What do Promise Neighborhoods need to build strong cradle-to-career initiatives?

Challenge

Every family, in every corner of our nation, dreams of a bright future for their children—a future filled with happiness, health, and fulfilling careers. From their first steps to their first day of school and beyond, we want them to thrive. Schools are central to children’s development, and collaborating with early childhood programs, health care providers, postsecondary institutions, and employers opens doors of opportunity for students and their families. Unfortunately, in many historically disinvested communities, the resources and coordinated systems families and communities need to succeed from cradle to career are not there.

Solutions

Westat supports the Promise Neighborhoods program, a U.S. Department of Education (ED) place-based initiative that invests in organizations striving to turn poverty-concentrated neighborhoods into communities of opportunity. Backbone organizations—such as nonprofits, institutions of higher education, and Indian/Native American Tribes—serve as anchors, uniting partners to ensure all children in a Promise Neighborhood have access to a continuum of support from cradle to career.

Westat collaborates with these organizations to build the capacity to implement tailored cradle-to-career supports, drawing on locally tailored solutions and effective nationwide strategies. For instance, some neighborhoods adopt 2-generation approaches, integrating early childhood programs with resources for families, such as “parents as teachers” workshops, career coaching, and resume support. Local variations may include prioritizing high-quality center-based care in urban settings or supporting home-based care in rural settings.

As the central hub of training and technical assistance for Promise Neighborhoods grantees, Westat partners with these backbone organizations, providing the tools and guidance to implement their cradle-to-career vision with the resources from ED and matching funds. Each year, Westat works with grantees and ED to identify ongoing and emerging needs and tailors training and technical assistance to meet needs, build grantee capacity, and contribute to place-based results.

Westat supports Promise Neighborhoods and other place-based initiatives through its website, products, and annual grantee conference. Westat also individualizes support for grantees through one-to-one guidance and small group learning experiences. Through activities such a data-focused community of practice, one-to-one support on data plans, webinars and office hours to support annual reporting requirements, and products focused on survey data collection, participants build their data skills for improved communication and data-driven decisionmaking.

Results

The comprehensive assistance facilitated by Westat has led to measurable growth in capacity and outcomes for participating Promise Neighborhoods, demonstrating the power of partnership in creating lasting change. This growth is evident through Westat’s data-driven, multitiered approach that supports Promise Neighborhoods sites and leads to improvements across 10 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) indicators:

• School readiness
• Successful transitions
• College and career ready
• Safe communities
• Supportive communities
• Academic proficiency
• High school graduation
• Healthy students
• Stable communities
• 21^st Century learning tools

The Promise Neighborhoods website provides detailed data on these indicators, allowing grantees to identify trends, set data-driven growth targets, make informed funding decisions, and continuously improve their cradle-to-career programming. The success stories highlighted in Making the Case for Promise Neighborhoods (PDF), such as the significant improvements in high school graduation rates, demonstrate the ongoing impact of this data-driven approach.