(Illustration by Hugo Herrera)
On the road to economic mobility in the United States, inequitable education, health, and employment systems, designed to benefit the few, leave many children and families of color behind, stuck in deep ruts along the lines of race, wealth, and zip codes. To really have an impact, we must look below the surface to understand the factors that contribute to inequities. Data enables us to get at the root causes and work upstream to create equitable pathways for those hindered by structural racism.
Equipping communities with tools to identify, collect, and report “systems data” that perpetuates racial disparities in education and employment outcomes can help change this. Communities can use data to engage the people most impacted by systemic inequities—including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian youth and families, and people experiencing poverty—and then disrupt those systems. Quantitative and qualitative data informs strategy, guiding communities in identifying, testing, and improving strategies to address the root causes of inequities. Data fuels an equity-centered collaborative improvement approach to getting better results. By working toward fundamental and institutional shifts in policies, practices, resources, and power structures, we can eliminate structural racism and advance equitable outcomes.
Rigorous use of qualitative and quantitative data has guided the evolution of the nonprofit I lead. Since the early days of StrivePartnership, a collective impact initiative in Cincinnati, Ohio, and northern Kentucky, we knew we could make a positive impact by using data to resolve systemic barriers that limit opportunity. Early successes led to a national movement, a Cradle to Career Network spanning 30 states and nearly 70 communities. Now known as StriveTogether, we continuously learn from communities as we strengthen data use to achieve population-level results. Data helps network members unearth the root causes of structural inequities within education, health, food, housing, transportation, financial, legal, and other systems that impact the well-being of youth and families. Data also guides communities in testing and improving strategies to achieve lasting results. The ultimate aim of systems transformation is creating equitable pathways to economic mobility. Network members use data to highlight inequities in per-pupil funding, access to transit, and community support services to hold systems accountable in for improving outcomes for young people.
Shifting Data Analysis for Equitable Results
A rigorous use of data has been a hallmark of StriveTogether’s approach to collective impact. Building on lessons from many communities using data for collaborative improvement, we decided in 2013 that achieving population-level impact—improving outcomes for large groups of people—would require a more intentional focus on systems, and commitment to rigor and use of data. We put a stake in the ground with the launch of our Theory of Action, which serves as a road map with progressive milestones, for network members. This move was controversial, with some network members pushing back against requirements such as publicly disaggregating data and aligning to a set of cradle-to-career outcomes. More than half of the network members left, reducing the network from more than 100 to just 49 members, but we maintained our belief that this was the best way to bring a community together around results and the civic infrastructure necessary to achieve large-scale, equitable social change.
The Theory of Action evolves continuously with lessons from network members. Our latest iteration, the fifth revision in eight years, strengthens our focus on racial and ethnic equity and systems-level change. For example, network members use evidence-based decision-making and data to narrow disparities. Despite our strong track record in measuring outcomes at the individual level like academic achievement gaps and postsecondary completion rates, we realized we were missing the norms, practices, and policies embedded within the systems, institutions, and organizations where children live, learn, and grow. We are subsequently expanding our focus to include systems-level indicators to better understand how structural inequity perpetuates opportunity gaps for communities of color.
Identifying Systems Indicators
StriveTogether’s process to include systems indicators began in 2019, when our racial equity planning team comprised of 27 staff, local partners, network and board members first recommended indicators for vetting at our annual network convening. More than 500 network members engaged directly with the indicators at learning stations and voted on the indicators that made the most sense for their community. We also conducted interviews and a workshop to gather additional insights.
Building on the feedback received from the network, the work group conducted a literature review and prioritized 10 cradle-to-career systems indicators that network members are testing now:
- Race/ethnicity of teachers and administrators relative to student body
- Teacher qualifications
- Culturally responsive curriculum
- Per-pupil funding
- Internet and computer/device access and technical support
- Accessible and equitable parental and community governance
- School climate/discipline
- Financial barriers to post-secondary enrollment
- Internship and mentorship opportunities/partnerships
- Local employer adoption of family-centered practices
Most of these indicators are linked to published research such as longitudinal studies that have shown the lasting impact of same-race student-teacher pairings in grades K-3 on graduation and college enrollment outcomes, particularly among Black students.
When it comes to per-pupil funding, the long-standing practice of using local property taxes results in a disproportionate number of students of color having unequal learning conditions. This is due to an accumulation of historical practices such as redlining, where banks deny loans based on the racial characteristics of an applicant’s neighborhood. Public schools with more students of color or more students experiencing poverty have fewer resources than whiter, more affluent schools to provide up-to-date technologies, robust extracurricular activities, and competitive salaries that attract experienced teachers.
Applying Data to Systems Change
Earlier this year, Bright Futures, a network member in Monterey County, California, used per-pupil funding data to demonstrate how racial inequities limit opportunity for local children and families. The initiative made national data on educational disparities meaningful locally by calculating the annual funding gap between majority white school districts and comparable school districts where students of color are the majority: more than $100 million. Communicating this data has helped Bright Futures change local narratives around why young students of color are not succeeding at the same rates as their white counterparts. It emphasizes that it’s not the young people, but the systems they are part of, that need to change.
To help Monterey County move forward, Bright Futures is working with StriveTogether to support local discussions on what factors the community needs to address. For instance, Bright Futures has identified indicators of systemic racism such as access, affordability, and quality of early childcare services, as well as teacher qualifications across all grade levels. To close racial equity gaps where schools with mostly students of color have less qualified and racially disparate teachers, Bright Futures is partnering with the College of Education at Cal State University, Monterey Bay, and school districts to innovate and improve the teacher preparatory systems, through high school, credentialing, and the first three years of classroom teaching. The collaborative tracks research-based, race-specific system indicators to drive momentum toward large-scale systems change with local partners motivated by the data.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, our network member, ImpactTulsa, is also using systems indicators to reveal disparities and develop a systems-focused, racial equity-based data strategy. ImpactTulsa created statistically informed data models for understanding the impact of adjacent sector and neighborhood factors on educational outcomes and child well-being. In ImpactTulsa’s analysis, the data revealed how neighborhood conditions such as transit access and walking conditions can impact a student’s ability to get to school. Other examples of using systems indicators include building partner effectiveness models to understand the effectiveness of programs and interventions on student success outcomes across different demographic groups.
Holding Systems Accountable
The inequities in resources, decision-making powers, and opportunities become even more apparent when communities pair individual-level indicators with systems-level indicators. One example can be found in Bexar County, Texas, where UP Partnership developed a fiscal map that breaks down public and private funding allocated for youth services and programs. The map includes outcome areas such as how many young people are fed, sheltered, and free from violence, have emotional and psychological support systems, and are connected as leaders in their communities.
UP, short for “unlocking potential,” makes it easier for young people, parents, and practitioners to study the community’s priorities for young people in a data-driven way. Their fiscal map accompanies a service map on UP’s website that consolidates information of out-of-school programs, workforce training, and college test preparation from more than 80 nonprofit agencies and partners. This fiscal map data was the foundation of a strategic funding task force that assessed the funding landscape and made concrete recommendations to relevant groups and organizations for closing gaps. Importantly, this task force included seven youth leaders from Our Tomorrow, a UP Partnership-sponsored network that connects and trains young people as researchers and policy advocates. The recommendations became the foundation for UP Partnership’s guide on how to use American Rescue Plan Act dollars to support youth recovery from the pandemic.
This is just one example of how data-rich insight, coupled with community engagement, can influence policies and practices within organizations and institutions. It’s a small step toward using data to disrupt and transform systems to yield more equitable results for every child.
Of course, quantitative data—numbers, statistics, and charts—are only part of the story. While a vital building block in understanding the needs and gaps in communities, data without context can lead to incorrect assumptions or incomplete solutions. A truly data-driven approach must include the stories and lived experiences of community members, especially those most impacted by the persistent racial and economic disparities.
For example, Bright Futures convened focus groups of Latinx youth and parents to identify the compelling and resisting factors that impacted student eligibility to attend a four-year college. This was in response to an analysis of college preparatory systems data that revealed a 32 percent college eligibility outcome for largely Latinx school districts compared to 63 percent college eligibility for largely white districts. The organization supported Latinx youth and parents in designing a solution to boost awareness of the courses students needed to complete in high school to be eligible to attend a four-year university. Bright Futures co-designed bilingual workbooks, marketing materials, and a short series of videos with student and parent actors to share information. Combining data and lived experience insights revealed actionable items that both families and school districts pursued, resulting in operational and policy changes that led to significant improvement in outcomes.
Assessing Adjacent Sectors
Given that improving cradle-to-career outcomes extends beyond the education system, our systems indicators guide includes adjacent sector indicators, which were drawn from the Urban Institute’s report on mobility metrics. These help communities work across historically siloed systems like education, health, transportation, and justice, and include:
- Financial well-being: financial security, income, and social mobility
- Housing: affordability, instability, homelessness, and environmental racism
- Health: health care access and utilization, neonatal/maternal health, and mental health
- Food security
- Inclusive communities and neighborhoods
- Transportation equity
- Legal system: exposure to trauma, crime, and overly punitive policing
By coupling systems-level indicators with the individual-level indicators that we are accustomed to tracking, we are in a better position to hold organizations and institutions accountable to create conditions where every child can succeed regardless of race, income, or zip code. We can pave a smoother, wider road to economic mobility that benefits all.
It is imperative to expand our focus by tracking and using a broader array of data to make a lasting impact. We believe the use of systems indicators will be just as transformative in how we get results as the release of the Theory of Action eight years ago. We hope to help more communities understand what is required to transform systems to get to equitable outcomes. This is hard, messy, painstaking work. We expect to learn from our partners, make mistakes, and improve as we move forward. But this is necessary work to get to population-level results.
By using data to understand root causes and the structural barriers that result in poor outcomes, we start to disrupt inequitable systems. Place-based partnerships working across a range of outcome areas can use equity and systems indicators to hold systems accountable and pursue structural change. These shifts are essential to ensure every child has every opportunity to reach their fullest potential from cradle to career.
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Read more stories by Jennifer Blatz.