Family Engagement and Return on Investment in North Minneapolis

• In Event: 56.054 - Family Engagement in Promise Neighborhoods: A Critical Look at Interventions in Four Federally Supported Sites

Abstract

Presentation Objectives: To share what leaders in the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) in North Minneapolis, MN are learning about the links between family engagement and student behaviors (e.g., academic engagement) and outcomes (e.g., grade-appropriate performance, persistence, and graduation). The presentation will describe NAZ’s family engagement strategies and early outcomes as measured by both the federal requirements and locally developed measures for assessing progress toward goals, as well as surface challenges encountered during the first three years of implementation and propose new avenues for research.

Perspective/Theoretical Framework: NAZ’s results-driven approach is based upon research that demonstrates how place, race, and income simultaneously influence the academic, social, and economic outcomes of a child’s life, as well as the lived experience of his or her family. NAZ works to reimagine ways in which families experience the academic and socioeconomic systems in which they live. Children are wrapped in integrated, coordinated, high-quality academic, social, and health programs and supports from the cradle to college to career. Schools efforts are complemented by intentional family and community engagement and governance of this system, as families support their children and community, and the neighborhood seeks population-level change.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: Promise Neighborhoods take a mixed-methods approach to analyzing the effects of the cradle-to-career model. Results presented will focus on NAZ’s first four years of a longitudinal data set. Using a shared case-management system that includes data from the local school district, healthcare providers, and social service providers, NAZ analyzes outcome data for every child and family member receiving services within its geographic footprint, across a framework of 10 results and 15 indicators.

Data sources and evidence: Presentation will focus on relevant results from NAZ’s ongoing quantitative and qualitative tracking of 2,500 children and 1,000 families. Presentation will offer a quantitative review of administrative data from the local school district as well as other partners and a neighborhood survey. Presentation will also include results from a Return on Investment study.

Results: Results will be shared from NAZ’s Connect family-based and resident-driven engagement system, including individual family achievement plans. Additionally, outcomes such as the following will be discussed:
• The share of children in the zone entering kindergarten ready to learn has improved from 28% to 80% during the period of implementation.
• The number of high school students performing at grade level in mathematics has increased by 102% since NAZ began collecting data in 2009.
• 88% of NAZ families regularly discuss the importance of going to college with their children (12% increase).

Scholarly significance of the study: The presentation and underlying research will build on the literature on family engagement in schools and will assess the challenges and successes that NAZ is having regarding its goals to employ strategic family engagement to:
• Improve student academic success and social-emotional outcomes, particularly for students of color; and
• Enable parents to be more effective advocates for their children; and to support their children’s learning at home.

Author

• Ellen Shelton, Wilder Research