Post-Pandemic Reflections and Exploratory Impact Metrics
It’s hard to imagine that we’re approaching the four-year milestone of the COVID-19 lockdowns. This milestone coincides with the four-year anniversary of our Restart SMART strategy, which we planned before the pandemic and launched in response to the reopening of schools.
While many are moving on from the pandemic, we at Higher Ground believe that it’s important to embrace what we learned from the experience. In this blog post, we share some of our reflections, along with early impact metrics that we’re measuring at Higher Ground.
For eight Tucson schools, Restart SMART was an experiment in COVID-era innovation
If you haven’t heard of the Restart SMART Strategy, you can learn more about it here. In short, during the COVID-19 pandemic, our team at Higher Ground deployed Restart SMART to eight schools, to address opportunity gaps for kids in Southern Arizona’s highest-poverty and most vulnerable communities. Restart SMART, built upon the Community Schools model, (1) provides on-site support to teachers who are responsible for managing classrooms full of energetic young people and (2) equips every youth with integrated wellness, life skills, and character skill development on a 1:1 level. (3) empowers parents to increase individual initiative and resilience and be involved in their school community (4) increases collaboration between businesses and organizations to have a sustainable and efficient use of existing resources.
The truth is, while we deployed Restart SMART during the COVID-19 pandemic to help with school reopenings, it was an initiative that our team at Higher Ground was planning as early as 2019. COVID ended up becoming the catalyst that pushed us to test how quickly our organization could mobilize to address the understandable crisis of trauma and academic disengagement.
Schools that are currently operating Restart SMART include:
Utterback Middle School
Safford PreK-8
Anna Lawrence Intermediate School
Raul Grijalva Elementary School
Apollo Middle School
Doolen Middle School
Southside Community School
Willis Junior High School in Chandler, AZ
The Community Schools model isn’t a new concept, and it’s not just limited to Tucson. It’s part of a nationwide movement to position more schools as neighborhood hubs that unite families, educators, and community partners. Following an evidence-based model with bipartisan support from politicians across the United States, there are at least 10,000 community schools throughout the United States.
“Research shows that community schools have a wide range of positive impacts on students and throughout the community, from improving attendance, academic achievement, and graduation rates, to reducing disciplinary actions and increasing the physical and mental health of students and their families,” writes Lauren Camera for U.S. News and World Report.
One analysis “found that community schools yield up to $15 in social benefits for every dollar invested. And they've proven especially important for underserved students and their families, who experience higher rates of economic insecurity, food scarcity, and mental health challenges.”
We are beginning to measure early signals of Restart SMART. The next section explains some of these insights with respect to schools and individual students.
Early impact metrics we’re seeing across 5 Restart SMART sites
Every statistic has a story behind it, especially when it comes to measuring educational outcomes. We need to be careful to separate correlation and causation. Correlation is the interrelatedness of two variables. Causation is a definitive assessment that something caused another thing to happen.
What our team at Higher Ground can conservatively report is that we’re seeing positive impacts at the schools at which our Restart SMART sites are present. Here’s an exploratory look into year-over-year trends between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years:
Safford K-8
At the school level
Increased use and stabilization of data literacy practices & documentation.
Removal from federal & AZ state school improvement status.
Letter grade improvement from F to B.
2% increase in average attendance rate.
5% increase in enrollment.
7% reduction in chronically absent students.
Among students with whom we worked directly
51% improved attendance. Of these students, they improved by an average of 11%.
68% decrease in the number of discipline incidents. Of these students, there was a decrease of an average of 2.5 incidents.
71% demonstrated an improvement in wellness.
76% improved their resilience.
39% improved their self-control.
98% show improvement in at least 1 of our success indicators.
Lawrence 3-8
At the school level
Increased tenure and highly skilled staff, data literacy practices, and time on proper documentation.
Increased time and capacity to document in higher fidelity.
Letter Grade Improvement from F to C.
3% increase in average attendance rate.
19% increase in enrollment.
6% reduction in chronically absent students.
Among students with whom we worked directly
51% improved attendance. Of these students, they improved by an average of 8%.
40% decreased # of discipline incidents. Among these students, incidents decreased by an average of 1.5.
43% showed improvement in wellness.
85% improved their resilience (aka grit).
45% improved self-control.
77% show improvement in at least 1 of our success indicators
Utterback Middle School
At the school level
29% decrease in logged discipline incidents.
Letter Grade Improvement from D to B.
4% increase in average attendance rate.
6% increase in enrollment.
19.5% reduction in chronically absent students.
Among students with whom we worked directly
46% improved attendance. The students in this group demonstrated a 6% improvement in attendance.
75% decrease in the number of disciplinary incidents; 82% showed improvement in wellness.
55% improved their resilience (aka grit).
43% improved self-control.
76% show improvement in at least 1 of our success indicators.
Grijalva Elementary
At the school level
89% decrease in logged discipline incidents.
2% increase in average attendance rate.
12% reduction in chronically absent students.
Among students with whom we worked directly
63% improved attendance. The students in this group demonstrated a 6% improvement in attendance.
92% decrease in the number of disciplinary incidents, with students decreasing by an average of 4 incidents.
68% improved resilience.
50% improved self-control.
96% show improvement in at least 1 of our success indicators.
Apollo Middle School
At the school level
12% decrease in logged discipline incidents.
Letter grade improvement from D to C.
1% increase in average attendance rate.
6% increase in the number of chronically absent students.
Among students with whom we worked directly
54% demonstrated an improvement in attendance. The students in this group demonstrated a 6% improvement, on average.
67% demonstrated an improvement in wellness.
63% improved their resilience.
67% improved self-control.
Considerations
Remember that the findings above are a starting point for exploration. There are many ways to measure indicators of change, and our team at Higher Ground is learning, exactly, how to effectively hold ourselves accountable to high performance standards.
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, our team is evaluating how we can strengthen the capacity of Arizona’s most vulnerable schools in a way that supports statewide objectives, overall. It’s going to take all of us, working together, recognizing the critical importance of supporting the next generation to succeed.
Ask us questions any time
Our work is rooted in our community. If you’re reading this blog post, that means you’re a part of it. Remember that these days, especially thanks to technology, communities can take on many different forms both online and offline. Know that you can reach out to us any time, simply by contacting us. If you see us out and about in the community, don’t be shy. Come say hi, and ask us your questions.
This post was a collaboration between Higher Ground team members Kat St. Pierre and Ritika Puri.