The application for the administration’s new
Promise Neighborhoods grant program (think
Harlem Children’s Zone) is now available. It’s good to see the focus on data and integrated services as core features of the program:
The Department believes that to effectively improve the outcomes for children in distressed communities, schools, academic programs, and family and community supports must include the following core features:
- The capacity to collect, analyze, and use data to evaluate the success of their efforts.
- Close integration so that time and resource gaps that contribute to children missing academic and developmental milestones do not occur.
- A leader and an organization that can engage the community and are accountable for results.
- A “place-based” approach, which leverages investments by focusing resources in targeted places, drawing on the compounding effect of well-coordinated actions.
But coordinating data across organizations is very difficult–even for several of the programs that the Promise Neighborhoods initiative is modeled on. It’s been hard to evaluate Orlando’s
Parramore Kidz Zone because the
