1

MAPPING A NEW

FUTURE FOR CUYAHOGA

COUNTY YOUTH: AN

AUDIT AND STRATEGIC

MAP

METROPOLITAN CENTER FOR URBAN EDUCATION

December 1, 2011

Metropoli tan Center for Urban Education

726 Broadway, 5th Floor | New York, NY 10003 -6680

212 998 5100 | fax 212 995 4199 | www.steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter

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CUYAHOGA COUNTY

PRELIMINARY YOUTH DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC MAP

December 1, 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….....3

Executive Summary .............................................................................................................4

Introduction ..........................................................................................................................9

Methods..............................................................................................................................13

Overview of Needs ............................................................................................................15

Theme 1: Capacity .........................................................................................................15

Theme 2: Communication..............................................................................................19

Theme 3: Collaboration .................................................................................................23

Theme 4: Data ................................................................................................................26

Recommendations ..............................................................................................................29

References ..........................................................................................................................38

Figures

Figure 1: Long-Term Outcomes, Recommended Goal Areas, and Objectives…………...8

Figure 2: Child Development Transitions and Goals ........................................................30

Figure 3: Cuyahoga County Three-Phase Goals ................................................................37

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research report is derived from a collaborative effort led by the Cuyahoga County

Executive‘s Office and funded by the Third Federal Foundation. We thank the Cuyahoga County

Executive, Ed FitzGerald, and Justin Bibb, Special Assistant to County Executive, for their

vision in establishing the need for this report. Additionally, we thank the countless individuals

including but not limited to Patti Choby, Eric Gordon, and Kurt Karakal for their time and

generosity. Finally, we thank the research team members: Liliana Donchik and Rachel Garver.

Mapping A New Future research report is written and edited by Adeyemi Stembridge and

Edward Fergus.

Metropolitan Center for Urban Education Mission

The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education is a comprehensive center that focuses on educational research, policy,

and practice. We are a partner and resource at the local and national levels in strengthening and improving access,

opportunity, and the quality of education in our schools. Our mission is to target issues related to educational equity by

providing leadership and support to students, teachers, parents, administrators, and policymakers.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center) of New York University‘s

Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development proposes a strategy map for

the coalescing of resources, services, and interventions for improving school outcomes for the

most vulnerable segments of the Cuyahoga County population. The strategy is influenced

heavily by the Broader Bolder Approach (BBA) model currently being implemented in Newark,

New Jersey that advocates for comprehensive services in support of schools. The BBA model is

underscored by a theory of change that draws on research suggesting a more comprehensive

approach is needed to increase academic outcomes for economically poor students (Blaue &

Currie, 2006; Comer, 1988; Dryfoos, 1993; Rothstein, 2004; Waldfogel & Lahaie, 2007).

Most notably, this strategy map emphasizes the critical importance of strategically building

partnerships that will strengthen the capacity of schools to respond to student needs and enable

community interests to come together. This way, parents and their allies can hold schools and

their leaders accountable for academic outcomes. The strategy map is informed by a series of

interviews with key stakeholders in Cuyahoga County. It draws on lessons learned from research

carried out in a variety of fields on the social and emotional needs of children and the best

practices of current reform initiatives.

The theory of change that underlies this strategy map is informed by research which suggests

that a more comprehensive and coordinated approach is needed to increase academic outcomes

for economically poor students and to improve the schools that serve them (Blau & Currie, 2006;

Comer, 1988; Dryfoos, 1993; Rothstein, 2004; Waldfogel & Lahaie, 2007). The basis of the

strategy map is the recognition that education is both a cause of many of the problems that

plague the region and simultaneously a potential solution to those problems. The theory of

change follows that improvements in schools could spur economic development and improve the

quality of life for a greater number of residents.

The essential design of the strategy map brings school reform efforts into alignment with the

provision of social services, economic development plans, and civic engagement, ensuring that

efforts to transform underperforming public schools in Cuyahoga County are not undermined by

environmental hardships or the lack of attention to quality control in educational practices and

interventions. A critical component of this theory of change is the effort to expand learning

opportunities for students through excellent early-childhood education and the deliberate and

strategic alignment of services among key stakeholders. While there are several notable efforts in

the County that currently seek to build capacity through strategic partnerships, these are largely

fragmented and lacking central leadership. Given the current social, economic, and political

context, the Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive is best positioned to assume a leadership

role in the coordination of this alignment effort.

Taken together, the recommended goal areas are intended to target the following long-term

outcomes across the County in coordinated support of improved education outcomes:

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Ensure data-driven performance of key stakeholder groups including County agencies,

school districts, and community and faith-based organizations.

Promote scaled-collaboration of school districts, agencies, and community and faith-

based organizations.

Increase transparency of fiscal and programmatic collaboration among organizations

affecting educational outcomes.

Foster a culture of accountability throughout the County‘s education and social service

stakeholder groups.

Facilitate greater communication among the County‘s education and social service

stakeholder groups.

To develop these long-term outcomes, specific objectives are recommended in the following

goal areas:

RECOMMENDED GOAL AREAS

GOAL ONE (1): The various Cuyahoga County service entities, school districts, and

community-based organizations must collectively define and frame priorities for youth

development initiatives.

Objective 1A: Outline youth development priorities in three strands:

1. Out-of-school-time priorities

a. Provide sufficient time for meaningful, active, and collaborative learning

b. Ensure quality by utilizing evidence-based practices

c. Focus on results that measure desired youth and program outcomes

d. Provide enrichment and acceleration opportunities

e. Employ principles of positive youth development to provide opportunities for

social and emotional development, leadership, and improved health and

wellness

2. School1

a. Build capacity to enhance the quality of human services and student support

by targeting resources that go to schools, ensuring appropriate staffing ratios,

freeing up guidance counselors and schools psychologists to counsel students,

and recruiting and utilizing graduate social work and school psychology

interns

b. Improve school procedures, protocols, policies, and practices to address the

elimination and modification of rules and that appear to be counter-productive

c. Improve school climate which includes student perceptions of connectedness

and support and improve their attendance

d. Train school administrators, teachers, and security staff to use proactive

approaches for addressing behavior issues, to eliminate reactive and punitive

1 School recommendations are derived from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Human Ware Audit

(American Institutes for Research, 2008)

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approaches for discipline, and to help students learn to manage their own

emotions, behaviors, and relationships

e. Develop warning and response systems to build school, district, and

community capacity to identify, respond, and provide early interventions as

well as respond to early and imminent warning signs through protocols and

the timely and effective application of efficacious practices

f. Provide focused professional development and support to develop the

capacities of adults to better meet the needs of students

g. Focus funding agency resources in order to identify and cost out a small set of

strategies and programs that the district will support

3. Family/community services priorities

a. Enhance family/school partnerships to involve collaboration with families

b. Tap into the expertise of community partners

Objective 1B: Develop metrics of community and youth development:

1. Develop youth asset metrics2

a. Communication skills

b. Life skills (e.g., resiliency capacity, emotional management skills, cross-

cultural capacity, time management skills, etc.)

c. Leadership and civic capacity

d. Positive behaviors

e. Relationship building

2. Develop community environment metrics in various categories (e.g., economic,

family, physical space/environment, housing, etc.)

3. Develop service delivery dosage metrics

Objective 1C: Create a common research, funding, and project-development agenda around

youth development metrics that parallel Cuyahoga County youth development priorities:

1. Develop MOU with governments, foundations, and school system that articulates

common definitions of youth development metrics

2. Utilize youth development priority points and metrics in framing RFPs

3. Encourage interagency collaboration around the investigation of youth development

services and outcomes

Objective 1D: Develop funding streams that allow for blending and braiding of funds that focus

on building healthy families and children with collaborations in schools and community and

faith-based organizations:3

1. Increase the number of children served while covering the full and actual costs of

high-quality programs

2. Invest in strategies that improve program quality

3. Enable programs to coordinate multiple funding streams

4. Reduce categorical restrictions of funding streams

2 See the Afterschool Youth Outcomes Inventory by the Partnership for After School Education (2010) for a

discussion of possible indicators:

http://www.pasesetter.com/documents/pdf/Outcomes/OutcomesInventory_8Nov10%20FINAL.pdf 3 See http://www.financeproject.org/ for possible options of funding sources.

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5. Support programs that achieve desired outcomes with stable funding sources to

minimize administrative burdens on high-performing programs

6. Remove barriers to the blending, braiding, and/or leveraging of funds

a. Allow for local flexibility so programs can best meet local needs

b. Coordinate funding streams at the agency level through regulations,

application and review processes, and quality assurance and evaluation

systems

GOAL TWO (2): Under the leadership of the Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive,

institute formal relationships between youth development initiatives with similar missions

and shared constituencies.

Objective 2A: Establish a regular forum for communication of partners within the MyCom

network along with key County services (e.g., Department of Health and Human Services,

Juvenile Court, Cuyahoga County Educational Service Center, and Cleveland Metropolitan

School District, etc.):

1. Form a Cuyahoga County Youth Development Council

2. Outline the charge of Cuyahoga County Youth Development Council

3. Create MOU between County service agencies and CMSD to articulate intent for

data sharing and service coordination

Objective 2B: Regularly communicate progress of youth development agenda:

1. Develop a communication plan that contains regular sharing of information to the

County (e.g., Cuyahoga County Youth Development Counts Report)

2. Outline annual or bi-annual funding and service priorities of the Youth

Development Council based on the Cuyahoga County Youth Development

Counts Report.

GOAL THREE (3): Develop a cross-County data platform to be shared by youth

development agencies, school districts, community-based organizations, and philanthropic

groups.

Objective 3A: Develop a model for strategic information sharing:

1. Draft a full inventory of available youth development services to be stored in one

location that can be accessed by school practitioners and County residents

2. Outline a map of fields (e.g., groups of related variables) in the following three

strands of youth development work: out-of-school-time, schools, and

family/community services

3. Procure data format to bridge across important agency partners serving similar

populations and/or communities

Objective 3B: Identify, collect, and analyze data that continuously informs the range of needs,

scope of services, and supports:

1. Develop a data dashboard which may be viewed with various levels of access to

provide real-time status of key data indicators

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2. Coordinate a regular convening of point persons from key groups (which may be

a sub-committee of the Youth Development Council) associated with data quality

control processes that engage an ongoing discussion in the strategies for data

analysis while analyzing observable trends in service provision and client needs

Figure 1: Long-Term Outcomes, Recommended Goal Areas, and Objectives

The short-term recommendations should be thought of as the foundation for long-term goals and

be connected to other ongoing County efforts including:

Expanding critical improvements to access for quality early childhood education and

universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) services Countywide.

Continue the work of the Higher Education Compact of Greater Cleveland to increase

college graduation rates.

Continue to develop and coordinate 21st-century workforce education and internships to

engage leading industries in establishing robust pilot workforce initiatives

Ultimately, this strategy map and the theory of change that informs it is designed to (1) improve

the economic mobility of County residents, (2) improve postsecondary opportunities and access

for County youths, and (3) foster a culture of accountability for equitable results.

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INTRODUCTION

With the goal of identifying a well-considered strategy for the implementation of a more holistic

approach to youth development, the Cuyahoga County Executive‘s Office commissioned the

Cuyahoga County Youth Development Task Force and contracted with New York University‘s

Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center) to provide technical assistance in the

development of a strategy map that connects County services to community-based interventions

and other Countywide initiatives in the support of Cuyahoga County‘s 38 school districts.

Childhood Poverty and Health Risks

According to the 2010 US Census, 290,262 (22.6%) of the 1,280,122 residents in Cuyahoga

County are under the age of 18 (US Census Bureau); of these youth, 97,657 (33.6%) reside in

Cleveland. The youth population represents the diversity of the County. Of the children in the

County, 55.5% are White, 35.9% are Black, 2.5% are Asian, and 6.7% are Latino (Children

Defense Fund, 2010). CMSD‘s 2008 Human Ware Audit conducted by the American Institutes

for Research (AIR) identified several factors that make the region‘s youth vulnerable to poor

academic, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Chronic poverty and health risks were among the

most prominent environmental factors identified.

The prevalence of health risks in the County negatively affect academic achievement as well as

life outcomes. The Human Ware Audit reports a lead poisoning rate of 6% in 2007, as compared

to a national average of 2% (Center for Health Affairs as cited in Human Ware Audit, 2008).

Moreover, 10% of infants were born with a low birth weight in 2008 and 51% of children were

enrolled in a public health care program in 2009 (Children‘s Defense Fund, 2010).

According to the Children‘s Defense Fund – Ohio Kids Count Report (2010), 23% of children in

Cuyahoga County were living in poverty in 2008, which represented an increase of 19% from

2001. The same study reported that 32% of children in 2008 received free or reduced-price lunch

and 29% of children received food stamps. In real numbers, Ohio‘s Department of Job and

Family Services (Cuyahoga County Profile, 2009) reports that 95,828 children receive food

assistance each month. Further, 17,618 children in Cuyahoga County received support from the

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, 33,711 children received publically funded

child-care, and 152,455 children under the age of 17 were enrolled in Medicaid in 2009. This

significant need for and use of many forms of public assistance demonstrates the critical

importance of quality services for Cuyahoga County youth.

Low Academic Achievement

Recent achievement data show that many youth in Cuyahoga County are not performing at grade

level. According to the Children‘s Defense Fund (2010), 32% of 4th graders scored less than

proficient in mathematics, 26% scored less than proficient in reading, and 27.8% of students in

Cuyahoga County attend failing schools (e.g., schools defined as failing by No Child Left

Behind for continually falling short of Annual Yearly Progress). In the 2007-2008 school year,

26.7% of youth dropped out of school.

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Simultaneously AIR also noted the school district was not effectively organized to serve the

range of needs represented among their student population. The AIR audit provides detailed and

compelling recommendations for employing ―a three-tiered public health approach for collecting

and using data on all children, youth, neighborhoods and schools to identify needs (including

factors that place individuals at risk) and assets (including factors that buffer or moderate risk

factors), parse or triage resources, plan interventions and monitor results‖ (AIR, 2008). The AIR

report makes the following specific recommendations for implementation in the Cleveland

Metropolitan School District that should be used as a model for other districts throughout the

County:

• Building a climate for change and sustaining it over multiple years using data on a small

number of metrics to refine interventions and enhance the District‘s approaches to

improving student outcomes and well-being

• Avoiding single solutions or unaligned multiple solutions for complex, but interrelated

problems

• Eliminating ineffective or counterproductive practices and behaviors

• Employing a three-tiered approach to building conditions for and capacities to learn and

teach

• Aligning promotion and prevention, early intervention, and treatment in a manner that

addresses immediate needs as well as prevents the incidence and magnitude of problems

• Supporting the ability of schools, agencies, and staff to systematically implement proven

practices and programs with quality

• Integrating cultural and linguistic competence as a conceptual framework, operating

principle, and professional skill to guide the educational success of Cleveland‘s diverse

students

• Leveraging the District‘s and Cleveland‘s strengths and resources

• Fostering collaboration and coordination between and among schools, agencies, families,

and community organizations

• Systematically leveraging public and private resources such as Medicaid, the Cuyahoga

County Community Mental Health Board, the Cuyahoga Tapestry System of Care, and

the Youth Development Initiative

• Using data for planning, monitoring, and evaluation

County Housing and Workforce

Migration trends out of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County suggest that the region is losing

resources as its tax base and human resources are becoming diminished. From 2000 to 2010, the

County‘s population decreased by 8.2% and Cleveland‘s population decreased by 17.1% (US

Census Bureau, 2011). Of the 621,763 housing units in Cuyahoga County, 76,707 were listed as

vacant in the 2010 census. This disinvestment in the County and Cleveland demands that the

available resources be used as efficiently as possible to support youth development in the region

as a strategic focus of the County's economic development.

The future of Cuyahoga County‘s economy depends largely on its efforts to cultivate a

workforce with the education, skills, and training necessary to meet the demands of current and

emerging industries. Educational attainment rates are a strong predictor of economic prosperity.

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According to the CEO for Cities Talent Dividend, a 1% increase in the college attainment rate in

Northeast Ohio would boost the region‘s economic output by $2.8 billion annually.

In addition, higher rates of education correlate to lower crime rates, greater community service

and civic involvement, as well as a higher tax base.4 In Northeast Ohio, occupations that require

a college degree are growing twice as fast as other occupations. Yet, according to The Literacy

Cooperative, more than half a million Cuyahoga County residents lack the skills to obtain jobs

that would lead to improved standards of living and support regional economic goals. Now more

than ever, the careful and deliberate coordination of a youth development agenda is required to

ensure the County‘s future well-being.

The Broader Bolder Approach Model for Improved School Outcomes

The Broader Bolder Approach (BBA) model is underscored by a theory of change that follows

other similar initiatives (e.g., Harlem Children‘s Zone, Children‘s Aid Society, etc.) which are

based on the central premise that educational reforms ought be designed to counter the effects of

social and economic conditions in the local environment that are known to negatively impact

school achievement (Noguera & Wells, 2011). This model of comprehensive and coordinated

school reform, through the strategic, long-term re-calibration of services, is exactly as the

moniker implies – broad and bold.

There is a substantial body of evidence that the educational reforms implemented over the last 30

years have not succeeded in bringing about sustainable improvements for low-income and racial-

and ethnic-minority students because they have largely failed to address the impact of poverty

and other factors of social disadvantage on school performance and student learning (Bryk et al.,

2010; Payne, 2008; Rothstein, 2004; Noguera & Wells, 2011). While the strategy map presented

in this report is informed by the same theory of change that is the driving theoretical force of the

Broader Bolder Approach, it lacks the scope and resource allocation to be appropriately thought

of as a BBA replication. Rather, this strategy map may be thought of as building a foundation in

the direction of a grander-scaled BBA-like effort. It is a critical positioning that will facilitate

future short- and long-term goals that give better alignment to structures supporting schools and

actual school-based initiatives.

Darling-Hammond (2010) suggests that unless the desire to raise academic standards is

combined with the willingness to ensure that optimal learning standards are in place for a greater

number of students, improved outcomes in school or student performance is unlikely (Noguera &

Wells, 2011). Too often, policymakers develop and legislate education reforms in a top-down

manner and without sufficient understanding of how policies will impact schools (Fullan, 2007).

In other cases, reforms have failed because the theory of change guiding them has been weak and

has not taken into account all of the related changes that need to accompany a particular reform

(Elmore, 2004; Noguera, 2005).

Research has shown that environmental conditions—which influence the health, nutrition, safety,

and overall psychological and emotional well-being of young people—have considerable bearing

on academic and developmental outcomes (Adelman & Taylor, 1999; Syme, 2004). Without the

4 Higher Education Compact of Greater Cleveland Background Paper. August 2011.

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resources that have been strategically defined and coordinated with other service providers to

support children from the harmful effects of dangerous and even toxic environments (Greenberg

& Schneider, 1996), schools can be overwhelmed and unable to respond to the nonacademic

needs of the children they serve (Noguera & Wells, 2011).

Environmental conditions also influence the ability of parents and schools to develop the social

capital that makes it possible to draw upon local resources to further student learning and

promote healthy development (Noguera & Wells, 2011). Schools that serve highly vulnerable

populations often function in isolation from other community agencies (e.g., churches, social

service agencies, neighborhood centers, etc.), either because school staff members lack

relationships with these community-based organizations or because they perceive the

neighborhood as hostile, devoid of resources, and potentially dangerous.

In worst-case scenarios, schools, which are often the most stable social institutions in the

communities (largely due to the public funding they avail) may even erode the social capital for

the communities they were intended to serve if those who work within them either resist efforts

or have few structured opportunities to build partnerships with families and neighborhood-based

organizations (Noguera, 2003; Wacquant, 2002). This Cuyahoga County strategy map considers

the ways in which a range of social, political, and economic factors should be arranged in order

to enable success for a greater number of schools in distressed neighborhoods.

Scope and Sequence of Study

This study‘s scope of work consisted of a technical assistance audit in which key representatives

of County service agencies, school districts, and community-based organizations were consulted

and interviewed to determine a theory of change in policies and practices that support the

preparation of Cuyahoga County students for academic and work-related post-secondary

opportunities. Through a series of interviews, the Metro Center research team sought to articulate

a strategy map for the comprehensive support of improved educational outcomes. To inform the

strategy map, the research team framed its inquiry around meta-level questions, including:

What are the long- and short-term outcomes and metrics of educational opportunity in

Cuyahoga County?

What is needed to design coordinating measures to link initiatives that have similar

missions and target similar client bases?

What is needed to develop a comprehensive evaluative framework of services in

support of educational outcomes in Cuyahoga County?

This document presents three recommended goal areas which are each multi-tiered and consist of

multiple objectives. These goal recommendations have been identified through a series of

individual and group interviews conducted in July and August at various locations in Cuyahoga

County. This project summary report is divided into three major sections: The Methods section

provides a brief explanation of the methods employed; the Overview of Needs section presents

the findings of the technical assistance audit, which are presented in four central themes that

were identified in the data collection; and the Recommendations section presents three major

recommended goal areas.

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METHODS

At the outset of the study, the Metro Center research team was briefed extensively by the

Cuyahoga County Executive‘s office. The research team employed an inquiry process that

emphasized the following meta-level questions:

What is the story behind the trends?

What are the root causes (positive and negative, historic and forecasted) with the greatest

influence on the trend lines used to document successful school and social outcomes?

What are specific indicators that are especially useful to track?

Within the specific areas of concern, are there examples of shifts in the trend line?

What would work to change the trend?

What are the options for strategies that could include policies, practices, and systems that would,

by addressing the most important trends, turn the curve of the trend line?

What are the proposed strategies for a change in outcomes?

What specific County and district policies, practices, and systems are proposed to re-direct the

current trend lines and what resources are necessary to implement the proposed strategies?

What should be emphasized on a data development agenda to improve the efficacy of

tracking change efforts?

What are the critical data points that inform the progress for redirecting trends?

In July and August of 2011, a research team from New York University‘s Metro Center spent a

significant amount of time talking with individuals representing the following Cuyahoga County

agencies and groups:

Case Western Reserve University Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development

CASTLE

Cleveland Metropolitan School District (Human Ware Initiative Team)

Cleveland Metropolitan School District (Office of the Chief Executive Officer)

Cobalt Group

Cuyahoga County Council

Cuyahoga County CountyStat Initiative

Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative

Cuyahoga County Health and Human Services

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court

Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County

Family & Children First Council

Invest in Children

My Commitment. My Community. (MyCom)

P16 Council

Promise Neighborhoods

Sisters of Charity Foundation

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Starting Point for Child Care and Early Education

The Cleveland Foundation

Third Federal Foundation

Workforce Investment Board

Youth Opportunities Unlimited

The Metro Center research team used a multi-method inquiry design that relied heavily on

qualitative methods of data collection. Data sources included transcripts of individual and focus

group interviews, a review of artifacts including County and school district documents, and a

summary review of County data. In the following sections, this report discusses the findings and

recommendations of the data analysis.

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OVERVIEW OF NEEDS

The Metro Center research team identified four major themes from the data that was collected

from focus groups, individual interviews, observations, archival investigations, and other

sources. These four themes are: capacity, communication, collaboration, and data.

THEME 1: CAPACITY

The many organizations with which we met struggle to meet the full range of client needs in

Greater Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Further, the range of client needs are rapidly changing

and in many cases intensifying. The majority of those with whom we spoke understand that there

is a profound interdependence of the County services, schools, and related community-based

organizations. However, it is unlikely that the shared and overlapping missions of these

organizations can be successfully met unless their work is more strategically interwoven.

Building capacity among the various organizations to meet the needs of Cuyahoga County

citizens also requires a renewed sense of accountability. This includes improved evaluative

processes as well as structured feedback mechanisms from the public that are designed to ensure

youth development entities are meeting client needs, reporting out appropriately, acting on data,

and seeing outcomes. These efforts are best led by the Cuyahoga County Executive‘s Office in

careful collaboration with other key stakeholders.

Service providers regularly reported their decreasing capacity to meet the broad range of needs

their clients presented. In an interview with CMSD school principals, building leaders lamented

the cut-back in services that had previously addressed a critical need:

―We are not happy about not having our social workers and nurses. Because the nurses

actually help as a support person to say, ‗this kid just needs glasses, this family needs bus

tickets, this family needs clothes, this family needs to be in a shelter maybe.‘ Or whatever

it is. They actually help a lot too. So we cut a lot of the support from Human Ware. The

social workers, the nurses, other people need to kind of see us, and help us because you

are looking at the people who are going to become more of these folks. The support role

will become greater for us, I think, this year more than ever.‖

Interview and focus group data suggest that the ability for organizations to have the capacity to

be successful in fulfilling their missions and in serving the community is hampered by budget

constraints, limited access to data, and limited communication across organizations. Many of the

participants expressed frustration and concerns about having the resources and capacity within

their organizations to provide appropriate services to meet the needs of youth in the County. In

one interview, an agency director explained:

―One problem is the need for the social workers and the need for the capacity to do the

work. For example, with everything that we are doing—it all comes back down to our

children and the services that they receive. We have been trying to implement programs

that allow us to determine what the non-academic barriers are that impede our children

and keep them from learning. So those needs have to be met. We are trying to make it a

positive environment. And I am being very expressive because I want you to understand

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because until we have the capacity to do what we need to do with children then we just

keep getting… there will be setbacks.‖

In the current economic climate the need to align education and social services has become even

more necessary; but doing so is doubly challenging. Many participants echoed the frustration

surrounding lack of resources. The ability of organizations to function effectively and efficiently

under current constraints seems to be one of the central challenges for directors across the

County services, schools, and community-based organizations. One principal explained:

―We‘ve learned to make do with what we have. The problem is [that] we have been doing

more with less for so long. You can‘t get blood out of a turnip. That‘s where we are going

– that‘s the point right now where we really are. I don‘t want to see administrators get

burned, discouraged what have you, because we have so many things to do. When we just

recently met at a principals meeting, the conversation was, they gave us a booklet. It turns

out we are the new family liaisons! Okay, one more thing to do. It‘s impossible.‖

The lack of resources for organizations to function efficiently and meet their goals may lead to

disorganization, burn-out of personnel, and demoralization. This, in turn, may further limit or

constrain organizational capacity. Another agency director explained:

―You know when we add more resources and we can have the luxury of maybe

specializing a little bit more…. You can have twenty organizations if you have the

resources. But as the resources shrink to support this administrative structure and these

individual fiefdoms or whatever they are—and they weren‘t always bad they were

probably good when we had the resources to do it—but as we lose staff and resources,

our ability to achieve what we‘re trying to do through these individual approaches begins

to fade.‖

Interdependence

It seems that capacity could be improved by pooling the limited resources across organizations,

which speaks to the interdependence of County services, school districts, and other community-

based organizations. This interdependence may support increased organizational capacity if it is

acknowledged and structures are put in place to increase communication, collaboration, and

sharing of resources. The data reveals a repeated recognition of the need for enhanced

collaboration across agencies and the reliance on other organizations to provide quality services

for community members in a variety of domains. One agency director explained:

―I‘m finding in real life, we have families who are in the child welfare system who have

an older sibling who‘s in the juvenile justice system. Often times, both of those siblings

go to or have gone to the Cleveland public school district or particularly an inner-ring

school district. So there‘s a lot of overlap, and so therefore I think over a fair amount of

time there‘s been a real intentional approach I think by the County and by these other

partners to plan together, to try to do what we can to break down the barriers between

these systems, to try to do joint planning.‖

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Community-based organizations highlighted the focus and need for joint planning and

interagency collaboration in order to remove barriers to services and improve capacity for

service providers as well:

―The Family and Children First Council that hosts the MyCom initiative has another

component of what it does called service coordination which is to try to take families that

are identified in one system that are also involved with other systems to try to come

together and do joint case planning where we can; to try to make sure that we‘re not all

paying more than once, or that some of us aren‘t paying more than once for services that

really only one system needs to pay for. And in fact, we‘ll do a negotiation about how

those services best get delivered and paid for.‖

While the interdependence of the many organizations in Cuyahoga County is highlighted often in

the data, strategies for improving service delivery seem to remain a challenge. One interviewee

stated:

―We‘ve been having meetings with different entities, but it always looks like you were

coming to get their data and what are we giving them back? So when you say, why can‘t

we as a community know the answer to this question, we all need to be on board that

we‘re about answering all our questions.‖

Accountability

Building capacity to meet the needs of Cuyahoga County citizens also requires a renewed sense

of accountability that includes not only evaluative processes but also structured feedback

mechanisms from the public to ensure that youth development entities are meeting client needs,

reporting out appropriately, acting on data, and seeing outcomes. There is a critical need for

clear, structured, and unified accountability mechanisms for County organizations. One agency

director explained:

―That is why it is so refreshing for the County executive to come in and say we want to

have data driven performance, we want to promote things that work to scale. The

transparency piece is incredibly important given the history of the corruption in the

County. The accountability piece, I think comes out of that, and if you do those things

and communicate, you will get accountability.‖

Accordingly, it seems that clear definitions of outcomes and organizational expectations would

be included among the accountability mechanisms that could ease communication and

collaboration across organizations. The need for these sorts of accountability mechanisms is

explained by one of the agency directors:

―We‘ve been pushing a lot toward becoming outcome driven and when we‘re building

new databases or any type of new infrastructure, the main focus is what is the outcome

that we‘re looking at? Now how do we capture data to show that outcome and finally,

how do we report that data? And in at least our coordination, I‘ll say three years ago they

were doing it the complete opposite way. It was, this is what we do, someone tell us what

our outcomes are. We have no idea, you know, we employ kids; yeah, that‘s it, yeah. But

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if we say, all right we have thirteen barriers and one of the barriers is youth pregnancy –

so how does your organization help youth not get pregnant until after they graduate?

Whatever that outcome is and how are you affecting it? What I‘d love to say is this

organization and this organization did this and this organization did this and the result

was this person graduated without getting pregnant. I don‘t understand why we can‘t do

that. I mean that‘s like the easiest thing in the world. It should be easy. I think.‖

Related to clear expectations and shared outcome measures is a shift in how accountability is

defined by both organizations and the County leadership. A need to shift or change the way

organizations collect, share, report, and evaluate data is important, but so too is a shift in the

expectations around how services are to be effectively provided. One agency director explained

the crux of the matter:

―I don‘t think the metrics will be hard, I think it‘s going to be getting people to change

their behaviors against those metrics. It‘s the first real accountability; [it is]

accountability to what you deliver and not just how often you deliver. That is going to be

a huge shift for us.‖

Change

The need for change in behaviors of organizations, how they view their clients, and how they

conceive of quality service seem especially salient. A recurrent theme in the data was change in

the County and changes in organizational functioning, values, and approaches to serving the

community. The sense that positive changes were being enacted at the County level, a renewed

optimism in the County leadership, and localized changes in ways of serving the residents of

Cuyahoga County were repeatedly expressed by a variety of stakeholders. The desire and the

will to change the way things are working in the County was expressed by one CMSD

administrator:

―People here really want better. They really do. And I think that is something to build on.

Unlike any place I‘ve ever been. The business community recognizes that the strength of

this city will come from the people who are in the city—that you cannot recruit a new

Cleveland to make Cleveland thrive. In Cleveland, in my biased view, it is really about

education. And I am trying to broaden the notion that it‘s really about how kids

experience growing up. It is not philanthropy; it is an investment. And people get it, and

they are persistent. Even at our very worst as an organization, they are not willing to give

up on it. The city cannot survive if we don‘t; and without the city, the County cannot

survive. ―

One agency director expressed the recognition of the effort of organizations to change by

actively focusing on the improvement of service delivery, coordination, collaboration, and

accountability:

―What we have been doing is looking through this lens of the P-16 model because it isn‘t

just the non-profit providers that need to be a part of that coalescing; there is a sort of

three strand approach which is the business, workforce, and entrepreneurship, schools

and learning, and then community. It really is a community-wide effort to make that

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coalescing happen and to make it youth-centric…. It is not youth-centric right now; it‘s

organization-centric.‖

According to many participants, change is happening, but it needs to be on a grander scale and

include as many stakeholders as possible. The idea of a paradigm shift—a philosophical shift in

the way organizations approach youth development and service provision—is central to change

in Cuyahoga County. One agency director put the need for change, accountability and the

enduring challenges very succinctly:

―I‘d love to see a press conference or an event with the County executive, the mayor of

the city of Cleveland, the president of the school board and Mayor Jackson all standing

next to each other saying these are the five things that we‘ve all decided as a community

are the most important things for kids and families in this community. And we all know.

CMSD knows its role, human services knows its role, juvenile court knows its role, the

suburban school systems know their role…. I mean that would be an amazing

accomplishment. And it‘s not so much a one-time press opportunity. It sends a signal to

all of us in these systems that we have got to keep an eye on these five goals and try to

figure out and they‘re going to ask us in three months, in six months, in nine months, in

twelve months, how we‘re doing on those. And also the other thing is that we have to be

willing to take a very long view of it because so many of these changes are not. I mean

I‘ve learned this I guess more significantly over the last couple of months working in the

child welfare program, we can only move the dial only a little bit with each tweak we

make and we have got to be willing to stay and not get frustrated after six months and say

well we haven‘t seen a quantum change….‖

This speaks to the need for more accountability mechanisms at specific intervals as well as a

need to focus County priorities for youth development across agencies. This quote also

highlights the importance of the willingness to develop new approaches and allow these new

approaches sufficient time to demonstrate effectiveness.

THEME 2: COMMUNICATION

The ability to communicate and share information and expertise across agencies is vital to

building Cuyahoga County‘s capacity to improve its youth development. There is a dearth of

formal interagency relationships that are capable of providing channels through which County

service agencies, school districts, and community-based organizations can effectively

communicate. Without these channels of communication, no structured opportunity exists to

clarify critical definitions of youth development priorities, share common understandings and

best practices, and clarify community needs. Similarly, there are infrequent and disrupted

channels of communication with the public, making it more difficult for County residents to

easily identify service providers. Further, ineffective communication channels make it less likely

that County service agencies, schools districts, and community-based organizations are able to

identify which community needs are most pressing and develop models to meet those needs.

―It seems like there is an opportunity considering the County‘s current position to really

begin to have a conversation about what youth development means, and what it means

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pre-natal all the way through post-secondary education. That‘s sort of P-16‘s philosophy.

But if there was a way even before we look at what indicators and tools are available,

which there are a lot, and some of them are really terrific, but to say, what does youth

development mean for Cuyahoga County? What are the things that we‘re aiming for and

what are our goals? Then the indicators and metrics and all these systems can fall in line

in a way that‘s meaningful because right now it‘s so frustrating because people are

collecting good data in these pockets.‖

Formal and Informal Relationships

Interview and focus group data suggest that important interagency communication functions

through informal relationships that have been developed over time. Some agency directors

explained that informal interagency relationships can lead to effective communication and,

thereby, collaboration. In one interview, an agency director explained:

―The informal aspect of partnering together is just because frankly a lot of the folks in

senior positions, in the human services departments especially, have been around for a

very long time. So there are relationships there that go beyond the fact that their systems

work together that they‘ve forged personal relationships and friendships and alliances and

that has helped remarkably. Frankly that may be more important almost more than the

formal. I mean, you have to have the formal relationships because you can‘t otherwise get

stuff accomplished, but it‘s the people picking up the phone and being able to call their

colleagues, the head of children‘s services calling the person at CMSD or the person at

CMSD calling the developmental disabilities department head.‖

While strong informal relationships should not replace formal structures, they do facilitate

effective communication. However, as the agency director above suggests, informal relationships

lead to alliances, which may lead to divisiveness and isolationism. Moreover, the reliance on

informal relationships for interagency communication does permit consistently strong

collaboration and information sharing County-wide. For one, informal connections rely on long-

term relationships, which may be less accessible to new leadership. In a focus group, one

principal suggested that informal relationships are vital to cutting through bureaucracy, although

this ability only comes with years of experience in the County:

―You need to know who to call and that‘s part of the problem, especially in the district.

We have had a transition due to the whole transformation. And a lot of times, the

resources are available, but you have to know who to call and when to call. I‘ve been

here now 11 years and I‘ve sort of navigated my way, cut through some red tape.‖

Accordingly, another principal explained how new principals struggle to access resources

because they lack the knowledge of who to contact or what is available:

―How many administrators are out there, teachers, etc. who don‘t even know who to call?

And there are, and it comes up, you have eleven years of experience, so you figured it

out, but for how many of those years did it get lost because you didn‘t know it? And

so…if there was a way, even if it‘s a book, I don‘t know, whatever, something that

people could refer to who are new coming in or who just never knew about it.‖

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This principal suggests that available resources should be formally communicated in order to

counteract the challenges of communication and information sharing in a system that relies

heavily on informal relationships built-up over time. Moreover, when communication rests

primarily on informal relationships, the level of communication and thereby reliability of

collaboration can fluctuate with changes in leadership. In an interview, one director explained his

agency‘s changing relationship with CMSD:

―We‘ve had fits and starts in our relationship in working with CMSD. There‘s always

been good will on both sides but that is an enormous bureaucracy, and we‘re an

enormous bureaucracy. We have different mandates, you know…. So we‘ve had times

when the

coordination was quite significant and extended all the way up to the superintendent level

of Cleveland public schools and to folks like me in my position or our director.‖

Accordingly, participants in interviews and focus groups suggested a need for developing more

opportunities for formal interagency communication. Several participants in the focus groups and

interviews expressed that memorandums of understanding are vital to facilitating information

sharing. One participant in our focus group with the CMSD Human Ware group explained how

MOUs are necessary to share information about youth who are connected to more than one

County agency:

―A perfect example is Department of Children and Family Services [and] CMSD; we

have the same babies. Sometimes we have... children beaten or abused. DCSF doesn‘t

have the address. Or we have educational neglect where our children are not coming to

school so we call DCSF to go and find out why the baby is not coming to school. So for

me, the first thing I would look at, for my piece of the puzzle, is that memorandum needs

to be resurged.‖

Other participants spoke about the importance of formal liaisons between agencies. One agency

director expressed the hope that his agency would be given a liaison from CMSD. A

representative of the youth court praised the success of having an educational liaison in order to

create a more complete picture of court-involved youth and to facilitate transitions in and out of

school. This position, however, was eliminated due to budget cuts. Yet, the opportunity to hear

from school-based staff in the case of each child may still be possible and important without a

full-time position:

―Who is the teacher or principal… that had [the child] himself and could offer some real

insight about how did he really do in school; and, yes we see that he was given in-school

suspension three times because of his aggressive behavior. Well, illuminate that.

Illuminate aggressive for us so that we have a better sense of what they really mean.…

There‘s nothing to illuminate them and then every discipline, every profession brings a

different perspective, a different vitality to any conversation and if educators aren‘t a part

of it, well then we‘re missing something, you know; we really truly are.‖

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This administrator suggests that the desire to forge formal interagency relationships for

communication and informal sharing comes in part from the understanding that there is a great

wealth of knowledge and expertise in the County that is not being effectively utilized across

agencies. The formation of formal relationships would not only facilitate cross-agency

communication and maximize the use of County talent and expertise, but also create access to

needed resources for new leaders.

Common Language for Youth Development Work

According to focus group and interview data, interagency communication may be limited by the

lack of a common vision for youth development and, thereby, the absence of a common language

to discuss the County‘s goals around youth development. Several interviewees raised the need

for clarifying organizational goals and defining key concepts around youth development as it is

defined in Cuyahoga County.

One director stated the need directly for a common vision:

―I think we need to have a common language that says when I say youth development it

means this and everybody who says they do youth development means this. That is a

huge hole right now.‖

Another agency director suggested that finding a common language would create a greater

understanding about what role each agency plays in reaching a shared, County goal:

―Maybe we‘d be better off if all the leadership of these major systems went off for a time

and came back with here‘s three goals or here‘s five goals understand what our respective

roles and responsibilities are within that.‖

This clarified understanding of how each agency‘s role around a County-wide set of goals would

likely aid in interagency communication and collaboration. Moreover, a common language and

understanding around youth development would lead to the articulation of universal indicators

that could be tracked across agencies, facilitating and directing data collection. A common

language and understanding would not only streamline data collection, but it would also help to

align services across ages, so that early childhood and late adolescent services are coordinated in

a manner that maximizes their effectiveness.

Communicating with the Public

One interviewee explained that the first steps in meaningfully communicating with the public

entails a thorough understanding of their needs:

―We want this to be more of a bottom up process than it is a top down. We can‘t

understand how to better provide social services if we don‘t understand the needs of these

communities.‖

This suggests that understanding the community‘s needs may be a precursor to defining a

common understanding of youth development in the County. Accordingly, communication with

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the public is a bi-directional process—hearing the community‘s needs and disseminating

information about available services.

According to the interviewees, the County‘s performance in providing information to the

community requires improvement. Some focus group and interview participants stressed the

effort their agencies dedicate to communicating available services to the community. A

participant in a focus group interview with community partners explained that communicating

with the public maximizes the effectiveness of County services and allows families to make fully

informed decisions for their well-being in the present and future:

―We are trying to support the outcomes of the schools through social emotional

components as well as making sure that our kids have information in order to make the

best decisions about their academics, such as knowing that if they want to go to college

they need to be taking algebra in middle school, those kinds of decisions.‖

However, some participants suggested that families are not made aware of all the services

available and what is necessary to access them. One community partner interviewee explained

that parents are often not informed about the requirements to enroll a child in kindergarten:

―And 211 called every school district to say ‗What‘s your criteria?‘ for entering

Kindergarten. And what we found were most schools had four things that were exactly

the same, even charter schools, and maybe two things that were different. So we run a

campaign every summer over the radio saying call 211 if you‘re not sure about what you

need because it‘s more than just a birth certificate and a social security card…. You need

more things and what we were finding is when you ask parents, one of the things we

found is that they were frustrated because they had to make multiple trips because they

didn‘t know what was needed. For example, one of our school districts, South Euclid

Lyndhurst, they require a face-to-face; they require an appointment to come in and

register. And parents did not know that.‖

This not only suggests that more efforts need to be made to inform the public of available

services and requirements for eligibility, but also that uniform eligibility requirements may assist

families in accessing resources.

THEME 3: COLLABORATION

The interview data reveal an intense need for service alignment. Many organizations with similar

missions are working in isolation from others. As a result, there are both gaps and redundancies

in services. The Broadway P-16 model is thoughtfully designed according to a life-span

alignment model in which developmental needs are situated at the center of service

considerations. Even with the impressive work of the CMSD Human Ware initiative, school

leaders in CMSD report not being able identify critical service providers. Organizations that are

able to identify providers of critical needs are generally those that have access to off-line

information sources and privileges, including informal channels of information.

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―I think the problem is or the challenge is, in an era of less resources we all sort of go

back to where, ‗I‘ll hunker down and go back to a sort of what we think our basics are‘—

and often times we‘ve never thought of our basics as thinking in a collaborative

[manner]. When we had resources, we collaborated, and when we don‘t, we shrink back

to [our] respective silos, I guess. You know I think what we don‘t realize sometimes, and

I‘ve only learned this probably recently, actually in a less resourced era, collaboration

pays off more than it does in a time when we have too many resources because what we

were finding is that we were paying for the same things or paying for very close to the

same things over and over and over again when we all had more resources.‖

Cuyahoga County has many resources and much expertise that can be aligned and strategically

utilized to promote youth development. This principal suggests that the challenge for the County

is not to attract more talent or collect more resources, but rather to collaborate and garner the

collective force of all available resources. In a focus group, one principal stated:

―We have the Cleveland Clinic, one of the most renowned in the nation. Certainly we

have resources here in the city. But it‘s going to take the clergy, the education, the

business, the law enforcement, all these groups working together.‖

The need for effective collaboration and service alignment is clearly stated by participants in

interviews and focus groups. One participant in the community partners focus group described

some of the current efforts toward service alignment:

―We also have what we call service coordination in our community and we have a

subcommittee that consists of the deputy directors of all the child-serving public systems.

We are now bringing the school district to the table and one of the things we have been

focusing on is in our MyCom neighborhoods, we offer tutoring. We want to make sure

that the tutoring we are offering at the center is in line with the curriculum during the day.

And we just began having those conversations with them.‖

One agency director expressed the commitment to enhancing collaboration to counter a tendency

toward isolationism, although the agency was only beginning to envision how cross-agency

partnerships may look and work:

―We are meeting this month, bringing people who are involved in public information at

some of the agencies who have been doing customer service or customer satisfaction

surveys for a while and bringing them to the table and say: ‗Ok, we are duplicating our

efforts, we are spending a lot of money on radio ads here….‘ So again, looking at how do

we best use our resources? How do we become more efficient? Or find some leverage on

what we are doing because we are all kind of siloed. Each agency is doing its own thing

or has its own grant. How do we make that more efficient? How do we use that to get

more people in and direct them to more County services?‖

This director suggests that collaboration is important to prevent redundancy and the waste of

resources. Accordingly, collaboration would minimize gaps in services and maximize the

efficiency of service provision. One school administrator described the need for each service

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provider to understand their role so that the schools are supported where there is the most need

and that services are not provided redundantly:

―We have a good relationship there where they have, over a number of years, had an

agreement with the district to provide social service supports through our agencies, the

mental health agencies, and to our schools. We have gotten better at making sure every

school has some level of penetration.… We also have a lot of agencies that want to do the

promotion/prevention work that we are supposed to be doing and are not real excited

about their mission which is the intervention and treatment work. So we have an issue of

real roles.‖

The fact that many of the students most in need of County support services have contact with

more than one County agency further emphasizes the need for interagency collaboration. One

agency director explained the way that families are interwoven throughout County agencies:

―The issue is that there‘s just so many more systems involved with kids at that point, you

know. The most important one being the educational system; but if a kid‘s beginning to

have issues, or the family is beginning to have issues, there are lots of other systems that

may well end up enmeshed in their lives. It‘s hard for them. No single system necessarily

has all the responsibility for ensuring this kid and family turn out ok.‖

This director suggests that when a family interacts with many County agencies, the County‘s

accountability for effective and quality care may be lost in the shuffle. An organized

collaboration between agencies, including interagency communication about shared clients,

would assist in increasing accountability. Much of the challenges to collaboration are closely

linked to the lack of formal structures for communication between agencies. One agency

director, who expressed a desire for increased interagency collaboration, described the informal

avenues through which collaboration can stem:

―Let‘s say that I get a case, and I‘m a case worker in public assistance, and I think that

there‘s a child welfare case I might try to call over to the department of children and

family services and find a friend over there. ‗Would you look up [someone] and see if

there‘s a case, and if so could you tell me who the social worker is?‘‖

Although informal relationships may occasionally lead to effective action, increasing formal

structures for communication better ensures regular, consistent, and accountable collaboration.

Collaboration calls not only for service alignment across the County, but also alignment of

services according to developmental needs and between the public and private sector. Similarly,

one principal expressed that collaboration should work to bring services to clients more

efficiently and effectively by ―coordinating resources so there is no red tape when the resources

start coming to us.‖

The challenges of collaboration are exacerbated at a time when resources have diminished. On

multiple occasions, the stakeholders explained that silos are especially prone to develop during

an economic downturn; however, these are the times when collaboration is most important.

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THEME 4: DATA

Data systems throughout the County are incongruent, making it difficult to impossible to track

and measure the efficacy of youth development programming and interventions. Further, many

entities struggle with data management within their own organizations, including methods of

data collection, entry, and reporting.

―We can do those prevention and promotion kind of activities. We can even do a lot of

early intervention in the mental health areas. But what we need, when our school support

team is talking, we need to be able to say: ‗How do we connect to this agency support?

How do we get this family connected into County service?‘ One of the struggles we‘ve

been having—and we are all working on it—is interagency ability to share. So we put our

families through, now, ‗I need your data, sign all these forms….‘ We don‘t have a good

interagency network here; that has been a struggle for us. We sort of have a loose

relationship with the County services, and it kind of got looser when the County service

changed and everyone went into treadmill mode. I‘m really looking forward to being able

to tighten that back up again. And we don‘t do a really good job, I would say, on either

end of our agencies of having a kind of single point of contact. I think, a small victory but

an important one, would be information sharing. We all need it, and we all want it.‖

Data sharing agreements exist formally and informally between some organizations, but,

overwhelmingly, most groups report being unable to share data that could critically inform their

work.

Data Sharing

Interview and focus group participants consistently expressed difficulty with data sharing. This

includes not only struggles with acquiring data sharing agreements across organizations, but also

the technical difficulties with the various data systems that do not work well together. These

difficulties include a lack of formal sharing agreements, memoranda of understanding, and/or

other data sharing agreements across agencies. Related to different data systems is a challenge

with data management, including defining outcomes, having similar metrics, and accuracy of

data. One community partner explained their challenge with data sharing agreements:

―One of the big things we have heard from all the child-serving public systems and some

of the neighborhood providers—and there has been a significant issue in our community,

and this is not just the schools it some of our public systems as well—around sharing

information. And so we recently worked with the child serving public systems and

CMSD to develop a multi-system release of information form. We have been working on

this since 1996, however, we have an active form right now to share information. As a

result from that process, we have gotten several agreements from CMSD that we hope to

push out to the other districts. The first thing they have agreed to is to allow us to

administer a child wellbeing survey district-wide.‖

The precarious and informal nature of the current data sharing agreements seem to impede the

work and effectiveness of nearly every organization involved. The issues with data sharing and

data agreements was also conveyed by County agency personnel:

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―I wonder sometimes because we‘ve spent literally years working on trying to figure out

how we can get information sharing agreements and mutual releases. I mean literally it‘s

like the Dickens novel, Bleak House. You know how if it‘s about this lawsuit it goes on

for a hundred years and nobody remembers why they filed the lawsuit in the first place.

One of the things that we‘ve talked to the County executive a little bit about is maybe

using, if he‘s willing, some of his political capital in Columbus to try to get those

administrators of these large systems that we are required to use for our various service

delivery mechanisms to ease the regulation so we can begin to share information more

productively and legally than we currently are now.‖

The difficulties with securing and sustaining data sharing agreements have been a stumbling

block for many agencies. Improving the ability to share information seemingly would greatly

improve organizational capacity, collaboration, communication, and accountability. Another

issue with data sharing includes different, incompatible data systems that impede data sharing.

Many participants explained the incompatibilities with the various databases and data systems

that exist:

―If we can‘t get a universal data system, how do we change or alter their databases? But

as you know that‘s very hard to do with large organizations. So my personal opinion is

that if we had a universal database, if we can get that here then we can figure out how to

flow everybody into that but until you have that and start to populate it, my belief is that

you are not going to really go anywhere until you have that structure.‖

A County organization director echoed this same sentiment:

―And the other big challenge that I didn‘t mention was these state data systems that are

so uncooperative even when you can get data out. There‘s so many errors. I mean so

many staff hours get chewed up just correcting obvious things that are wrong. The quality

of the data is an obstacle.‖

The incompatibility of the databases and the amount of time it takes to access or input data to

many different systems is a source of frustration, but also a waste of time and resources. One

participant explained that creating another new system without assessing the data management

needs of organizations would not be helpful. She offered this input:

―So not only is it extremely time consuming to have to have people put things in multiple

databases but there are huge costs attached and it‘s not efficient in any way shape or form

and there‘s always going to be a devaluation of the integrity of the data and so the

integrity of the data and the ease—that‘s the most important thing to me and we, in terms

of working with MyCom—we want so badly to be able to identify youth or whether or

not a youth is in a MyCom neighborhood. That‘s a big thing for us so that we‘re reporting

correctly. Until we have that, we don‘t even know if we‘re reporting correctly. It‘s really

a guess. So I‘m all for any type of communication that we can create that is for everyone.

But please don‘t build another system that we have to put data into unless we can import

it in.‖

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Data Management

Many participants explained that methods and mechanisms for data collection, data use, and data

reporting across agencies and organizations are vastly different and highly inconsistent.

Management of data has become problematic for several reasons. Organizations collect data

differently, collect different types of data, and report data differently. Data sharing issues also

arise from these data management concerns. One agency director explained:

―I think at this point we‘ve been spending time understanding what kind of data is being

collected. It‘s been a little bit frustrating at times because it‘s so inconsistent and it‘s

collected, different things are being collected in different ways at different times and so

there‘s no one set of data that we can analyze or even one framework that we‘ve been

able to look at and say, ‗this is it, this makes sense.‘ I think we‘re at a point of beginning

to put it together but nothing sort of solid yet.‖

Creating consensus across agencies regarding outcome metrics, as well as data collection and

reporting methods would be helpful for multiple organizations to be able to better make use of

and interpret data from different organizations. Improved data management would improve

agency evaluation and accountability. This has been a struggle for many organizations and the

different ways of reporting, using, and collecting data have remained both highly localized and

highly isolated from other organizations. This explanation by a community partner represents the

urgent need for improved data sharing mechanisms and improved management of data across

organizations:

―This community is accustomed to head counts but not the quality of the intervention. So

defining quality of intervention is going to be very important. The other thing from my

perspective is having benchmark data that shows that treatment is having effect over

time. We actually talked originally about having a universal data platform back in 2007.

We actually met with some external agencies who have experience working with multi-

site, large youth development initiatives to gather appropriate data, dosage data, outcome

data. That‘s something we‘ve hoped to implement now for years but the funding has not

been there. So what we‘ve had is kind of piecing together data here and there; we don‘t

really have a universal plan in how to look at data across the initiatives. But we‘ve had

evaluations and surveys here and there. We‘ve had data in spots, but we‘ve never really

gotten the whole picture of what‘s going on. And dosage has been the biggest problem.

We‘re talking about a hundred agencies anywhere from a small mom and pop agency to a

large Boys and Girls Club with sophisticated ways of gathering data. How do you merge

all those together and gather data with the same variables across agencies? So we struggle

with that, and we‘ve done some evaluations. Really our role for the last couple of years

has been technical assistance and work with agencies to try to get them up to speed so

that they understand that they need to gather this data, with mixed results obviously.‖

An unambiguous finding from the data collection shows this theme of data management and data

sharing to be considered among the greatest challenges to service provision and youth

development across and within many agencies in Cuyahoga County. Improving the ease of data

sharing and increasing commonalities across databases and management systems seemingly

would improve accountability and organizational capacity.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

As the data demonstrate, there is a clear need for new strategies for developing human capital

that include educating and making healthy Cuyahoga County citizens if the region is to

experience a sustained economic and social renaissance. A critical strategy in attaining this goal

is the transformation of schools and strengthening their partnerships with County agencies and

community- and faith-based organizations so that they are more effective in providing young

people in Cuyahoga County an education that will drive the economic rebirth of the region.

The theory of action that informs the set of strategies recommended herein postulates that it will

be possible to address many of the social and economic challenges that have contributed to

downturns of the past several decades by transforming schools in Cuyahoga County through

strategic reinvestments in their partnership with key County agencies and related community-

based interventions. Specifically, this strategy map suggests efforts that combine research-based

educational strategies with school-based social services, out-of-school-time initiatives, and

thoughtfully coordinated community-based interventions to increase the capacity of schools to

respond to issues that are endemic to the social and environmental context (e.g., the need for

health, nutrition, jobs, safety, etc.).

The research-informed assumption is that such an approach will make it possible for schools in

Cuyahoga County to be better positioned to meet the needs of the students they serve. It is also

assumed that successful implementation of a full-service reform model will improve the ability

of schools to prepare students to meet the demands of a rapidly changing knowledge-based

economy and increase the likelihood that public education in Cuyahoga County will play a role

in reducing poverty and improving social conditions over time. These are bold and innovative

strategies for a comprehensive approach to public education that potentially places Cuyahoga

County at the forefront of research-informed education innovations.

Child Development Needs and County Resources

The present task is to build a strategy map that facilitates an educational pipeline in Cuyahoga

County whereby the educational goals of the public school systems are supported by

collaborative efforts of County agencies and various community-based interventions.

Educationally speaking, there are developmental goals that lead to the long-term goals of college

and workforce readiness of graduates.

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Figure 2: Child Development Transitions and Goals

31

County-based and community-based supports of desired school outcomes must be developed in

ways that align with specific developmentally appropriate student outcomes. Taken together, the

recommended goal areas are intended to target the following long-term outcomes across the

County in coordinated support of improved education outcomes:

Ensure data-driven performance of key stakeholder groups including County agencies,

school districts, and community- and faith-based organizations.

Promote scaled-collaboration of school districts, agencies, and community- and faith-

based organizations.

Increase transparency of fiscal and programmatic collaboration among organizations

affecting educational outcomes.

Foster a culture of accountability throughout the County‘s education and social service

stakeholder groups.

Facilitate greater communication among the County‘s education and social service

stakeholder groups.

The technical assistance audit yielded the following short-term goal recommendations (January-

December 2012):

GOAL ONE (1): The various Cuyahoga County service entities, school districts, and

community-based organizations must collectively define and frame priorities for youth

development initiatives.

Objective 1A: Outline youth development priorities in three strands:

1. Out-of-school-time

a. Provide sufficient time for meaningful, active, and collaborative learning

b. Ensure quality by utilizing evidence-based practices

c. Tap into the expertise of community partners

d. Focus on results that measure desired youth and program outcomes

e. Provide enrichment and acceleration opportunities

f. Employ principles of positive youth development to provide opportunities for

social and emotional development, leadership, and improved health and

wellness

2. School5

a. Build capacity to enhance the quality of human services and student support

by targeting resources that go to schools, ensuring appropriate staffing ratios,

freeing up guidance counselors and schools psychologists to counsel students,

and recruiting and using graduate social work and school psychology interns

b. Improve school procedures, protocols, policies, and practices to address the

elimination and modification of rules and that appear to be counter-productive

c. Improve school climate which includes student perceptions of connectedness

and support and improve their attendance

5 School recommendations are derived from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Human Ware Audit

(American Institutes for Research, 2008)

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d. Train school administrators, teachers, and security staff to use proactive

approaches for addressing behavior issues, to eliminate reactive and punitive

approaches for discipline, and to help students learn to manage their own

emotions, behaviors, and relationships

e. Develop warning and response systems to build school, district, and

community capacity to identify, respond to, and provide early interventions as

well as respond to early and imminent warning signs through protocols and

the timely and effective application of efficacious practices

f. Provide focused professional development and support to develop the

capacities of adults to better meet the needs of students

g. Focus funding agency resources in order to identify and cost out a small set of

strategies and programs that the district will support

3. Family/community services.

a. Enhance family/school partnerships to involve collaboration with families

b. Tap into the expertise of community partners

Objective 1B: Develop metrics of community and youth development:

1. Develop youth asset metrics6

a. Communication skills

b. Life skills (e.g., resiliency capacity, emotional management skills, cross-

cultural capacity, time management skills, etc.)

c. Leadership and civic capacity

d. Positive behaviors

e. Relationship building

2. Develop community environment metrics in various categories (e.g., economic,

family, physical space/environment, housing, etc.)

3. Develop service delivery dosage metrics

Objective 1C: Create a common research, funding, and project-development agenda around

youth development metrics that parallel Cuyahoga County youth development priorities:

1. Develop MOU with among governments, foundations, and school system that

articulates common definitions of youth development metrics:

a. Utilize youth development priority points and metrics in framing RFPs

b. Encourage interagency collaboration around the investigation of youth

development services and outcomes

Objective 1D: Develop funding streams that allow for blending and braiding of fiscal resources

that focus on building healthy families and children with collaborations in schools and

community and faith-based organizations:7

1. Increase the number of children served while covering the full and actual costs of

high-quality programs

2. Invest in strategies that improve program quality

6 See the Afterschool Youth Outcomes Inventory by the partnership for After School Education (2010) for a

discussion of possible indicators:

http://www.pasesetter.com/documents/pdf/Outcomes/OutcomesInventory_8Nov10%20FINAL.pdf 7 See http://www.financeproject.org/ for possible options of funding sources.

33

3. Enable programs to coordinate multiple funding streams

4. Reduce categorical restrictions of funding streams

5. Support programs that achieve desired outcomes with stable funding sources to

minimize administrative burdens on high-performing programs

6. Remove barriers to the blending, braiding, and/or leveraging of funds

7. Allow for local flexibility so programs can best meet local needs

8. Coordinate funding streams at the agency level through regulations, application and

review processes, and quality assurance and evaluation systems

Why Goals 1A-1D Matter

Among the most critical of the goal recommendations is the call for the various Cuyahoga

County service entities, school districts, community-based organizations, and other key

stakeholders to collectively define and frame priorities for youth development. There are many

organizations which focus specifically on youth development as well as a number of youth

development initiatives sponsored by various agencies throughout Cuyahoga County; however,

the priorities, goals, and foci are myriad and not organized around any clearly defined central

themes. This has led to service redundancies and service gaps, poor interagency communication,

a lack of coordinated service provision, and a lack of knowledge about the range of available

services and resources. Creating more cohesive, integrated, and clearly defined youth

development priorities is a critical step in improving the efficacy of Cuyahoga County‘s youth

development efforts.

The process of defining and framing priorities for youth development occurs in three broad steps:

1. The first step includes outlining the youth development agenda into three priority areas:

out-of-school-time, school, and family and community services. County agencies, school

districts, and community-based organizations must collectively and clearly define youth

development priorities. The process of defining youth development priorities should

include the effort to identify a common language and clarification of the purpose and

relationship of similar-oriented initiatives.

2. The second step toward framing priorities for youth development initiatives includes the

identification of metrics or indicators for youth development. A commonly understood

language does not currently exist among the various Cuyahoga County service agencies

that defines the most frequently utilized units of measurement used to describe the work

of youth development initiatives. These units of measurements should be developed to

include youth asset metrics, community environment metrics, and service delivery and

dosage metrics. The actual metrics should be conceived of in three domains: Education,

Work/Entrepreneurship, and Community.

Within each domain of recommended goal areas, it is essential to develop metrics useful

in identifying the critical knowledge and skills relative to expected outcomes and, further,

to assess the County-wide resources and organizations that work toward the youth

development agenda. These metrics should be conceptualized across the life span from

birth to college and beyond. Developing an understanding of the needs, metrics, and

34

resources available in these domains and across the life span is critical for reframing the

youth development priorities.

3. The third step under this goal is to coordinate research and development projects in

alignment with the Cuyahoga County youth development metrics. A clear presentation of

criteria for a long-term research and development agenda is critical in the articulation of

funding priorities in both the public and private sector.

GOAL TWO (2): Under the leadership of the Office of the Cuyahoga County Executive,

institute formal relationships between youth development initiatives with similar missions

and shared constituencies.

Objective 2A: Establish a regular forum for communication of partners within the MyCom

network along with key County services (e.g. Department of Health and Human Services;

Juvenile Court; Cuyahoga County Educational Service Center; and Cleveland Metropolitan

School District, etc.)

1. Form a Cuyahoga County Youth Development Council

2. Outline the charge of Cuyahoga County Youth Development Council

3. Create MOU between County service agencies and CMSD to articulate intent for data

sharing and service coordination

Objective 2B: Regularly communicate progress of youth development agenda:

1. Develop a communication plan that contains regular sharing of information to the

County (e.g., Cuyahoga County Youth Development Counts Report)

2. Outline Youth Development Council annual or bi-annual funding and service

priorities based on the Cuyahoga County Youth Development Counts Report

Why Goals 2A-2B Matter

The Metro Center research team recommends that the County executive commission a Youth

Development Council, which would institute formal relationships between the various youth

development initiatives in Cuyahoga County.

The first objective of this Youth Development Council is to serve as a consistent forum for cross-

County communication among County services, initiatives, and community organizations. In

order to facilitate communication, this Council will employ a common understanding and

language for youth development in Cuyahoga County. Using this common understanding and

language, each representative on the Council will be able to represent their work as it contributes

to the overall County youth development goals.

In order to facilitate communication, this Council will promote interagency communication and

collaboration, accountability, and an increase in capacity. This may include but is not limited to

organizing opportunities for agency employees to share best practices, initiating MOUs, creating

formal liaison positions between agencies, and/or developing a plan to share data about families

that have contact with multiple County agencies and organizations.

35

The second objective of the Youth Development Council is to regularly communicate the

Council agenda and progress to the County executive, including reports of collaboration,

accountability, and an increase in capacity. This may include, but is not limited to, having set

goals with which to mark the County‘s progress. Progress in achieving these goals should be

reported to the public at regular intervals to ensure accountability. Moreover, the Council is

responsible for communicating the common vision of youth development to the public. This

includes communicating the funding and service priorities according to the County based needs

in the community, consolidating youth development efforts (where appropriate), and creating an

accountability arm to oversee the interagency work.

GOAL THREE (3): Develop a cross-County data platform to be shared by youth

development agencies, school districts, community-based organizations, and philanthropic

groups.

Objective 3A: Develop a model for strategic information sharing:

1. Draft a full inventory of available youth development services to be stored in one

location that can be accessed by school practitioners and County residents

2. Outline a map of fields (e.g., groups of related variables) in the following three

strands of youth development work: out-of-school-time, schools, and

family/community services

3. Procure a data format to bridge across important agency partners serving similar

populations and/or communities

Objective 3B: Identify, collect, and analyze data that provides information that continuously

informs the range of needs, scope of services, and availability of supports.

1. Develop a data dashboard which may be viewed with various levels of access to

provide real-time status of key data indicators

2. Coordinate a regular convening of point persons from key groups (which may be a

sub-committee of the Youth Development Council) associated with data quality

control processes that engage an ongoing discussion in the strategies for data analysis

while analyzing observable trends in service provision and client needs

Why Goals 3A-3B Matter

Information sharing will serve to enhance the quality of services and accountability to families,

particularly those who have contact with multiple County agencies. Based on administrative,

focus group, and interview data, we recommend that the County develop ways to share data

more easily. A County-wide data platform to be shared by youth development agencies, school

districts, community-based organizations, and philanthropic groups should be established. This

will not only facilitate information sharing about particular youths and families in order to

coordinate services, but also hold County organizations and agencies accountable to their

missions. Measures that align to the common understanding of youth development will unify

data collection across agencies.

The administrators of this central database will also be responsible for putting out an online and

print resource for the public that names all of the available County services and describes their

mission in terms of the common vision. This guide, which may be organized by out-of-school-

36

time services, school services, and family/community services, can serve as a resource to County

employees, especially new hires, as well as to families seeking assistance.

These recommendations may be thought of as occurring in tiered phases, with each phase

informing steps for incremental and collaborative initiatives in subsequent phases. In truth, this

work occurs in continuous cycles. What is most important is that the various initiatives are

strategically coordinated under a central theory of change that advocates for the strategic

collaborative support of school outcomes.

The short-term recommendations should be thought of as the foundation for long-term County

efforts, to include:

1. Expanding access for quality early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten

(UPK) services County-wide.

2. Continuing the work of the Higher Education Compact of Greater Cleveland to increase

college graduation rates.

3. Continuing to develop and coordinate 21st century workforce education and internships to

engage leading industries in establishing robust pilot workforce initiatives.

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Figure 3: Cuyahoga County Three-Phase Goals

38

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