Our Work in Alamance County

ALAMANCE COUNTY01 OUR WORK IN

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bout one in three children in Alamance County lives in poverty, according to the 2014 Small Area Income Poverty Estimate.

Research has shown that children whose environment limits their access to healthy foods, safe places to play and quality schools are less likely to be ready for kindergarten, less likely to graduate from high school and less likely to get jobs that can support their families.

Breakthroughs in neuroscience mean that we now understand much more than ever before how it is that brains develop and children learn. Based on the data collected and research that shows there are crucial stages in a child’s development, Alamance Achieves has chosen to focus on four Key Goals to help Alamance children thrive:

KINDERGARTEN READINESS EVERY CHILD IS WELL, HEALTHY AND READY FOR SCHOOL

ACADEMIC PROGRESS EVERY CHILD THRIVES IN SCHOOL

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION EVERY STUDENT GRADUATES, PREPARED FOR POST-SECONDARY LEARNING

CAREER SUCCESS EVERY LEARNER IS ON TRACK TO ACHIEVE CAREER GOALS

It is the goal of the Alamance Achieves collective impact partnership to align community organizations and resources around these goals to change outcomes for children.

OVERVIEW OF DATA To ensure our investments pay off, Alamance Achieves will hold itself accountable by using the baseline data in this report to continually assess progress and steer our efforts. The baseline data collected to create the four Key Goals had to meet certain criteria, including that it:

• represents community-wide factors that affect the entire Alamance County population • is produced by a trusted source that will continually collect this data on a yearly basis • is available consistently over time • is a valid measure of the outcome areas our community is working to improve • is able to be improved by local action

From the data collected, the Outcomes Team and the Steering Committee determined Core Indicators to measure progress in each of the four Key Goals, such as kindergarten readiness assessments and high school graduation rates.

They also identified Contributing Indicators that influence the environment and the systems around the Core Indicators. These include access to highquality pre-K programs and school attendance.

Core Indicators and Contributing Indicators for the four goals will be discussed in detail later in this report.

According to the NC Department of Public Instruction, the 2017 high school graduation rate of Alamance-Burlington School System was 82.4 percent, compared to the state rate of 86.5 percent.

HOW “COLLECTIVE IMPACT” CAN HELP What is Collective Impact? It’s when organizations from different sectors agree to work together to solve a complex problem. They develop a common agenda, align their efforts and use agreed-upon measures of success. Working together in a common direction leverages the power of their efforts.

Alamance County’s schools, nonprofits, government agencies, churches and other organizations are already working hard to help plug children into the resources and opportunities they need to grow and learn. Alamance Achieves helps to connect and align our community’s efforts and use data to measure progress and identify the areas that need more attention.

Numerous community organizations – including AlamanceBurlington School System, United Way of Alamance County, Alamance Community College, Impact Alamance, the First Presbyterian Church of Burlington and companies such as Glen Raven – have committed to coordinate resources and actions around the Core Indicators to improve outcomes for our children.

COLLAORATIVE ACTION NETWORKS Collaborative Action Networks, or community teams, will be created around each of the four Key Goals: Kindergarten Readiness, Academic Progress, High School Graduation and Career Success. Each network will be responsible for plugging children into the existing resources and opportunities they need to succeed in their particular stage. The networks will use local data to continually assess progress and steer our efforts to improve patchy areas in the community’s “grid” of resources. Access to resources can help children become more resilient to negative events or situations, but the challenges that we are preparing our students to be able to face are multifaceted and complex. It only makes sense that we are going to need people with all kinds of expertise and from all walks of life to partner with our educators and be able to solve problems in innovative ways. It will also be critical to include community voices, including parents and youth, throughout the process. Often those closest to the problem have the solution.

By giving all children access to the grid of resources our community offers — such as libraries, museums, schools, community centers, early learning programs, health care providers and more — every child can have a real opportunity to thrive. When we are all aligned and focused on common outcomes, we can achieve true system change that impacts the students most in need, reinforcing our collective actions to create measurable results, continuous improvement and shared accountability.

In Alamance County, only 38 percent of entering kindergartners met developmental benchmarks in text comprehension at the beginning of 2017.