Helping more children enter school ready to learn. 

Recently, we had the chance to sit down with Mike Clark, Executive Director of Housing and Family Services in Queen Anne’s County Maryland, to get the scoop on how the agency is using Results-Based Accountability to turn the curve on learning outcomes.

A large part of the agency’s work is ensuring that children of all backgrounds are entering kindergarten ready-to-learn. According to a scholarly report published by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), “recent neuroscientific research strongly supports the belief that young children’s learning before they enter formal education is an essential foundation for later school success.” MSDE recognizes seven domains of readiness, including 1. Social and personal development; 2. Language and literacy; 3. Mathematical thinking; 4. Scientific thinking; 5. Social studies; 6. The arts; 7. Physical development and health.

With the support of MSDE, Queen Anne’s has implemented Early Childhood Advisory Councils – diverse groups of community stakeholders charged with “identifying the most important factors and most effective strategies for making the greatest possible gains in early care and education.”

According to Clark, the use of Results-Based Accountability in the council and community has resulted in significant successes, particularly in bringing together partners and resources to improve school readiness. The agency, with the help of  the school system and various state agencies, was able to increase the percentage of children entering school ready to learn from under 50% to around 90%. The data, along with data for the county’s other result areas is publicly accessible at http://communitypartnerships.info/getting-results/scorecard-data/

The Clear Impact Scorecard has been a critical component to supporting this work to turn the curve, particularly in providing up-to-date data on progress to the community. “We use Clear Impact Scorecard a lot,” says Clark. “First and foremost is a desire to be transparent. I want folks and our board want’s folks to see that we really do have a desire to make a difference for children and families, and we want to be able to show that it’s really working.”

After 15 official years of experience with RBA, Clark had a few words of advice to share with new practitioners. One of his top pieces of advice is to “Talk to folks, and see how other people are doing it. Talk to folks at Clear Impact and just get an idea of how it works. Because a lot of those resources are free right on the web. Watch some of the videos, read the book, and just go.”

For more insight into Queen Anne’s County’s use of RBA, watch the full interview above, or read it below:

Who are you?

I am Mike Clark, I’m the Executive Director of Housing and Family Services in Queen Anne’s County Maryland.

How many years of RBA experience do you have?

Officially, about 15 years. I think I was using it even before that and not realizing it.

What successes has your organization had implementing RBA?

One of the big successes is that I work for a board – they’re charged with working with the community to pull in resources together for children and family services. And one of the biggest successes that’s come from that is that our board and our community have been able to focus on results, and specifically, not just how many kids walk through the door in our after school programs, but when those kids and students walk out at the end of the year – are they better off for it? And RBA reminds us every day every second, are we making that difference?

Can you give an example of a “Curve” you’ve successfully “Turned” using RBA?

A couple big result areas that we have right now are children entering school ready to learn, so we’re looking, at one point we had a low number. That’s an actual population curve that our community has turned. We kind of had below 50% of our kids entering school ready to learn over the course of a year, but then, we’ve been monitoring for the last 5 to 10 years, and we’ve brought that up to around 85% to 95% of our kids entering school ready to learn. That was a whole community-wide effort of, the school system of course and their yearly childhood groups, our child care agencies, our early childhood support programs that are just collaboratives, our health department, department of social services. All those folks really came together and worked harder – local community college. All came together and focused on that one result and it really showed results. It was a model of turning the curve.

What were the biggest challenges using RBA?

With RBA, with any model, one of the challenges that seems to come up is the same with us: if you have new players come in, so your new players come in and you have to re-explain the whole process. That’s good. That’s natural to have new blood, but also you have to re-explain the whole process. Folks come in and they want to jump right to action before they know specifically what the data’s telling them, what the community’s about, that kind of stuff. According to Mark Friedman’s model, there are ways to deal with that. I’ve just learned that at this conference actually. But it can slow you down. Sometimes you feel like the data doesn’t tack or doesn’t keep up with the pace we want to go – like the data might be two years old. In our county we’ve got a partnership for suicide prevention committee. Well, if we want to look at the number of suicides that are happening in a community, in our community especially. I mean, that data’s two years old all the time. So that’s the kind of data that you’d like to have a little quicker. So we’re finding ways, and RBA is helping us find ways to be creative around finding different data.

How is the Clear Impact Scorecard being used in the work that you do?

We use Clear Impact Scorecard a lot. First and foremost is a desire to be transparent. I want folks and our board want folks to see that we really do have a desire to make a difference for children and families, and we want to be able to show that it’s really working. So, one of the cool things – I mean, Clear Impact Scorecard does a lot of stuff. One of my favorite things that it does is that it graphs out and it gives you a quick chart so you can just click and go to your Scorecard and you can click that one piece of data you want to look at and it will show you – hopefully the curve is going the way you want it to go. So that’s one of the things that it does. My second favorite thing that it does is it gives you a cool link, actually in two different formats, and I use it both ways. So if I get a constituent, or somebody from the board who says “Hey, you know, what’s the issue with this. What’s going on with this particular piece of data, or this particular program?” I can pull a link out, I can email them the link and link them directly to the Scorecard, and they can see all our data, and look at it right there in real time. And also, if you go to our website, www.communitypartnerships.info, we have a drop-down called “getting results” , and then you have Scorecard. And there we have four Scorecards that are specifically with our result area. And you click on each result area – children entering school ready to learn is the top one. You click on that and there’s the children entering school ready to learn scorecard. It’s got the population measures and the performance measures we fund underneath it. So anybody in the community can go and see – “Hey, are they talking about it a lot, or are they really making a difference?” And we do that for all our four result areas. Additionally we – and this is an area where we’re still learning it – committees. You know, you sit on a committee, it can be tiresome and just another meeting. Hopefully we’re trying to make Scorecard so when you’re sitting on a committee you’re actually making a difference and that the data is changing because of that. We’ve got each of our committees – each has their own Scorecard that we try to keep up to date after each monthly meeting. And folks can access that right there on the same website.

What advice would you give to someone new to RBA?

There’s lots of data systems, there’s lots of ways to collect data, there’s lots of ways to measure progress. But to realize that , while RBA provides you a framework to do that – a realistic usable framework to do that – to realize that the reason you’re getting into it is to make a difference in your area, and to make a true difference. And to make a measured difference. You have to remember that. The second thing I would tell them to do is to understand the model from the beginning and maybe read Mark’s book from the beginning. Talk to folks, see how other people are doing it. Talk to folks at Clear Impact and just get an idea of how it works. Because a lot of those resources are free right on the web. Watch some of the videos, read the book, and just go. Talk to folks that are using it. Cause I think it’s a pretty straightforward approach – people will be honest with where they have a difficult time. People will be honest whether its really working for them. And that would be a very helpful feature.

Why is focusing on results important when building sustainable communities?

Focusing on results is important for me because I was a psych major, and before that I was a business major. I wanted to be a business person. I was going out and then I was in this economics class. And they were talking about how – you know if you fire 95 employees in this particular company, you could increase your profits by this amount. Well that’s a great business model – that’s wonderful. But we stop talking about those 95 families. You know, they’re not getting paid, you’ve got kids that are getting hurt. And I’m thinking whoo! That’s how business works. That’s how our country works. But man that’s tough. What about those kids? So then I kind of moved into a helping profession mode. But if I was going to do it, I wanted to be all in. I didn’t want to do it and not know that I was making a difference. So if I was going to commit my life – at least the career part of my life – to human services, I wanted to feel like I was making a difference. That people were better than the work I did. Without a model like Results-Based Accountability, you can never know that. You know it feels good – people will smile and they’ll tell you it really helped. But are they really better off because of the work you’re doing? Well Results-Based Accountability lets you know that. It’s got a framework to say hey, we’re measuring something that matters and that you’ve possibly changed a life. And we can prove that. So when I retire I’m hoping that I can look back and say I’ve made a difference in the community and because of RBA I’m sure that I played a part in a positive change.