The Public-Private Partnership: Helping Schools Succeed

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from education reporter Diana Lambert of the Sacramento Bee.

Session: Covering ‘Collective Impact’ and its Link to Education

Moderator: Diette Courrege, the Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Participants:
Jeff Edmondson, managing director, Strive Partnership
John Kania, managing director FSG, a social impact consulting group
Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey, president, Say Yes to Education
John Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, U.S. Department of Education

Schools can’t do it alone. This is becoming even more apparent as states continue to cut education budgets, leaving schools with fewer teachers and less resources.

Non-profits have helped for years – offering after-school programs, summer school or health services, for example – but usually worked individually and without collaboration.

Organizations like Strive Partnership and Say Yes to Education have emerged to help neighborhoods organize non-profits, school, state and federal resources to collectively work on a single goal like closing the achievement gap or improving reading scores. The effort – called Collective Impact - is a “strategy to address a large-scale problem and to make consistent progress, so numerous organizations can systematically align goals to come to a common goal,” Kania said.

There are five characteristics of "Collective Impact," according to the speakers:

*A cross-section of organizations coming together with a common agenda

*Shared measurements

*Mutually reinforcing activities

*Continuous communication

*A backbone organization with collaboration as its sole focus

Math and English scores have skyrocketed upward since Strive has been working in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky to improve student achievement. The communities have been trying to reach this goal for decades, but “felt that there wasn’t enough return on their dollar,” Edmondson said. He said the school system was program rich and system poor. “They would spray resources and pray it worked.”

He said the organizations involved in the collective effort agreed on 10 outcomes. Now that the effort has shown success the focus is on spreading the practices “that are doing the most for kids,” he said.

Say Yes to Education is working with urban schools on the East Coast to offer services for youth that include academic, health, social and legal supports. The organization’s goal is to form public –private partnerships to increase the number of low-income students who graduate from high school and college. The organization offers a unique promise: scholarships for all students.

Say Yes to Education – which began 25 years ago – has been successful. Over 75 percent of all participating students in Say Yes Chapters have graduated from High School; 50 percent have achieved a postsecondary degree.

The federal government has started a similar program. Its Promise Neighborhoods organizes communities for a common goal – to provide cradle to career services to improve the academic achievement and health of children.

“You can see results in a fairly short period of time,” said Schmitt-Carey, of the efforts.