The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: a Community- Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement

Publications Lincy Institute 5-2013 The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: A Community- Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement Sonya D. Horsford University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected] Carrie Sampson Lincy Institute Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/lincy_publications Part of the Education Commons, Education Policy Commons, and the Social Welfare Commons Repository Citation Horsford, S. D., Sampson, C. (2013). The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: A Community-Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement. 1-42. Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/lincy_publications/12 This Report is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Report in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Report has been accepted for inclusion in Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LINCY INSTITUTE The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative A Community-Based Approach To Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement Sonya Douglass Horsford, Ed.D. Carrie Sampson, M.S. May 2013 The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative A Community-Based Approach To Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement Sonya Douglass Horsford, Ed.D. Carrie Sampson, M.S. The Lincy Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2013 About the Author Sonya Douglass Horsford, Ed.D., is Senior Resident Scholar of Education at The Lincy Institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Carrie Sampson, M.S., is a Research Assistant at The Lincy Institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative community partners who participated in the original grant application process and attended numerous convenings and meetings without which this report would not be possible. Special thanks to the administration and staff of the Clark County School District and Southern Nevada Enterprise Community board for their leadership and support. About The Lincy Institute Established in 2009, The Lincy Institute conducts and supports research that focuses on improving Nevada’s health, education, and social services. This research is used to build capacity for service providers and enhance efforts to draw state and federal money to the greater Las Vegas community and highlight key issues affecting public policy and quality-of-life decisions on behalf of Nevada’s children, seniors, and families. The Lincy Institute is located on the campus of University of Nevada, Las Vegas and made possible by the generous support of The Lincy Foundation. To learn more about The Lincy Institute, please visit http://lincyinstitute.unlv.edu/. © The Lincy Institute University of Nevada, Las Vegas April 2013 The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: 4 A Community-Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity and Achievement Table of Contents 6 Introduction 7 What is “Promise Neighborhoods”? 9 The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative 24 Lessons Learned from the Federal Competitive Grant Process 24 Building Capacity for Community-Based Education Reform 27 Recommendations and Conclusion 28 – 29 References 30 – 32 Appendix A: List of Promises Neighborhoods Grantees, 2010, 2011, 2012 33 Appendix B: Schools Located in Target Neighborhood (Prime 6 and Non-Prime 6 Schools) 34 Appendix C: Brookings Social Genome Model: Benchmarks for Success 35 – 37 Appendix D: LVPN Life Stage Indicators and Data Sources 38 Appendix E: LVPN Planning Councils 39 – 41 Appendix F: Lessons Learned from 2011 Planning Grant Process 42 Appendix G: 10 Results/20 Indicators The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: A Community-Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity and Achievement 5 Introduction Since the 1980s, the standards and accountability movement in U.S. education has focused heavily on reform at the classroom and school level, with insufficient regard for how social, political, and community contexts impact student learning and achievement (Berliner, 2006; Horsford, 2010; Noguera, 2003; Oakes, 1989; Wells et al., 2004). This emphasis on standardization and high-stakes testing has stigmatized, and in many instances, penalized low-income and historically underserved students and communities through the use of student subgroup and school designations. It also largely has ignored the research literature documenting the significant impact poverty, neighborhood context, and related out-of-school factors such as housing, food security, health care, and family supports have on student learning and achievement (See Anyon, 1997; Berliner, 2006; Kozol, 1991; Noguera, 2003; Oakes, 1989). At the federal level, policy efforts intended to equalize educational opportunities, whether through school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s, effective schools programs in the 1980s, or most recently, No Child Left Behind, have failed to acknowledge as Berliner (2006) noted, that “all educational efforts that focus on classrooms and schools, as does NCLB, could be reversed by family, could be negated by neighborhoods, and might well be subverted or minimized by what happens to children outside of school” (p. 951). While a number of federal programs have sought to mitigate the negative impacts of poverty and segregation on urban education (i.e., Title I, Magnet Schools Assistance), on April 30, 2010, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement launched its Promise Neighborhoods program and described it as “the first federal initiative to put education at the center of comprehensive efforts to fight poverty in urban and rural areas” (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). This report by The Lincy Institute examines the renewed interest in neighborhood-scale education reform as demonstrated by the Promise Neighborhoods program and its implications for education reform in Southern Nevada. More specifically, it offers a brief overview of Promise Neighborhoods, description of the original Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood planning grant application, and discussion of the collaborative activity that LVPN partners have engaged in since to advance the coordinated provision of community-based supports for school success. This report seeks to illustrate how and why the Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative, and other neighborhood-based education reform efforts hold “promise” for school improvement and success in Southern Nevada. The next section offers a brief overview of Promise Neighborhoods, followed by a description of local efforts in Las Vegas. “If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.” — Barack Obama, July 18, 2007 The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: 6 A Community-Based Approach to Improving Educational Opportunity and Achievement What is “Promise Neighborhoods”? According to the U.S. Department of Education, “Promise Neighborhoods is a competitive grant program that supports cradle-to-career service designed to improve educational and development outcomes for students in distressed urban and rural neighborhoods.” It is carried out under the legislative authority of the Fund for the Improvement of Education, which supports nationally significant programs to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education at state and local levels to help all children meet challenging state academic content and student academic achievement standards. As a place-based strategy for education reform, Promise Neighborhoods seeks to transform underserved schools and communities by: Identifying and increasing the capacity of Developing the local infrastructure of systems eligible organizations (as defined in the notice and resources needed to sustain and scale up – see attached) that are focused on achieving proven, effective solutions across the broader 1results for children and youth throughout an 4region beyond the initial neighborhood; and entire neighborhood; Learning about the overall impact of the Building a complete continuum of cradle-through- Promise Neighborhoods program and about college-to-career solutions (continuum of solutions) the relationship between particular strategies in (as defined in the notice) of both education 5Promise Neighborhoods and student outcomes, 2programs and family and community supports including a rigorous evaluation of the program, (both as defined in this notice), with great schools according to the 10 results/20 indicators at the center. All solutions in the continuum of identified in the federal notice. solutions must be accessible to children with disabilities (CWD) (as defined in the notice) and English learners (EL) (as defined in the notice); Integrating programs and breaking down agency “silos” so that solutions are implemented effectively 3and efficiently across agencies; The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: A Community-Based Approach to Improving

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