What We're Learning At State Level About How to Get Things Done

           The Boston Globe is publishing a series about Washington called “Broken City: Politics in An Age of Paralysis.” But while political pundits debate whether the President and Congress can accomplish anything on behalf of the American people, we’ve been proving that outside of Washington change is possible, especially at the state and local level, even on behalf of vulnerable and voiceless children.

            Last week Colorado Governor Hickenlooper signed “breakfast after the bell” legislation so that thousands of school kids will now have a stronger chance of succeeding in thanks to getting  nutritious food.  It had bipartisan support in the Colorado General Assembly. A day before the L.A. school board voted unanimously to support alternative and more accessible school breakfasts. Maryland approved a $1.8 million increase in Maryland Meals for Achievement.

            Such accomplishments at the state level are not accidental.  Unlike members of Congress, Governors have the action orientation of executives and are not fighting to preserve a legislative majority that determines everything from committee assignments to office space.  They don’t check with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell before deciding what to do.  That’s not to say there isn’t partisanship at the state level, or that it never hinders our work, but at least there are places where it is kept in check.

Share Our Strength made the strategic decision to shift our focus to where children actually live, learn and play, thus our state-based No Kid Hungry campaigns.  That doesn’t mean advocacy at the federal level is unimportant. To the contrary, upcoming battles to preserve SNAP will be vital. We’ll work for the SNAP Ed funding so important to Cooking Matters.  But national organizations working with governors, doing community organizing and providing technical assistance to local governments are few and far between.  Share Our Strength’s efforts there stand out.

There are leaders – Democrats and Republicans - who get things done. Sadly, few are in Washington. In the end our work in the states will not only help feed a lot of children, but may also show there are times and places when Democrats and Republicans can work together, to the mutual interest of each, and on behalf of the larger public interest.  If so, we’ll accomplish something even greater than ending childhood hunger. The glow of that achievement, and others built upon it, could light a path toward ending the polarization that paralyzes politics and government today.

Remarks To National Head Start Association Announcing Partnership to Reach 10,000 Head Start Parents with Cooking Matters At The Store

            Yesterday I spoke at the closing session of the 40^th annual conference of the National Head Start Association, following inspiring remarks by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  A summary of my comments follow below.

NHSA REMARKS

            Thank you Yasmina Vinci for that very kind introduction and congratulations on all that you’ve achieved here this week. It is an honor to be in a room of advocates and champions for how to care for, mentor and bring along the generation of young people who will be our future.

            I recently heard some good advice along those lines from my eight year old son, who is in second grade and as we were walking to school bumped into his pre-school cousin Audrey .  They got into a conversation that my wife Rosemary and I could not quite hear, but when he put his hand on her shoulder to console her about something, we leaned in from behind and heard this wisdom from a second grader to a pre-schooler: “Listen, just enjoy the naps while they last.”   

            Here’s another bit of advice we’ve found to be true: if you want to make a difference in the lives of kids, then partner with National Head Start Association.  And so today Share Our Strength is announcing just such a partnership which includes a grant of $100,000 to ensure that 10,000 Head Start parents get Cooking Matters At the Store, our signature program for ensuring that moms and families have the information and resources they need to prepare healthy meals for growing children.  This will empower families by teaching them more about reading nutrition labels and unit pricing, so that they can make healthy and affordable choices for their meals. This is just a start.  We hope to grow the program in 2014 and 2015..

Cooking Matters at The Store is a critical component of our No Kid Hungry campaign. Hunger in America is a solvable problem. This is not Syria or Sudan or sequestration. Children are not hungry because of lack of food or lack of lack of food programs, but because of lack of access.  21 million children get a free or reduced price school lunch and all 21 million are also eligible for breakfast, but only 11 million get it. What does that tell you. It says that these children are not only vulnerable but voiceless.  You are there voice.

            This is an extraordinary time to be raising your voice on behalf of those who are voiceless. With so  many Americans in poverty or struggling and so many kids at risk.  Our focus at Share Our Strength and our window into this space is around the impact of food and nutrition and what we are seeing affirms the vital role that early investments here as well of course as in education and head start plays.

Every day we are learning and proving that while there are investments some think we can’t afford to make, we actually can’t afford not to make them when it comes to the education of our children. We can’t have a strong America with weak kids. We can’t have a healthy economy with unhealthy kids. We can’t have an America prepared to compete in the world without children prepared to learn.  Head Start and Cooking Matters are a big part of that solution.

As the writer James Baldwin said: “These are all our children and we shall profit by or pay for whatever they become.”  Let’s make sure that what they become is smart, and kind, and healthy, and wise, and that American does too.

Meet COMMUNITY WEALTH PARTNERS

Today Community Wealth Ventures changes its name to Community Wealth Partners, which reflects just one of many ways in which the organization has evolved toward greater transformational impact over the past few years.   See our new website and Dream Forward campaign @ http://communitywealth.com/blog/

In their landmark book BUILT TO LAST, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras describe one characteristic of successful companies as fidelity to core values but willingness for everything else to change.  Community Wealth Partners embraces precisely that balance.  Our dedication to the notion of creating the community wealth necessary to build stronger communities with more opportunity for all remains undiminished. As does our commitment to the critical building blocks of community wealth such as scaling and sustaining what works, building capacity, defining what success looks like, setting goals that are bold but believable, recognizing communications as strategy and advancing other insights we’ve developed.

But how we do the work has changed dramatically, as we’ve married our own experience with hundreds of clients over a decade and a half to our research about the characteristics of organizations that have succeeded in moving beyond incremental change to the truly transformational.  Increasingly the way we do our work is in partnership with clients and communities, meaning our commitment is not to deliver a report (that might sit on a shelf) but to deliver a transformational outcome that will change lives.  Like true partners our interests and our clients’ interest our aligned. We are not successful unless and until they are successful.

Throughout this evolution we’ve had the benefit of a partner of our own – our parent company Share Our Strength whose No Kid Hungry campaign led to rapid growth in impact, revenue, and size and established a trajectory based on aspiring to transformation that other nonprofit organizations have sought to follow.  The opportunity to learn from each other during this journey and to share what we’ve learned with you – is one of the assets Community Wealth Partners brings to every engagement.  That’s a process of change and growth that never ends. We hope you’ll choose to be part of it as well.

 

Upon Returning to Boylston Street After Boston's Worst Week

Saturday, April 20, 2013
 

Fate had our family far from Boston this past week. It was Nate’s spring break and we were out of the country.  The second blast occurred by the Starbucks I use as my Boston office. We’ve watched the last 6 marathons from that spot, just up the street from our apartment. That’s our connection.  That and friends who ran the race.

Today we returned and like thousands of others, walked over to the makeshift memorial at the finish line on still closed off Boylston Street.  A hushed crowd of families with children waited patiently to drop off flowers, flags, notes, photos, teddy bears and Red Sox caps. We stared down that empty, haunted avenue, where men in protective white suits could still be seen working on the sidewalk. Much of our vacation was spent glued to TV images of this spot. Even from 1500 miles away it was impossible not to feel connected to what was happening. 

I’d didn’t feel the same connection to the many comments about this proving how tough Boston is, or how the bombings showed what Boston was made of.  Certainly there had been no shortage of inspiring and heroic actions. But I’d never thought of Boston any other way.  After all, Boston is home to City Year, and Partners in Health, to Andy Husbands and Dan Pallotta, to Citizen Schools, and Facing History and Ourselves, to Gordon Hamersley and Jody Adams, to Cradles to Crayons and Project Bread, to Robert Lewis Jr. and Joanne Chang, to Jim and Karen Ansara and Ira Jackson.  If there was ever a city that had proven what citizenship means, what compassion looks like, what a social conscience can achieve, it was Boston before the marathon, not just after it.

But I believe people would have reacted the same way in New Orleans, Denver and Seattle, or in New Delhi, Dakar, or Singapore for that matter.  Moments of darkness shouldn’t blind us to the light in the rest of humanity. The impulse to single ourselves out for such qualities is natural.  But the impulse to recognize what we have in common with others, whether across the street or across the oceans, is even larger, and more needed now than ever.  

For too many here in Boston, the suffering doesn’t end with the end of the manhunt. The marathon’s digital clock can’t measure the years healing will take. For some life will revert to normal sooner than anyone thought possible, For others it never will. For the rest of us, here and around the nation, we go on, reminded about qualities of kindness and courage that will endure not because they surfaced in the aftermath of a few horrific moments but because they were there all along.

Targeting early investments in children for greater return

Last week Share Our Strength board member Scott Schoen arranged for me to have lunch with Massachusetts’ former Superintendent of Education Paul Reville, who was intrigued by the Deloitte report and especially the connections we are seeing between school breakfast and attendance. Afterward, Scott sent this article from the New York Times business section “Investments in Education May be Misdirected” @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/studies-highlight-benefits-of-early-education.html 

The article reports on the work of Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman which shows that early interventions on behalf of kids are much more effective and much less expensive than later interventions.  While we’ve always assumed that to be true, Heckman’s work shows that the gap in cognitive performance “is there before kids walk into kindergarten” and doesn’t really improve over time notwithstanding the massive amounts of money spent on remedial efforts as kids get older.  Public policy lags behind such insights, with public spending on higher education three times greater than spending on preschool. 

Scott Schoen’s interest in Heckman’s research seemed consistent with his impressive track record as an investor accountable for producing significant return on investment,  Given what we are learning – and proving - about the connection between school breakfast and academic achievement, such research may suggest how we can best target our No Kid Hungry strategies to ensure that kids get the nutrition they need when they need it the most.  

School breakfast as a "force multiplier" for educational achievement

The growing movement to boost educational achievement via breakfast for school children is an example of how bipartisan pragmatism can triumph over politics to serve the public interest.  It may also be a model for other early investments in children that are effective in the short-term and save money in the long run.

Recently at 52^nd Street Elementary School in L.A.  Principal Jimenez told us that after switching to breakfast-in-the-classroom, the number of students with perfect attendance increased from 250 to 439.  What I didn’t realize until further research was that attendance in K and 1^st grade is a predictor of third grade reading levels. Grade level reading is a predictor of high school graduation.  Suddenly a stunning return on investment becomes visible on what once seemed a far and bleak horizon. 

Every 26 seconds a student drops out of school according to America’s Promise. The national high school graduation rate is 78.2 percent. Nearly one in five students does not graduate with their peers.  One in four African American and nearly one in five Hispanic students attend high schools where graduating is not the norm.  If we reach a 90% graduation rate by 2020, additional graduates will increase GDP by $6.6 billion annually.

Deloitte’s No Kid Hungry Social Impact Analysis affirms that 52nd Street Elementary School fits into a broader pattern linking breakfast with academic achievement. Governor O’Malley’s initiative – Maryland Meals for Achievement – is aptly named.

Yet for generations breakfast participation rates were stuck near 40%  because of difficulties getting kids to school early, and the stigma attached.. Though still a long way to go, national participation recently topped 50% for the first time. That’s partly because over the past five years something fascinating happened. Instead of giving up, or giving in to the traditional reflex of trying to outspend the problem, advocates began to out-think it.  Through innovation, local solutions, and public-private partnerships they developed an array of alternatives to breakfast in the cafeteria. Those that work best are now being scaled, especially Breakfast After the Bell which includes in-classroom as well as “grab-and-go” options.   This relatively simple, low-tech change yields enormous dividends.

If that were all the value we created it would be more than enough. But like a “gift with purchase” we not only get the results for children that we bought and paid for, but also learn valuable lessons about creating transformational social change.  Here are four:

n   Scaling What Works:  NKH has focused on existing but under-utilized programs with a track record of effectiveness and bipartisan support.  Scaling strategies such as reducing barriers, raising awareness, community organizing, and building political will, are challenging but more politically palatable than creating new programs from scratch. As Newark Mayor and New Jersey Senate candidate Cory Booker told the New York Times just last week: “The issue is not finding the answers.  It’s just growing them to scale.”  

n  Relying on local innovation and solutions:  ranging from financial incentives, competition, the Governor’s bully pulpit which can be advanced via dissemination of best practices.

n  “Force multipliers” which is what the military means by dramatically increasing the effectiveness of a given action.  As new research data enables us to connect the dots, we learn that breakfast is not only helping children grow and be healthy, but impacting attendance and potentially grade level reading and graduation rates.  This force multiplier broadens our base of support, creates allies and partners beyond the usual suspects, and improves prospects of success.

n  Accountability:  by setting specific, measurable goals, that have local and national buy-in, tracking and communicating results, and ensuring transparency, we differentiate ourselves and achieve a competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.

School breakfast is not a panacea to solve all of our problems. But it is a necessary foundation upon which to build.  As Governor Martin O’Malley told me during a recent visit to his office in Annapolis: “Small things done well make large things achievable.”  If we do this well there may be no limits to what we can achieve.

Letter from 52nd Street Elementary School in South L.A.

Just back from three days in California. The highlight was an early morning visit to the 52^nd Street Elementary School in South L.A. which has 850 students and last October switched to breakfast-in-the-classroom notwithstanding initial resistance on the part of teachers and others. Principal Jimenez explained that before breakfast-in-the-classroom there were 250 children with perfect attendance records, but that now there are 439 with perfect attendance and the only thing that’s changed is breakfast.  Talk about measureable outcomes!

I had never before seen “perfect attendance” used as a metric. But I do know that of the numerous national organizations such as Communities in Schools, America’s Promise, City Year and College Summit doing heroic work addressing the nation’s drop-out crisis, all will tell you that attendance is a leading indicator of graduation rates.   In the second grade classroom we visited our recent Deloitte report on the link between school breakfast and academic achievment came to life. @ http://www.nokidhungry.org/pdfs/school-breakfast-white-paper.pdf