Category: CityConnects

City Connects Year in Review: Boston

This week on the blog we’ll be looking at the year in review across our 45 sites in three geographic areas: Boston (public and Catholic schools), Springfield (MA), and Ohio.

City Connects is currently implemented in 17 Boston Public Schools, our original site. Here are some BPS highlights:

  • For the 2012-12 school year, City Connects partnered with its first in-district charter school, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School, and its first public high school, the Quincy Upper School.
  • Across Boston Public Schools, in the 2011-12 school year, City Connects partnered with 250 community agencies to arrange more than 30,000 services and enrichment activities for students.
  • 2012 brought some exciting new findings on the long-term benefits of City Connects for students after they have a City Connects elementary school, including significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism in middle school and significantly lower rates of school dropout after the age of 16.
  • Results of our 2012 teacher survey in Boston were exceptionally positive, with 95% of teachers reporting satisfaction with City Connects and 95% reporting that they would recommend City Connects to a teacher in another school.
  • City Connects’ New Balance Foundation Health & Wellness curriculum continues to show positive results for children across all four units: nutrition, physical activity, social/emotional wellbeing, and healthy choices.

City Connects in Catholic Schools (CCCS) is currently active in 17 schools in the greater Boston area, as well as one freestanding Early Childcare center. Highlights from CCCS include:

  • In the 2011-12 school year, CCCS  linked students to more than 11,000 services and enrichment activities provided by 100 community agencies.
  • This year, CCCS partnered with a freestanding Early Childcare center for the first time, Catholic Charities’ Nazareth Child Care Center in Jamaica Plain. An Early Childhood adaptation of City Connects is being piloted at this center.
  • Analysis of CCCS’s work with Early Childhood populations (ages 3-7)  suggests that students in Early Childhood programs in City Connects schools show significantly more growth in school readiness over a 3-year period than students in comparison schools.

Check back tomorrow for more “Year in Review” updates!

The impact of poverty and out-of-school factors in the news

Central to City Connects’ work is the belief that addressing the “out-of-school” factors impacting students helps them come to school ready to learn and thrive. Children living in poverty face especially pervasive and severe out-of-school factors, like hunger, homelessness, and violence. Three recent articles from Education Week address different aspects of these out-of-school factors and are worth a read:

  • Time to Put Forward a New Reform Agenda
    On EdWeek‘s “Bridging Differences” blog, NYU professor Pedro Noguerawrites, about the importance of urgently addressing the needs of children living in poverty. “…Poverty is harming millions of children and the schools they attend, but we can’t take the position that nothing can be done until we eliminate poverty … their parents don’t want to hear that we have to wait till we muster the will to reduce poverty. Moreover, there are schools that are showing us right now that if we address the academic and social needs of poor children, they can not only achieve, they can thrive.Noguera calls for the federal government to create “a comprehensive support systems around schools in low-income communities to address issues such as safety, health, nutrition, and counseling,” which is similar to City Connects’ work.
  • Must Teachers Shut Down Our Compassion to Survive Education Reform?
    Another EdWeekblog, “Living in Dialogue,” used the adversity faced by victims of Hurricane Sandy to show how teachers can respond to students who have experienced trauma. Because the hurricane affected everyone, “teachers cannot help but respond and modify their instruction. This normalizes the trauma for these students and allows them to see that their feelings of helplessness and frustration, even depression, are normal and can be shared. However, in the case of the storms of poverty, the evictions, the foreclosures, the divorces, the days when there is no dinner to eat, the night their father is arrested and sent away for years – these insults to their being are individual and almost always hidden. They are hidden because the students are ashamed of being poor.”Author Anthony Dowd, a former teacher, wrote, argues that schools and teachers need to respond to the effects of poverty as they did the hurricane: “We do not require that poverty be fixed before we can teach, but we insist that it be responded to, as it often interferes with the healthy growth of the children we care about.”
  • Research Traces Impacts of Childhood Adversity
    And finally, a research story from EdWeek about the relationship between childhood adversity and poor academic achievement. “The stress of a spelling bee or a challenging science project can enhance a student’s focus and promote learning. But the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can poison a child’s cognitive ability for a lifetime, according to new research. While educators and psychologists have said for decades that the effects of poverty interfere with students’ academic achievement, new evidence from cognitive and neuroscience is showing exactly how adversity in childhood damages students’ long-term learning and health. Those studies show that stress forms the link between childhood adversity and poor academic achievement, but that not all adversity—or all stress—is bad for students.”

City Connects featured in Education Week blog

We are delighted that our work was written about on Education Week‘s “Public Engagement & Education Reform” blog today! You can read the post here:

More on Turning Schools Around

Here’s an excerpt from the piece featuring a quote from our Executive Director, Mary E. Walsh:

While strong school leadership is imperative, we believe that it is unfair to ask schools and teachers to bear sole responsibility for closing the economic divide. Systematically addressing out-of-school factors can help students achieve and removes the burden from teachers, allowing them to focus on delivering quality instruction.

For more information:

City Connects & Special Education

Education Week published an article earlier this week about San Diego public schools and their high Special Education referral rate for English Language Learners (ELLs), which echoes a national trend. The article, “Evaluating ELLs for Special Needs a Challenge,” featured a quote from a program manage in the district’s Special Education department:

“Special Education had become the default intervention,” said Sonia Picos. “Special Education was seen as the place with the answers, without taking into consideration what the long-term implications were going to be for the students.”

The article led with a kindergarten teacher who referred 6 ELL students to Special Education early in the school year. It turns out that for these students, out-of-school factors were the culprit: eyeglasses were needed for some, a hearing aid for another; none were deemed appropriate referrals to special education. This teacher may not have had other options to pursue before making the referral. In a past anonymous surveys of teachers, we heard similar scenarios:

“I think that for years, teachers thought that they had one direction to go in. ‘This child isn’t learning, they have behavioral problems, etc.’ It’s very difficult to look into complex background situations without staffing to help. You really need that third-party person to intervene, ask the hard questions, gather information, and to share that information with the classroom teacher and whoever is appropriate. In the past, all you had was Special Education.”

At City Connects, we work with teachers and school staff to look at the whole child across four domains: academics, social/emotional/behavioral, health, and family. Together, we identify the in- and out-of-school factors impacting students and then match them up to the services most appropriate for their individual strengths and needs. One of our main goals is to broaden options available for supporting students. While Special Education services are clearly the right option for some, we recognize that it should not be the only option for all students. Academic and social development requires a range of prevention, early intervention, and intensive supports, of which Special Education is only one.

The Research

Does the City Connects model of optimized student support impact Special Education referrals? To determine this, our evaluation team examined the accuracy of Special Education referrals, where an “accurate” referral is one that is not deemed “ineligible” and that results in Special Education placements aligned with student learning needs. Special Education referrals are costly, so reducing the number of inappropriate referrals would amount to cost savings. More importantly, appropriate Special Education referrals result in students receiving services that correctly address his or her barriers to learning.

For grades K-5, our analysis showed that City Connects schools are more accurate at referring students who display evidence of mild special needs. Comparison school students never in City Connects who are referred for mild special needs are 22% more likely to be deemed ineligible than similar students in City Connects schools.

In addition, our schools are not missing students who should have been referred to Special Education. Among students who were not referred in grades K-5, former City Connects students in grades 6-12 do not have significantly lower or higher probabilities of being placed into Special Education than comparison students.

Almost all principals interviewed feel that City Connects has changed and improved the Special Education referral process at their school. Both teachers and principals report that we have added beneficial new systems and processes to the referral procedure.

Citation: City Connects annual report (Fall 2009, updated Spring 2010): The Impact of Boston Connects: Summary Report 2008-2009, p. 36-39.

City Connects 2012 Progress Report Published

We are pleased to announce the publication of the City Connects Progress Report 2012, detailing results from the 2010-11 academic year. Again this year, our report presents strong evidence of the positive effects of City Connects on students, teachers and school staff, and community partners.

New findings from this year’s report include:

  • Lower Rates of Dropout: Students who attended City Connects elementary schools are significantly less likely to drop out of school in grades 8 through 12 than students never in City Connects. Check page 22 of the report for the full analysis.
  • Decreased Rates of Absenteeism: A new analysis shows that students who attended City Connects elementary schools are significantly less likely to be chronically absent (defined as being absent for 10% or more of the days within the school year) than students never in City Connects. Check page 21 of the report for the full analysis.
  • Positive Effects on Middle School Report Cards: In past years, our reports have documented a significant positive effect on elementary report card scores. A new analysis demonstrates similar results for middle school report card scores, after the students have left City Connects schools. Students enrolled in City Connects elementary schools had significantly higher GPAs overall and in Mathematics in grades 6, 7, and 8–even though they left City Connects after grade 5–than students never in City Connects.  Check page 19 of the report for the full analysis.

A copy of the full report (pdf) is available on our website. As always, we are grateful to all of our school district and community partners for their commitment to addressing the out-of-school factors that impact students’ lives. This report demonstrates the power of our collaboration.

City Connects Awarded $400,000 Grant to Develop Student Support Sustainability Plan

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has awarded City Connects a $400,000, two-year award to develop strategies that build district capacity to sustain effective student support programs in schools. City Connects will be partnering with Boston and Springfield public schools for this work, which is supported by the DESE Priority Partners for Turnaround Investment Fund.

“We are pleased to receive this award, which will allow us to develop a strategy to sustain evidence-based student support efforts in schools,” said Mary E. Walsh, PhD, executive director of City Connects and the Kearns Professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. “It is crucial that schools and districts are able to maintain systemic student support after the federal funding has run its course. We look forward to collaborating with Boston and Springfield districts to devise strategies to enable them to keep the work going.”

Read the full press release here.

Two City Connects Schools Commended for Promoting Student Health

“Healthy Connections” awards were presented to two City Connects schools, the John F. Kennedy and the Josiah Quincy elementary schools,  at the Boston Public Schools (BPS) 5th annual Wellness Summit on May 30. Seven awards were given to schools with innovative approaches to promoting student health and wellness.

“The schools we recognize today have shown innovative, collaborative, and service-oriented approaches to delivering Coordinated School Health to BPS students and families,” said BPS Superintendent Dr. Carol R. Johnson.

The JFK Elementary school’s health and wellness efforts included a range of activities: a Girls on the Run running club partnership with Hill House, Playworks recess activities, yoga instruction, a Winter Walking Club, dance and movement classes with the Boston Arts Project and the Hyde Square Task Force, nutrition lessons from the Martha Eliot Health Center, and a Step It Up walking challenge with Partners HealthCare. Beyond student activities, parents and caregivers were invited to attend weekly meditation and stress management classes and staff participated in Zumba.

In addition to winning a Healthy Connections award, the Quincy Elementary was given one of 10 national “Praiseworthy Pioneer” grants from the Active Schools Acceleration Project (ASAP). ASAP is an initiative of ChildObesity180, an organization at Tufts University committed to facilitating cross-sector collaboration to reverse the trend of childhood obesity within one generation’s time. ASAP seeks to increase quality physical activity in schools to promote healthy, active living and to evoke the beneficial behavioral and academic outcomes that follow. The $2,500 Praiseworthy Pioneer grants were given to support physical activity programming in schools.

“We are honored to be recognized. The award  will help support the Quincy’s Jammin’ Minutes, Playworks, GoKidsGo, and Sports and Scholars physical activity programs,” said Pauline Yee, a physical education teacher at the Quincy.

In City Connects, health is one the four domains of student strengths and needs that we examine, because healthy students are better able to learn and thrive in school. Congratulations to the JFK and the Quincy schools on these awards!

For more information:

City Connects Springfield Update

Springfield EducatorCity Connects’ work in Springfield Public Schools (SPS) was featured in the Spring 2012 issue  [pdf] of the Springfield Educator. The conclusion of this school year marks the first year of City Connects’ implementation in six transformation (Level 4) SPS elementary schools. Next year, three SPS Level 4 middle schools will also be implementing City Connects.

The article comes on the heels of the first-ever gathering of community partners working with SPS, held on May 9. Convened at Springfield College, a partner with SPS and City Connects, the meeting marked the official launch of the Springfield “Wraparound Zone” Initiative. Wraparound Zones are an effort  funded through the state’s Race to the Top grant designed to build district capacity to systematically address students’ non-academic barriers to learning.

Springfield Community Meeting
Julie Donovan and Dr. Ingram at the Springfield Public Schools Wraparound Zone launch May 9.

Julie Donovan, the City Connects Program Manager in Springfield, welcomed more than 85 community partners to the meeting. Dr. Alan Ingram, Superintendent of Springfield Public Schools, opened the day by discussing the importance of the connection between home and school.

“Twenty-six thousand students in our schools live in poverty. Morally, we can’t ignore it. Poor children can do well in school with the right supports,” Dr. Ingram said. Students only spend a small part of their day in the classroom, he said, so we can’t turn around schools by only looking inside the classroom. The solution is to bring fragmented parts of the community together to work on behalf of children.

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