Ohio is launching a new educational model that's been launched to give kids a stronger start in life, stay on track through school, and prepare for future careers.
The DeWine administration is aiming to do this through the launch of 12 Regional Education Partnerships.
The state program will be led by Learn to Earn, which has been working on this goal for the Dayton region for years.
Emma Smales is the director of statewide strategy and data with Learn to Earn. She told WYSO the new partnerships will identify and address the most pressing challenges facing young Ohioans.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Emma Smales: We were really excited to work with some of our local representatives, Tom Young and Andrea White, to get some language in a bill last year that would help the state designate regional education partnerships throughout the state.
"Everyone's trying to help, everyone's trying to accomplish the same goals, but is everyone working together?"
Learn to Earn Dayton has been doing this work for over 15 years here locally and we've seen what we can do when we use collective impact to move outcomes for students.
I think one of the great things about Dayton is how we all work together. And we really wanted to see if we could replicate some of that work across the state. And we knew that there are organizations already doing really great work across the state, right? We didn't have to come up with anything new. The whole point of this was to find those organizations who are already doing good work with kids. Some of them are doing the work on the earlier side — kindergarten readiness, some of that early childhood preschool, early grade reading work — and some are on the other side of the spectrum, which is, workforce readiness, career-connected learning.
And really the whole point of this is, how do we bring that whole continuum together so that all the partners are working together from when the kid starts in school as early as preschool and then follow them all the way through until they get to their goal, which sometimes that's college and sometimes that a career path outside of high school. Those sometimes happen in silos, right? Everyone's trying to help, everyone's trying to accomplish the same goals, but is everyone working together? That's our job is to make sure and help everyone work together to accomplish those goals. And we're really trying to replicate that across the state.
Jerry Kenney: I think that's the interesting part about all of this. While it adds another operational layer, it's really meant to make all of these more efficient and help these organizations that are already doing this kind of work.
Smales: Yeah, it's interesting. I think some people could see it as another administrative layer, but really what it is is adding capacity. School districts are busy. They have so much to accomplish. We can only expect school districts to do so much more, right? They are packed. They are dealing with a lot. And so how do we come up alongside them and support them and help them with capacity? Because their goal and our goal is the same. So part of it is adding capacity to this work. How do we help these organizations do their work better or do more of their work? And then the other part is that kids are only in school a certain amount of time during the day. There's a lot going on in kids' lives outside of the school building. And the schools can only be responsible for so much of a child's education development, right? So we also think about those things happening outside the classroom, and how can we make environments better so that kids can learn in school. Again, we've seen great success. We've done a lot of really great work here locally and we really just want see that happen throughout the state.
Kenney: And so the work that you'll be doing with these partnerships will be conducted right here in Dayton, correct?
Smales: Yes, so Learn to Earn Dayton is still Learn to Earn Dayton. So we are still doing the work that we do in Montgomery County that we've been doing in Montgomery County. Really, it's just taking all the things we've learned over the last 15 years and helping other organizations hopefully avoid mistakes we made and capitalize on successes we've had. And so it's really just us taking the work we're still doing, we've doing here and helping other organizations do their work better and more efficiently.
"The big thing to know about this is that moving student outcomes is a long game. It's a marathon. This is no a quick fix. This is building environments and enabling conditions that really help students succeed."
Kenney: What do you think is your biggest challenge as you move into these new partnerships?
Smales: We're in every sort of region of the state. We are helping organizations all the way up in Youngstown, down in Marietta, Cincinnati, Columbus, I mean, all over. I would say it's a challenge, but it's also really fun getting to meet everyone and hear the work they're doing and how it's all very connected and yet it's so specific to their communities. I've learned already from them for us. Like some of the rural work going on is so interesting and the way they have to approach things is slightly different, than how Cincinnati or Columbus is approaching their work. And so for me, that's a really exciting challenge to be able to help these communities move forward in their local context. It's really interesting and it's hard, but it's really exciting to see all the good work that's happening. I mean everywhere
Kenney: And I'm just guessing, but with your work in statewide strategy and data, you'll be able to quantify the success of this program and these partnerships pretty early.
Smales: Yeah, hopefully. So one of the added benefits of this is because we spent the time building up a data infrastructure for the entire state, we can help all these partnerships with their data capacity, which means they don't have to worry about like hiring a data person right away. They can focus on implementation and programmatic things, and we can help them with some of the data capacity. And so that takes some burden off of them as well, because a lot of these smaller organizations or newer organizations don't have the ability to hire people that aren't programmatic people, people that are implementing things in the community. And so that's why we're here to help support them in that.
The other great news is that we're not depending on them to track anything because we're already tracking it. We are, of course, having them report back on process and the things that they're implementing, but when it comes to student outcomes, we already have that data and we can pull that data for them, they don't need to do it. And I can tell you, there's a big sigh of relief in the room when I said, don't worry about the data, e've got it, because it's intimidating for people who aren't in it every day.
Kenney: Is there anything I haven't asked you or that you would like our listeners to know about this program?
Smales: The big thing to know about this is that moving student outcomes is a long game. It's a marathon. This is no a quick fix.
This is building environments and enabling conditions that really help students succeed. And I wouldn't expect quick wins on this; changing student outcomes takes time. But that's what we're building here.
We're building the infrastructure to help kids in the long run. It's really good work and it's slow and hard work as well.
