Today’s School Spotlight is highlighting a great piece from State of the Re:Union’s contributor Mike McGrath with the National Civic League. This post on education elicited such a positive response, SOTRU would like to share it one more time for your ruminating pleasure.

Sacramento Focuses on Grade-Level Reading

I see that State of the Re:Union has been doing some reporting on Sacramento, California, exploring some of the tough challenges facing the community, so I thought I’d mention that Sacramento is joining the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national effort to get more low income kids to read at grade level by third grade.

Last month, Mayor Kevin Johnson launched the Sacramento Reads! 3rd Grade Literacy Campaign, one of the largest community-wide reading initiatives in the United States. Currently only about 37 percent of third graders in Sacramento read at grade level. The goal of Sacramento Reads! is for 80 percent of third graders to be reading at grade level by 2020.

Sacramento’s ambitious plan is part of a collaborative effort by dozens of funders and nonprofit partners across the nation known as the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Other communities that have answered the call include New Britain, Connecticut; Springfield, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California.

The campaign focuses on three preventable causes of the performance gap between low income readers and other students:
• The readiness gap: The fact that many low income kids who show up for school are already behind because they haven’t had as much access to books or high quality pre-kindergarten programs that help prepare students to learn.
• The attendance gap: I’ve already written a blog post about this problem. Research has found that one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students nationwide misses nearly a month of school each year in excused and unexcused absences.
• The summer slide (summer learning loss): Lots of students lose ground over the summer if they are not reading at home or engaged in enrichment programs.

The National Civic League has also joined this nationwide effort. Our part will be to encourage communities to address the reading gap by focusing the 2012 and 2015 All-America City Awards on grade level reading efforts. Ordinarily, the award programs let communities choose the issue areas they want to present to our jury of civic experts at the annual event. In 2012, we’ll be doing things a little differently.

In 2012, the All-America City Award program will be a little different. NCL is asking communities to develop comprehensive plans that focus on the three critical areas identified by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Winners must demonstrate capacity to use data, deploy effective interventions, build strong cross‐sector partnerships, and mobilize public will to improve reading proficiency in the early grades.

Since the late 1990s, NCL has asked All-America City finalist communities to list at least one project that benefitted or engaged young people. Consequently, we’ve had more than a few past winners present reading or literacy projects.

For example: Marietta, Georgia, a winner in 2006, touted “Marietta Reads!” program. Participants selected books from approved lists and are tested on reading comprehension. Students earned points on the basis of the book’s difficulty and test scores. Goals were set for students at each grade level in all the city’s schools, and students earned awards by reaching those goals.

Hollywood, Florida, a winner in 2007, presented its “Born to Read” program, which positioned a fulltime librarian at the Memorial Primary Care Clinic, to interact with each family of young children. New families were given an application for a library card, a resource guide and a first book for the child. Families were given instructions on ways to encourage reading and this is reinforced with every subsequent visit to the clinic.

El Paso, Texas, a winner in 2010 has its annual Día de los Niños/ Día de Los Libros to improve literacy and health awareness in the community. The event involves a free giveaway of books and opportunities for young people to sign up for the Summer Reading Club.
For today

Tupelo, Mississippi, a winner last year, featured two projects from the mayor’s task force on education: “Read Tupelo” which provides a morning of learning for approximately 400 four and five year olds, including art activities, a music demonstration with various instruments, and story time presented by local officials and volunteers. Another initiative provides every baby born at North Mississippi Medical Center’s Women’s Hospital a copy of the book, Goodnight Moon.

Our hope is that more and more communities will do what Sacramento is doing and organize community-based efforts to address the reading gap. (Another difference in 2012 is that the campaign and its partners are offering technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to cities that participate in the award process.) To qualify, communities must submit a letter of intent by October 14.

For more information on the All-America City Grade Level Reading Award, visit the campaign’s website or the All-America City Award blog.

Because (thankfully) we are all different, we’d like to hear what your comments and thoughts are. Do you know of a unique school program that works for your community? If so, please, let us know.

Back in 2009, IBM announced it was opening a technology center in Dubuque, Iowa, a move that would bring 1,300 jobs to the region. Not long afterwards, I read an editorial by a TV commentator in Madison, Wisconsin: “IBM could have located here, and chose Dubuque. That’s just not right.”

What seemed remarkable to the author the opinion piece was the notion that a small, Iowa city would be selected instead of a more recognized technology “triangle” or “corridor,” but it wasn’t much of a surprise to me. Dubuque was an all-America city winner in 2007 and I knew that it was an unusually innovative community. What it lacked in glitz and cachet, it more than compensated for with pluck, organization and civic spirit.

To be selected a finalist for All-America City Awards each community must submit an application that tells its story and describes three community-improvement projects and Dubuque had quite a dramatic story. In 1985, it had one of the highest levels of unemployment in the country, upward of 23 percent. The city’s largest employer, John Deere, recently had shut its doors, and residents were leaving in droves. Old-timers remember when a joker put up a billboard outside town that said: “Will the last person to leave Dubuque please turn out the lights?”

A few years later, the city undertook an ambitious public planning process called Vision 2000, in which citizens from across the region met to lay out a road map for economic recovery: The vision that emerged was a “diverse and balanced economic base that provides job security for all segments of the community … secured through the support, retention, recruitment of retail, manufacturing, hi-tech, services, year-round tourism, recycling businesses and industries.”

Focusing on bringing in new industry – insurance, technology, publishing, health care, education and tourism – Dubuque rose to No. 1 among Iowa’s metro centers for job growth. A revitalized waterfront with hiking trails, restaurants, a museum and an aquarium reconnected the city with one of its great resources, the Mississippi River.

Vision 2000 was the first of four strategic planning processes that took place in Dubuque over about a dozen years, the latest being Envision 2010 in 2005, when thousands of residents convened to dream up 10 “big” ideas for the future.

One of those ideas was for downtown Dubuque to be a “cool” place to live, where people surf the Internet and chat in cafes with original art hanging on exposed brick walls, a place that would draw young professionals away from Chicago and the Twin Cities because of its combination of livability, affordability and opportunity.

“It all started in the 1980s when people decided we had reached the bottom and collectively wanted to make it a better community,” said Mayor Roy Buol. “The new Dubuque, that’s what I call it. People really bought into the idea. There was a common desire to better the community and make it place where everybody has opportunities, a place people want to come, and when they do come, to stay.”

Last year, when we were doing a special issue of the National Civic Review on environmental sustainability, Dubuque’s name came up again—as a case study in community-wide successful environmental sustainability planning. Again I wasn’t surprised.

Few, if any, winners of the All-America City Award have exemplified the spirit of regional cooperation, civic engagement and community innovation more effectively than Dubuque. It’s a story that we love to tell and tell again.

To learn more about the National Civic League, click here, or to nominate your city for an All-American City award, visit here.

Is there a similar story of rebirth and rejuvenation for your town that you would like to share? Please do let us know, we would love to hear about it.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

State of the Re:Union’s intern Melissa Lee gives us an insight into what some people of a small town in Washington State are doing to keep their community going.

Here’s something you don’t usually hear when entering a hardware store: “We’ve got some pie over there, help yourself.”

That’s exactly what I heard when I stepped into the Waitsburg Hardware & Mercantile in Waitsburg, WA.  And there was pie indeed.  It was blueberry rhubarb and it was delicious.  There was also coffee to go along with it.  I happened to stumble into the hardware store on what is known to the locals as “pie day,” which is not so much a set day of the week, but occurs whenever someone from the community decides to bring in pie for anyone who might stop by to enjoy.

“We have some very good pie and cake makers, and sometimes we have biscuits and gravy; we have all kinds of food in here,” said John Stellwagen.  He and his wife, Marilyn, own the place since they bought the business in 2005, and it was then that it became a center where people come together.  “People want to fix something, they bring it in.  We have people that make smoked cheeses and bring them in and sometimes we barbeque, so it just gets you through the day.” According to the Web site the hardware store is “A place where the community gathers to pass the time of day and catch up on the local news.”

I spent about a half hour in the store and in that time saw at least 10 people come in, sit down, eat some pie and chat.  Many people seemed to know each other, but I also overheard introductions being made.  Stellwagen told me it all started one fall when Waitsburg Hardware decided to hold an apple pie baking contest.  Members of the community brought in their finest but the result was a draw, everyone coming in first place.  A run-off was planned, a second round of pie eating ensued and “pie day” was born.

“We had all these people bringing in these pies and we could never quite make up our mind, so we had to have another run-off, but really it was just a huge excuse to have pie. We never did choose anyone, but we had a pie a day for weeks,” explained Stellwagen.

“Sometimes people stop in two or three times a day,” a patron who was working on his second piece of the blueberry rhubarb treat told me.

The pie and coffee wasn’t the only evidence I saw that this store serves as much more than a place to buy nails and a hammer.  Marilyn Stellwagen also runs the Black Dog Rescue Program, which finds homes for abandoned cats and dogs, placing around 250 needy animals in the past two years.  And locals have a place to strut their stuff on a community bulletin board, displaying pictures of area members and the fish they have caught, complete with labels showing names and sizes.

I had just gone in to buy some batteries, but I left with a lot more; a sense that community can form wherever there is pie and a welcoming population.  Before I walked out the door, Stellwagen told me to come back sometime soon, and I will.  I hope I happen upon biscuits and gravy day, but for now, I know where I can find some pie; sitting right next to the screwdrivers, just how I like it.

Would these type of events work in a larger town or a metropolis, or is this something that can only be utilized by smaller hamlets? Do you know of more unique tactics to get the community involved? We would love to hear about it.

State of the Re:Union Contributor Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute offers his reflection on his experience of his recent visit to the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, and how defining and standing for community starts with us.

Earlier this year, my 21 year old daughter, Emily, and I went to Germany to visit the Nazi death camp, Dachau. As Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tomorrow evening, I keep thinking about that trip and its meaning. At issue, for me, is not what others might have done, but what do I do, each and every day?

Visiting Dachau was heart wrenching. After Emily and I spent a day there, I told her over dinner that night that something deep within me was pulling me back to the death camp, that I still had unfinished business and unresolved issues to confront. And so, with Emily’s encouragement, I decided to return to the death camp the next day – alone.

I arrived at the camp early in the morning, hours before it opened, and thought that I would sit outside the camp’s gate, the same gate the prisoners were marched through from the train tracks only yards away, and write in my journal and get ready for the day ahead of me.

But something prompted me to stand up and go up to the camp’s iron-gate – and gently push on it. When I did, it opened. There, looking out over the acres upon acres of the death camp, I was the only person in sight.

I stepped through the door and walked to the center of the courtyard, the same courtyard where the prisoners would stand for roll call each morning and again at night, and I stood there, alone, and said my Hebrew prayers. As I did, I could not avoid the stark reminder that evil does exist; that apathy and indifference sometimes get the best of us; that at times we turn our backs on one another just when another person is most in need; that sometimes we even hide from one another.

There’s much in my experience at Dachau that I want to write about someday, but not today. Instead, on this day, as Rosh Hashanah approaches, I simply wish to focus my thoughts on what it means for me to stand my ground.

In Jewish tradition, there is the notion that, “if you save one person, you save the world.” This notion is a simple and powerful entreaty to step forward and engage. To me, its meaning is that each of us, as individuals and collectively hold the innate capacity and responsibility to make a difference in the world. That it is possible.

Rosh Hashanah commences 10 days of reflection and repentance, and leads up to Yom Kippur, when one asks for forgiveness for their transgressions over the past year. This is by far my favorite time of the year. It opens up a space where one must stand alone and reflect on what they have done, and where they believe they must go in the New Year.

This week, as I enter this space, I am reminded of this basic notion – that “if you save one person, you save the world” – and to ask, “How well I am fulfilling it?” In doing so, I am reminded that my main task is not merely to land the next big project, but to make sure that what I do holds meaning. That implementing my work is never enough; instead, the test must be, “Did the work make a difference in someone’s life?” That while I can always find ways to run faster and harder, the real question is whether I will slow down enough to hear the next person?

For me, the world stopped for a very long moment as I stood alone in the middle of the courtyard at Dachau. There, I was reminded that success is not achieving what one desires; rather, it is doing something desirable.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

The word “reform” has become ubiquitous in its meaning and uses over the past few years. It is a hot-button topic, and perhaps its meaning has diminished. State of the Re:Union’s contributor Peter Block gives a refresher course on how to reform the notion of “reform.” (Because there are a few poignant points, SOTRU will present an excerpt from his post. To read Peter’s post in its entirety, click here.)

I would like to whisper a quiet caution to those of us who are investing in institutional or structural reform efforts. There is an intensifying stream of efforts to reform our institutions. In the U.S. there is government reform, education reform, healthcare reform, economic reform, food reform and environmental reform efforts. A growth industry to be sure.

Unfortunately, most of these reform efforts will change very little of consequence. Reform means to change the nature or order of things, to end something that is not working and replace it with something that does. Most of our current efforts have little to do with reform. They are at best efforts to make things a little better, a little less expensive, and at worst they are punitive strategies masquerading under the banner of reform.

The meaning of serious reform.

If we were serious about reform, there are four conditions that need to exist:

1. Serious reform means that there is a fundamental shift in the nature of relationships among the players. For example there would be a change in the relationship between teacher and student in education, doctor and patient in health care, politician and citizen in government, farmer and family in the food world.

2. This shift in relationship begins with a shift in who is authorized to speak, whose voice counts. If the voice of the educator, medical professional or elected official drives the reform and the voice of the student, patient or citizen is not amplified, then nothing has really changed.

3. When we re-authorize whose voice counts, there is a shift in where control resides. This means that real transformation calls forth from the student and patient and citizen more power than they had before, whether they want it or not. Power is distributed, not centralized. Consistency and efficiency are sacrificed for local ownership.

4. Shifting control leads to new forms of engagement. The players whom the system is designed to serve (students, patients and citizens) are now the center of the action. We pay close attention to how they come together. They meet to create relationships with one another. They value one another’s speaking. They realize they have the real power to create the future they have in mind for themselves. These effects are determined by the way we come together, not by new policy, program or expert design.

Education reform applies to the other reform movements afoot.

Serious economic reform will create ways to build a stronger relationship among local businesses, home-based entrepreneurs, citizens buying less and buying local.

Serious health care reform will recognize that health is dependent on the network of relationships around us. We now know how to be healthy, we just need support from each other.

Government reform will have all of us deciding that we are citizens producing a good life for ourselves, not consumers wanting more services. Politicians will lose power and redefine their role as super-conveners of the process described above.

What this calls us to remember is that it is in the nature of students, parents, neighbors and citizens to lead the fundamental shifts that we all seek. The essential reform is to break the dependency we have on professionals, experts and consumption to provide satisfaction. As this occurs, our gift to the professionals is to give them and their systems something to follow.

What has reform come to mean to you? Has it been used so often that it has lost its meaning? What do you find to be the definition of reform? We want to know how reform works in your life, so write and tell us about your thoughts and comments.

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Peter Block co-authored the book “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.” He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops to build the skills outlined in his books. He is the author of Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, and Community. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Organization Development Network’s 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.

This week’s School Spotlight features a school that was mentioned in our recently released Cleveland, OH: Entrepreneurs at Work episode. The Near West Intergenerational School (NWIS)  is a new charter school that was born of parents’ aspirations to obtain a better community and future for their children. (To hear this podcast segment, click Here.)

Modeled after a highly regarded school in Cleveland, NWIS is currently in its first year of operation as a publicly funded charter school, offering children in grades K-4 an opportunity to be involved in a better education right now. While there is availability in public schools around them, those schools didn’t exactly tout high expectations of students’ developmental achievements. And the schools that did have waiting lists that are ridiculously long. Instead of forsaking their neighborhood in search of a better school zone, these parents, and later founders, opted to create a school dedicated to the heart of their community’s future.

A brief explanation of the reinforcing reasons for starting NWIS resides in the Founders’ Statement found on Website. It states that school was “founded by a group of neighborhood parents who desire a school rooted in and reflective of the physical and social fabric of the local community it serves.” Its goal is to  provide quality, free and accessible education to all children. The school intends to serve the children and families of that community, but not exclusively to that area. The founders want it to serve “as a cornerstone for continued community development, economic and neighborhood stability, and a gathering place for lifelong learners.”

According to an article from Cleveland.com, “Many of the parents are young professionals. At a time when Cleveland is emptying out, they are dedicated to urban life and have found a pocket where it thrives with historic houses and clusters of shops and restaurants.” You can read more about the school in the article here.

While opening a school is not the obvious or even right choice for others facing a similar situation, it is a working solution for this community of Cleveland parents. However, as wonderful of an accomplishment as this is, the school will need support to survive the rounds of voting and scrutiny it will encounter from city officials, sponsors and residents since it is publicly funded.

To that point, NWIS and its founders are the very reason that there will be money staying in and promoting growth in this Cleveland neighborhood area. Of course this situation begets controversy. Some wonder if this is an appropriate answer to the educational dilemma. The families whose lives have been positively affected through NWIS would say “yes.”

Is this a feasible solution for your community? Or is there another approach that could offer a better solution? Do you think your family or community would benefit from a program like this, or do you think public schools and the communities they serve would benefit from a different approach? We don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer, so we want to hear from you.