high school graduate—to prepare them for college, work, and to be contributing members of society. Founded in 2001, the Alliance focuses on America's six million most at-risk secondary school students—those in the lowest achievement quartile—who are most likely to leave school without a diploma or to graduate unprepared for a productive future.

Our Relationship 

Collaborative provides the Alliance for Excellent Education with advise and expertise on a wide range of issues, including research and analysis, project management, the development of written policy and advocacy documents, and the development and coordination of public engagement events.

Our Impact 
Transforming the High School Experience
Our Services 
Engagement Services

Nevada Public Education Foundation

Type: 
Foundations
Overview 

Nevada Public Education Foundation’s mission is to secure and sustain resources that will assist, support and promote excellence in public education programs in Nevada. NPEF operates under the guiding principle that young people can become “ready for life” through successful transitions at each developmental stage during their educational careers in Nevada and beyond.

Our Relationship 

The Nevada Public Education Foundation utilizes Collaborative’s knowledge and expertise on planning strategic initiatives, as well as facilitating sessions with high-level leaders, policymakers, and decision makers.

Collaborative facilitated a retreat with the Clark County Ready for Life Coalition hosted by the Nevada Public Education Foundation (NPEF) to support and promote excellence in Nevada public education programs. Collaborative continued its work with NPEF to facilitate a retreat for the organization's board in 2007 and 2008.

Our Services 
Strategic Services
Our Ideas 
Leverage Knowledge

KnowledgeWorks Foundation

Type: 
Foundations
Overview 

KnowledgeWorks strives to be the leader in developing and implementing innovative and effective approaches to high school education in the United States. Their work primarily focuses on redesigning urban high schools, developing STEM and Early College high schools, and supporting student-centered approaches to delivering real learning and results in our schools.

Our Relationship 

When the KnowledgeWorks Foundation needed an experienced firm to handle research, analysis, and bring together educational experts, they called upon Collaborative's knowledge and expertise.

To address the challenge presented by KnowledgeWorks, Collaborative conducted presentations and facilitated discussions, including leading sessions with educational leaders and community-oriented educational change leaders.

Our Services 
Strategic Services

United Way Worldwide

Type: 
Associations
Overview 

United Way Worldwide is a worldwide network in 45 countries and territories, including nearly 1,300 local organizations in the U.S. It advances the common good, creating opportunities for a better life for all, by focusing on the three key building blocks of education, income and health. The United Way Worldwide movement creates long lasting community change by addressing the underlying causes of problems that prevent progress in these areas.

Our Relationship 

Collaborative has been called upon to provide trusted advice and consultation to United Way Worldwide on a wide variety of issues, including high-level executive consultation, strategic consulting, meeting facilitation, research and analysis, and production services.

Our Impact 
AT&T/United Way Worldwide Grant Kick-Off Meeting Facilitation
Community Impact Leadership & Learning Field Engagement (CILL) Team Consulting
Engaging CEOs of Local United Ways
Research, Writing and Strategy Development for United Way Worldwide
Strategic Planning for Education Impact
United Way Innovation Network
Our Services 
Strategic Services
Our Ideas 
Engage Communities

National Academy Foundation

Type: 
Foundations
Overview 

The mission of the National Academy Foundation (NAF) is to sustain a national network of career academies to support the development of America's youth toward personal and professional success in high school, in higher education, and throughout their careers.

Our Relationship 

Collaborative provides the National Academy Foundation a variety of ongoing research and network development services, including research, analysis, and documentation production on the potential of new academies and a redesign of their national conference.

Collaborative worked with NAF and its partners to create a standards document that would be useful to youth, schools and employers. The Collaborative team conducted interviews with and received feedback from NAF stuff and the field. The resulting document adeptly clarifies the expectations youth, school personnell and partners, and employers have when developing, implementing, and assessing internship experiences for high school students. An electronic copy is available at www.naf.org/internship-gold-standards.

Our Impact 
Creating Gold Standards for High School Internships with the National Academy Foundation
Exploring California Expansion Opportunities for the National Academy Foundation
Our Services 
Network Development

Jacksonville Schools Show Graduation Rate Gains

TAGS:

The Florida Department of Education recently released new data that shows an increase of 4.6 percentage points in the graduation rate of the Duval County Public School District (DCPS).  DCPS comprises 177 schools, serving 125,000 students in the City of Jacksonville, Florida.  The district's four-year high school graduation rate now stands at 71.2 percent; its dropout rate stands at 2.3 percent.

"The gains in our graduation rate are proof that Duval County Public Schools is on its way to becoming the best large urban district in the country," DCPS Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals said in a statement.

Collaborative Communications Group has worked on the ground in Jacksonville for the past year, supporting the work of the Learning to Finish (LTF) Partnership.  Through the partnership, the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, The Community Foundation in Jacksonville, United Way of Northeastern Florida, Jacksonville Children's Commission and Duval County Public Schools have aligned their programs and resources to increase the graduation rate in Jacksonville. 

We applaud the success of the students, teachers and administrators of Duval County Public Schools.  Together with the support of committed community partners, they are making a demonstrable impact on the lives of Florida's students.

For more information on Jacksonville's graduation rate gains, see the DCPS press release.  For more information on Collaborative's work supporting collective impact efforts, see our strategic services page.

Date Added: Feb 10, 2012

Exploring California Expansion Opportunities for the National Academy Foundation

The Challenge 

The National Academy Foundation (NAF), a national network of career academies whose mission is to support the development of America's youth toward personal and professional success in high school, in higher education and throughout their careers, reached out to Collaborative to take a comprehensive look at the state of career academies and multiple pathways in 29 communities in California, and to make recommendations for potential expansion opportunities.

NAF shared with Collaborative some previous challenges they had experienced with collecting information to inform their expansion decisions. One of the biggest challenges they encountered was that school data and information became quickly outdated because of the constantly changing landscape of multiple pathways and career academies in California. Limited funding also put a cap on the number of communities they could reasonably examine.

Our Approach 

Collaborative looked at multiple indicators to identify potential expansion opportunities for NAF academies in California. We examined public education data, interviewed potential partners and identified existing support structures, to gain a clear picture of interest, need and support. We looked at how these indicators intersected and overlapped, to identify potential areas for academy expansion. We synthesized our findings in a written report that "maps" our recommendations.

In response to the need be able to update information and continue to explore new locations, Collaborative created the Community Readiness Assessment Tool, which helps to guide strategic thinking about a community's level of readiness to engage in the career academy approach. By capturing and documenting the process by which data can be used to inform decisions, Collaborative empowered NAF to continue its work in an effective and strategic way.

Our Impact 

NAF responded enthusiastically to the value that Collaborative added to this project, and plans to continue to explore how these and other tools might be put into an interactive online format.

Date Added: Mar 13, 2010
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Creating Gold Standards for High School Internships with the National Academy Foundation

The Challenge 

The National Academy Foundation (NAF) is an acclaimed national network of high school career academies predominately based in urban districts. These schools-within- schools have rigorous, career-themed curricula created in partnership with current industry and educational expertise. NAF's work has shown that work-based learning opportunities are essential to helping youth succeed as adults in the world of work.

NAF sees high school internships as one component of a continuum of work-based learning experiences, and believes that it should be the pinnacle of years of carefully planned work-based learning opportunities. However, no standards for high school internships existed to clarify the kinds of high quality experiences that youth, school personnel and partners, and employers should aspire to when creating, implementing and evaluating internship experiences. NAF needed a clear document stating the gold standards for high school internships.

Our Approach 

Collaborative Communications Group worked with NAF and its partners to create a standards document that would be useful to youth, schools and employers. NAF began the process by convening a Career Academy and Internship Task Force of national experts in work-based learning. Collaborative provided direction on the meeting agenda, materials and purpose; attended and documented the meeting in Oakland, CA; and identified the most relevant themes from the daylong discussion. We also attended a convening of employers in the Los Angeles area and gatherings of educators and intermediaries who deliver work-based learning activities to further test the identified themes.

Our process of creating the standards document included receiving continuous feedback from NAF staff, the Task Force and the field. When a change in scope resulted in the need for a slightly different product, we adeptly changed our approach to deliver a document that would be most useful to the organization in continuing to solicit feedback and funding to obtain support nationwide.

Our Impact 

Collaborative produced Preparing Youth for Life: The Gold Standards for High School Internships, a document that lays out the vision for high school internships, and pushes the discussion about how to achieve this vision in practice.  NAF is using it as a tool to lead internal and external discussions about expectations for high school internships at all stages of implementation.

This project also helped Collaborative continue to grow our partnership with and knowledge of NAF. We have compiled educational resource maps in New Orleans and Los Angeles, and for the state of California.

Date Added: Mar 13, 2010
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