The Strive Blog Has Moved!

The Strive Partnership has a brand new web site up and running that is designed to be more interactive and partnership focused. The site is also the new home to this blog, which has been integrated into the heart of the site.

Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds. The new feed can be found here.

Over the course of the next few months, the site will be populated with more content and the data area of the site will become more robust. We will share relevant news, data, information, and links that are important to the partners in Strive. In the meantime, you can also check out the Community Research Collaborative Blog, which is a source for in-depth data and information about the Greater Cincinnati region.

Thanks for following the work of the Strive Partnership!

Community Conversation on Oct. 26

On Tuesday, October 26, the Strive Partnership, Stand for Kids, and Parents for Public Schools hosted a Community Conversation on Education. A diverse group of over 200 parents, teachers, and community members attended the event at Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). The discussion focused two important questions we face in Cincinnati: how do we ensure that every student is succeeding academically, and that every school is high performing?

(Read two local stories on the event: Parents, residents discuss ways to reform schools, Documentary Sparks Conversation on Schools)

Coming out of the conversation, a few things were clear. First, we have truly committed, deeply caring parents, teachers and community members in Cincinnati. We all want the same thing: great schools and each and every one of our kids succeeding academically. Working together is the only way, and our student panelist, Kenny Fowler, reminded us that only through collaboration we can we make a difference for every child.

It was also clear that most everyone in attendance focused on the need for change and innovation. People talked about the need to move from “effective” to “excellent” as a district, to better leverage community supports in advance achievement, for an updated teacher evaluation process, for easier access to schools and teachers for parents, for greater flexibility to turnaround failing schools, and to bring to Cincinnati only high performing charter schools. Everyone expressed their interest in having all of the “adults” working together on those things that will have the greatest impact kids.

Finally, it was clear that we have great success stories here in Cincinnati. We heard from the principals from Taft Information Technology High School and Roll Hill Elementary School. Both leaders have had great success in dramatically improving the level of achievement of their students, despite the fact that both schools had been considered chronically low performing prior to their time at the helm. They’ve worked effectively with their teachers, parents, students, and community resource providers, and they have found a way to bring everyone involved together around what works best for kids. We should learn as much from these and other local examples of success, and make sure that learning is being leveraged in all of our schools.

To build on this momentum, we are encouraging people to do two things:

Speak out. Tell CPS leadership that you want a great school for every student. We must make sure they hear from us that we support collaboration, reform and innovation, and building on what works for kids. Call or write, and attend the next CPS Board Meeting.

Cincinnati Board of Education Meeting
Education Center, 2651 Burnet Ave., Auditorium
Monday, November 15, 2010
7 p.m.

Sign the Stand for Kids pledge. Visit www.standforkidscincy.org/pledge and pledge to support because you believe we all have to work together - administrators, teachers, parents, students, faith, community, business, nonprofit, and philanthropic leaders - to ensure every student is succeeding academically, and that every school is high performing.

Waiting for Superman and Education Innovation in Cincinnati

Waiting for Superman, a highly anticipated documentary about the current state of education in the U.S., will open tomorrow in Cincinnati and Newport. By all accounts, Waiting for Superman is a powerful movie about the role education plays in reducing poverty and expanding opportunity. We care about this subject, and so we hope the movie leads to an important conversation locally about reform and innovation.

To this end, we will be hosting, along with Parents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati and Stand for Kids, a community conversation on education on October 26 at the CPS Education Center from 6-8PM. We hope this discussion, along with others that will likely take place around our community, will bring together school officials, teachers, parents and community members around a shared vision of reform and, ultimately, around coordinated action. To ensure that every child is succeeding in our region, we need to work together to strengthen each of our public schools, whose success we believe is critical to the growth of our region, while pursuing a coordinated approach to expanding school options for parents and students.

Our goal is to have every child prepared for kindergarten and enrolled in a high performing school. The latter begins with the school turnaround efforts currently underway in Cincinnati, Newport and Covington. CPS will continue its successful Elementary Initiative (EI), which targets the district’s most challenging schools. Newport has reconfigured its schools to improve achievement. Covington is pursuing a Community Learning Centers (CLCs) approach, similar to the highly regarded CLC work at CPS, to strengthen performance. There will be a role for all of us to play in these turnaround efforts. If you’re not already involved, become a mentor or tutor, and get your organization or business to partner in this work.

We also believe CPS could build on the success of its more unique schools – Taft Information Technology High School, the School for Creative and Performing Arts, and the district’s Montessori schools, for example – and further expand school options for parents and students. With the district pursuing a strategic and hands-on approach to the matter, similar to how it has been done in New York City with its Office of Portfolio Planning or in Denver with its Office of School Reform and Innovation, we could work together as a community to investigate and bring to Cincinnati only the most promising alternative school models. Many of these schools are part of the public school system, while others are not. But the district, working with teachers, parents and community members, can lead the way in expanding options in our region.

If you see Waiting for Superman, we hope it strengthens your resolve to support the reform and innovation that will strengthen our schools and improve student achievement.

We also hope you join us on October 26 for an important conversation on education.

Please join us for a Community Conversation on Education

Hosted by Stand for Kids, the Strive Partnership and Parents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati

Tuesday, October 26, 6-8PM
CPS Education Center
2651 Burnet Avenue

This community conversation will focus on answering a very important question: what must we do together to ensure that every child has access to an excellent education, and that every school is achieving excellent results? To answer this question, we will hear from all of you, plus a panel of a few education stakeholders. We hope the conversation helps us develop a shared vision for reform. We hope you join us on October 26.

Spotlight on The Gateway Partnership

The Gateway Partnership in California was recently selected to receive a national Promise Neighborhoods Planning Grant. Gateway is part of Strive’s national network of similar Cradle-to-Career partnerships. Here is what Gateway wrote about our role in their application:

The initial planning grant and support from Living Cities and Strive helped us design a strategic cradle to career framework which has allowed us to be more competitive in the federal application process. The result of this work will help us to ultimately create more successful citizens and vibrant communities.

Strive's framework of community engagement involving all stakeholders working to collaboratively support student success throughout the educational roadmap was a natural overlay to the Promise Neighborhood grant and provided the conceptual structure for articulating holistic and purposeful strategies.

Cal State East Bay has had a long history of working with the South Hayward neighborhood to "address the imbalance in education of poor and minority students with hands-on, data driven approach" as indicated by Nan Maxwell, the grant PI. Many of the community groups have been working in the neighborhood. Importantly, the Gateways framework enabled the community to come together in a new way. Indeed, one community leader, Sara Lamnin of South Hayward Parish, a non-profit organizations started by religious congregations more than 40 years ago was quoted in a newspaper article saying "the Promise Neighborhood grant has brought new energy, new ideas and an infusion of resources --differences that may bring "a lasting change."

"Cal State East Bay is proud to be taking a leadership role in finding new solutions to some of the most serious, longstanding challenges that our community and its children face," said Cal State East Bay President Mohammad Qayoumi. "This will provide new hope and new means for members of our local community to the educational and social support services they need to succeed."

Gateways Partnership focus has been to identify the strategies or the levers along the educational roadmap that would make the greatest impact on the indicators for student success. We see that the Promise Neighborhood grant allows us to put in place a feeder school pattern model (elementary school, middle school, and high school) and community school model as powerful and effective ways to work with children and families over time.

The new normal is that our corporate, community, non-profit, and school district partners see Gateways as an exemplar for how community leaders come together, take action around key levers along the educational roadmap that will produce different and improved outcomes for students. Integrated strategies and funding such strategies for systemic, not episodic impact is viewed as critical to the consortium. More importantly, there is a recognition that the responsibility for impacting and advocating change is shared. What is at stake is the quality of life of our citizens and our communities.

Congratulations to The Gateway Partnership!

UC is expecting its most academically prepared freshmen for the Uptown Campus.

UC is expecting more than 41,000 students when classes begin on Sept. 22, as well as its most academically prepared freshmen for the Uptown Campus.

Overall Enrollment:

2010 – 41,250 (up 4.0 percent from Autumn 2009)

UC Freshmen :

Overall freshmen expected for 2010 – 6,000
Uptown Campus, baccalaureate degree-seeking – 3,900 (up 7.0 percent from 2009)
Uptown Campus- Freshmen

Average ACT – 25.0 (2009: 24.8)
Average SAT – 1135 (2009: 1128)
Among the top 10 percent of their class – 21.9 percent (2009: 21.5 percent)
Number of valedictorians – 58
Number of salutatorians – 21
Number of Cincinnatus Scholarship recipients – 1,125
Number of National Merit Scholars – 45
Number of freshman Choose Ohio First Scholarship recipients – 162
Number of Darwin Turner Scholars – 35
Number of Demakes Legacy Scholars – 36
Number of Cincinnati Pride Grant recipients – 131
Number of Ohio counties represented by the freshman class – 83
Number of states represented by the freshman class – 38
Number of countries represented by the freshman class – 33

More facts related to the upcoming academic year at UC can be found here:
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=12419

Effects of excellent early schooling

The UC Economics Center for Education and Research recently discussed some research in the areas of early childhood education, academic achievement test scores, and how we measure success.

The article highlighted a recent Harvard study of more than 17,000 children who were educated in the early 1980s and now are adults. The author, like others, found that early childhood education with good teachers has a positive short-term impact on student test scores. However, this test-score advantage did not last all the way through school, fading out by junior high.

The study found that despite the fading test scores, these students were more likely to go to college, less likely to become single parents, more likely to save for retirement, and were earning higher incomes as adults - highlighting the importance of not solely relying on test score metrics to measure success.

The full article by Dr. George Vredeveld is available on the Economics Center web site.

CPS Earns Highest Rating Ever:"Effective"

For the first time since the state began rating public school districts a decade ago, Cincinnati Public Schools has advanced to the Effective category on the Ohio School Report Card. The district announced this at a press conference this morning. "We are thrilled to reach this milestone," said Superintendent Mary Ronan. "It is a reflection of the hard work - and team work - of our school and central staffs, our parents and community partners, and, most of all, of our student themselves.


CPS attained Effective status through the Department of Education's (ODE) Value-Added measure. For two years in a row, the district's 33,000-plus students achieved more than a year's worth of expected growth on their test score results. The district also met federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards on all but one of its eight student subgroups - another condition for moving to Effective.

Additional information can be found here, and links to the School Report Card data will be posted here as it become available.

CPS 2009-10 Report Card