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April 17, 2011Measuring a Vision: A 'Promise Neighborhood’ Faces theChallenge of Charting ProgressBy Suzanne Perry

Washington

Editor's note: This story is part of a continuing series.

Donnita Bennett, who lives with her two school-age sons in one ofthis city’s poorest neighborhoods, has a simple vision for what shethinks it would take to help children in her community thrive.

It starts with effective prenatal care, continues with strongpreschools that prepare children for high-quality elementary andsecondary schools, and is grounded by parents who are heavilyinvolved in their children’s education. And it would all be wrappedby a community in which neighbors would watch out for oneanother’s children.

“If you ever see my boys anywhere, you should know who they are,”she says. “I should know who your children are. We live in the samecommunity.”Part of a Team

Ms. Bennett is offering more than just a personal wish list.

She is among a nationwide network of parents, teachers, nonprofitgroups, foundations, and others who are exploring ways toguarantee that children in troubled neighborhoods lead healthy,productive lives.

Together they are part of the Promise Neighborhoods program, a federaleffort to help communities design antipoverty projects modeledafter the Harlem Children’s Zone, in New York.

That much-acclaimed effort, championed by President Obama,offers a comprehensive set of academic, medical, and social servicesto help children from “cradle to college” in one 97-block area ofHarlem.

Mr. Obama’s support is one reason the federal program got anincrease in spending this year, even as many other social-service programswere cut.

'Culture Shift’

Washington is one of 21 communities that won a total of $10-million from the Department of Education last fall to plan theirHarlem-inspired projects. And while they flesh out their concepts,they are also working to ensure they have the systems in place towin money in the next round of federal grants, which will beawarded later this year.

The D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative, which The Chronicle is followingfor a year, got $500,000 in the first awards. And the money comeswith a requirement: Promise Neighborhoods must develop systemsto measure results.

Instead of simply setting up services, grant winners in Washingtonand elsewhere are now involved in the nitty-gritty work of collectinginformation about their neighborhoods and designing ways toevaluate whether they are making progress.

The data-gathering effort could bring about a “culture shift” forpeople who work in education and social services across the nation,says Kelly Bathgate, a manager at Education Sector, an educationthink tank.

It will provide valuable clues about how elements beyond classroominstruction influence children’s academic performance, she says.Until now, she adds, most communities have not been able to relyon good data to make decisions about which services to offerstudents.Good-Quality Data

It’s also hard work, says Ms. Bathgate, and Ms. Bennett and othersworking on the Washington project have already figured that out.

While it is easy to articulate the general ideals shared by Ms.Bennett and her neighbors, finding high-quality data to back themup has proved challenging.

What’s more, information about students is protected by federalprivacy laws, and some results that the Department of Educationwants tracked seem almost impossible to measure.

Nevertheless, dozens of residents of Parkside-Kenilworth, a mostlyAfrican-American neighborhood in the city’s far eastern corner thatwill be served by the Promise Neighborhood, as well as teachers andprincipals from local schools and educational and child-welfareexperts from across the city, have been working intensively forseveral months to gather information and design ways to evaluatewhether their project is achieving its goals. The Urban Institute, aresearch group that collects data on Washington neighborhoods, is

also helping.

Ms. Bennett is co-chair of a committee that is discussing what stepsare needed to prepare children for kindergarten. Similar groups aresetting the course for measuring whether students are proficient inmajor academic subjects, feel safe at school, have access to theInternet, graduate from high school, and go to college.

The federal agency asked communities to examine specific thingswhen measuring progress toward each result.

For example, to assess whether children are ready for kindergarten,it says, projects should collect data on the number of young childrenwho are enrolled in child-care or early-learning programs and thenumber who can perform tasks that are appropriate for their age.

But Ms. Bennett’s “ready for kindergarten” group decided it wantedto do more than count how many children were attending early-learning programs. It also wanted to know how many were enrolledin programs that were of high quality.Not Meeting Standards

The city can provide information about how many child-care orearly-learning programs operate in Parkside-Kenilworth, but nothow many of the neighborhood’s children are enrolled there, saysJohn “Skip” McKoy, an official at Fight for Children, a Washingtoneducation charity, who is advising Ms. Bennett’s group. It is alsohard to get information about the number of children who aregetting care in people’s homes or the quality of that care, he says.

But Parkside-Kenilworth does know it falls short of getting the bestchild-care centers. The city ranks those getting government moneyas “gold,” “silver,” or “bronze” according to how well they meetcertain standards, and the neighborhood has none that are “gold.”

But even that system, which assesses things like physical facilitiesand teacher certification, “says nothing about whether the kids arelearning,” Mr. McKoy says. “It says nothing about whether the kidsare socially well adjusted, whether they’re emotionally welladjusted, whether they’re ready for kindergarten.”

He says the group hopes to explore ways to get that information.Measuring 'Caring’

The Promise Neighborhoods group that faces perhaps the biggestmeasurement challenge is the one assigned to chart a path to ensurethat “families and community members support learning,” saysMary Bogle, planning director for the D.C. Promise NeighborhoodInitiative.

The Education Department has asked projects to measure howmany family members attend parent-teacher conferences and howmany students say they have a “caring adult” in their lives.

The former is pretty straightforward, she says, but defining whoqualifies as “caring” is another story. “That one is very difficult tomeasure,” she says. “It’s even controversial to measure.”

It might be easier to simply point to people like Ms. Bennett.

In addition to co-chairing the “ready for kindergarten” group, she ispresident of the Parent Teacher Association at KenilworthElementary, a Promise Neighborhood school that her 7-year-oldson, Marqui Alexander, attends, and a member of the project’sadvisory board. She also manages to cater the project’s monthlydinners.

She says she is drawing from her experience as a mother who wasonce afraid to send Marqui and her other son, Tyrese White, 11, toWashington public schools after she moved to the city fromMaryland because the D.C. schools had such a bad reputation. “Toget that fear out,” she says, “I needed to be involved.”Getting Parents Involved

But getting other parents to be so involved has been difficult, notjust in Washington but other Promise Neighborhood planning-grantwinners, experts say.

Helen Westmoreland, director of program quality at the FlamboyanFoundation, an educational grant maker in Washington who isadvising the committee that is considering how to get families andparents more active, says the participants have been looking atelements beyond those currently prescribed by the EducationDepartment.

For example, they have shaped a set of “outcomes” that they wouldlike to see for the neighborhood.

They include things like “families and communities value theimportance of education” and “families and communities reinforcewhat children are learning in school.”

They have since been brainstorming ideas about how to remove thebarriers to achieving those results.

Ms. Westmoreland says those conversations have exposeddifferences in perceptions among various segments of thecommunity.

For example, parents complain that schools are not welcoming or do

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not want to share power, while teachers and principals feeloverburdened and subject to great scrutiny. “Now we’ve got to bringparents in, and they’re going to be looking at us. This is just an extralayer of a challenge,” says Ms. Westmoreland.

The Parkside-Kenilworth project will have to overcome thosedivisions to build trust among the schools, parents, and others overtime, says Ms. Westmoreland.

That will be a challenge, she says, because some residents are tiredof groups coming and going without making a long-termcommitment to the neighborhood.

“I have heard very clearly that there’s a burnout factor,” she says.

As the project continues its efforts to measure progress, or what theEducation Department calls “indicators,” Ray Laszczych, theproject’s development director, says community leaders should keepone overriding goal in mind.

Most of the young people at a recent retreat could name only oneperson in the neighborhood they trusted.

“If that doesn’t change as we go forward, whether you hit theindicators or not,” he says, “it doesn’t mean anything.”

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