The Northern Kentucky Education Council (NKYEC) has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to launch an innovative, community-based program and institute that could prove to be a model for fostering resiliency in children, turning the key for youth to succeed in school and beyond.
At the core of the project is the connection between students’ social-emotional learning and academic achievement. Essential to the success of the new endeavor is NKYEC’s collective-impact model.
The new initiative will create the Resilient and Ready by Design (RRD) Implementation Network for educators.
Educators selected to participate in the RRD Institute will receive resources and extensive support to improve their effectiveness by deepening their knowledge of social-emotional learning strategies that can boost hope, engagement and well being for students. Those three qualities ‒ hope, engagement and well being ‒ are key indicators of a child’s future success, research has shown and should be embedded intentionally into teachers’ instructional practices to improve academic achievement.
“We will begin by creating a common understanding of the significance and importance of children and youth who are resilient and ready, and the role that social-emotional learning plays in the process,” said Polly Page, executive director of NKYEC.
Polly Lusk Page
The new program will create Academic and Resiliency Teams consisting of students, families, educators and community to be developed with schools in the Northern Kentucky region. Each team will be led by a school-level classroom leader so that implementation is tied to standards and educator effectiveness implementation efforts
The RRD program aims to increase student achievement, close academic achievement gaps, and reduce the percentage of children scoring at novice levels, decrease dropout rates, and rates of college and career readiness.
Educators know that multiple influencing factors impact a child’s ability to learn. Low reading and math proficiency rates, on average, across 57 elementary schools in six counties of Northern Kentucky are troubling, even though the rates are trending slowly upwards. (Among third graders, 47 percent are not on grade level in reading, and 52 percent are not on grade level in math.) For some time, leading educators have said that, in order to achieve better academic success, the classroom must respond to and educate “the whole child”. Meeting as a learning community, educators will analyze their instructional practices to infuse effective strategies for social-emotional learning into academic instruction.
“How many children might benefit from this added dimension of learning in a classroom, school and community where the social-emotional health of each child is recognized as part of their academic DNA?” asked Page.
The new RRD Institute and Networked Community established by the Council will afford cohorts of educators the opportunity to improve school climate and culture, have a positive impact on college and career ready outcomes.
The first cohort in the program will include four Northern Kentucky school districts, all of which have made a district-wide commitment to participate. The districts are Boone County Schools, Campbell County Schools, Erlanger-Elsmere Independent Schools, and Williamstown Independent Schools. The program will have the potential for scale to impact more than 64,000 students and 4,500 teachers in all 18 school districts across the six Northern Kentucky counties served by the NKYEC.
The two-year development phase for this network is supported by the $200,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Using the NKYEC’s collective-impact model, the project’s roadmap for success includes five key elements: 1) creating a common agenda where all partners share a vision for change and can achieve success; 2) using shared measurements to evaluate progress; 3) providing mutually reinforcing activities through the RRD Institute; 4) prompting continuous, open communication among partners; and 5) providing backbone support through NKYEC. The RRD Professional Community of Learners will be led by a consulting project director and two national experts, all to be named later.
The Resilient and Ready by Design program fits well NKYEC’s three primary goals, which are: 1) to see very child on grade level in reading and math by the end of third grade; 2) to increase the number of youth who are hopeful, engaged and thriving ‒ “Ready for the Future”; and 3) to increase the number of youth and young adults who are prepared for college and career. The Council has a wealth of baseline data on schools and students’ achievements in Northern Kentucky. Its work is data-driven and goal-oriented, overseen by six volunteer Action Teams and led by a board of directors from a wide spectrum in the community that includes business, education and nonprofits. All 18 public school districts in the region are members of the Council.
About NKYEC
The Northern Kentucky Education Council (NKYEC) is the overarching organization in Northern Kentucky for the alignment of education initiatives that support the region’s population from birth to career. The Council serves as a catalyst for collaboration, change and progress toward the area’s education goals and has aligned the work of more than 90 partners to accomplish this. The Council is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization comprised of education, business and community members. For more about NKYEC, visit www.nkyec.org or call (859) 282-9214.
