The Wisconsin Partnership one of 16 winning initiatives that will tackle systems changes needed to help children and families living in poverty move up the economic ladder
KENOSHA, WI — The Wisconsin Partnership, which includes Building Our Future, Milwaukee Succeeds, Higher Expectations for Racine County, and Achieve Brown County has received nearly $350,000 from StriveTogether, a national nonprofit working to bring communities together around data to make decisions and improve results for kids. The Wisconsin Partnership will use its grant award to test, learn, and spread strategies focused on advancing policy change within Wisconsin. The grant award is part of StriveTogether’s Cradle to Career Community Challenge, which seeks to create local change to enable economic mobility. The program’s goal is to strengthen and align the many systems, such as education, employment, health and housing that shape opportunity for children and families in America. “This project will allow Building Our Future to elevate our work in state and local activities in order to generate meaningful student outcomes at scale,” said Tatjana Bicanin, executive director of Building Our Future. “We have leadership from all sectors of Kenosha County that understand the need for alignment,” said Jean Moran, former CEO of LMI Packaging and executive sponsor. “We all know there is much more work to do. The best news of all is that we are ready, willing, and able to do what is needed.” The Wisconsin Partnership will focus on addressing mobilization of systems-level barriers that prevent families from accessing high-quality early care and education through community engagement. Through the Community Challenge, more than $20 million over the next three years will fund projects across the country that aim to shift public policy and engage the systems needed to help students progress from kindergarten to postsecondary completion and finding a job. The Wisconsin Partnership is receiving its grant through the Community Challenge’s Strategic Initiatives Fund, which supports projects working to advance policy change for children by engaging policy leaders, leading grassroots advocacy and coordinating efforts within state and local coalitions. As part of the Strategic Initiatives Fund, the Wisconsin Partnership has one of seven policy-focused projects being awarded grants of up to $350,000 per year for three years. Communities in the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network were eligible to apply for the Community Challenge. “Education is key to a strong economy, and every child should have the opportunity to achieve his or her fullest potential, but existing systems don’t always support the success of students, particularly students of color and those from low-income families,” StriveTogether President and CEO Jennifer Blatz said. “Using the common language of data, we can create better, more equitable systems to improve outcomes for major milestones in every child’s life. Our Cradle to Career Community Challenge will enhance and expand the real, lasting results underway across our 70 communities.” About Building Our Future Building Our Future is Kenosha County’s first cradle to career collective impact effort focused on education and workforce development with leadership representing schools, businesses, government, civic organizations, and nonprofits, committed to improving student outcomes. As a community we focus on three shared goals: Every child enters school ready to learn, Every student succeeds in school, and Every student succeeds in a career. About StriveTogether StriveTogether leads a national movement of 70 communities to get better results in every child’s life. We coach and connect partners across the country to close gaps by using local data, especially for children of color and low-income children. Communities using our proven approach have seen measurable gains in kindergarten readiness, academic achievement and postsecondary success. The StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network reaches 10.4 million students, involves 10,800 organizations and has partners in 30 states and Washington, D.C. The future of a community depends on the success of its youth, and Kenosha County is dedicated to ensuring that our community succeeds. In Kenosha County, there are over 100 organizations emphasizing the development of the individuals in the community by focusing on skills such as reading and math. These educational programs work diligently to prepare our youth for their future careers; however Kenosha County is still struggling in many areas. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Forward Exam, a state assessment, from the 2015-2016 school year found only 47% of 3rd Graders are reading proficient and 30% of 8th graders are math proficient. StriveTogether, the national partnership and model for Building Our Future, has found that students who perform well in 3rd-grade reading and 8th-grade math typically have a more successful academic career. In 2015, the United States Census Bureau also found while 90.3% of Kenosha County residents had received a high-school diploma, only 34.5% have received an associate’s degree or more, according to their Quickfacts Data & 2015 ACS 5-Year Survey. The advanced manufacturing jobs most frequently coming to Kenosha County will require advanced education skills. Building Our Future focuses on the idea that communities are often "program rich and system poor,” meaning they often have excellent programs, but need to find a more efficient way to align these programs to realize their full potential. Our goal is to align all sectors in Kenosha County around cradle-to-career success for all children. StriveTogether was created for better outcomes through community empowerment. The StriveTogether model has shown that, when communities follow this philosophy and focus together on the critical outcomes and indicators that impact a student’s future success, the partnership’s reach can be significantly increased, measured, and scaled. When a community has a higher rate of educational success, it thrives. A highly employed and engaged workforce lowers a community’s tax burden, provides innovation and creativity, bringing with it more job opportunities and economic success. Imagine Kenosha County as a place where the community unites, students succeed, and everyone prospers. The future of the Kenosha County community depends on us, the community members. Let’s build our future together. To learn more and share your thoughts, visit buildingourfuturekc.org. Connect With Us at Harborfest Building Our Future will be at Harborfest ’17 hosted by Leeward Business Advisors! Harborfest is an annual event where community organizations from Kenosha and Racine come together to share what they have been working on, their impact on the community and ways you can be involved. There will also be food and music to enjoy. The event will be held on Thursday, September 21st of 2017 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Festival Hall, 5 5th St. Racine, WI 53403. Admission is free, but registration is required. If you would like to attend, please register at LeewardBA.com. We hope to see you there! Kenosha News Article BY DIANE GILES Nov 23, 2015 A program that takes a holistic, collaborative approach to education is coming to Kenosha County. Strive is a national program patterned after a model that was first developed at the University of Cincinnati several years ago. In the program, businesses, government and non-profit agencies work together to support students outside of the classroom so they can do well inside the classroom. The local Strive program has been funded in the 2016 Kenosha County budget to the tune of $50,000. About 50 communities around the country have launched the program with the purpose of improving education and workforce development. “Many communities refer to the Strive effort as a ‘cradle to career’ initiative,” said Todd Battle, Kenosha Area Business Alliance president. KABA is on the ground floor of the local initiative. The end goal of the program is young people getting good jobs and becoming contributing members of the community. “The county leaders have said that it makes more sense for us to invest in youth, education and youth employment than it does making investments later on to expand the jail system,” Battle said. Strive is a framework to bring together all the existing, similar programs and aligning them to help children succeed, said Jean Moran, CEO of LMI Packing Solutions in Pleasant Prairie and a member of KABA. Racine has had the program for about three years, but Moran said Kenosha’s program may look different. ‘It takes a village’ The program uses local data to identify inequalities in student achievement and prioritize efforts to improve student outcomes. Too often, Battle said, community members have a knee-jerk reaction to blame schools and teachers for kids failing to perform at grade level and not graduating. Instead, issues of poverty and inellectual parenting could be the root of the problem. “It’s a recognition that it takes a village to raise kids, and putting all of this on the school system isn’t fair,” Battle said. “It’s a more holistic effort to say, ‘Let’s get our business community; let’s get our non-profits;let’s get our government and social programs and our education partners working together.’” As an example, Battle said, community resources like the Kenosha Literacy Council, the KABA mentoring program, United Way and the public library system would work together to adopt strategies and programs to help kids improve their reading. Working together, in addition, Moran said the program would get the leaders of non-profits and businesses to communicate more efficiently. “We do (communicate), but we’re not as integrated as we could be. There’s a lot of things going on that everyone doesn’t know about,” Moran said. “So sometimes we’re duplicating each other’s efforts, and sometimes we could be doing more in our programming.” The program will help resource leaders learn about what is trending and what’s working in education. “As a population, we jump to conclusions much too quickly,” Moran said. “The Strive model is really to test results, to test metrics and to test philosophies rather than all pretending that we know what’s right — that we all saw one data piece and now we all know where we should go. |
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