Community Solutions
Community Solutions are regional initiatives targeted at overcoming disconnects and silos between different parts and levels of the education system and with related social sectors. These initiatives utilize mutually reinforcing activities to amplify efforts of individual partners who work directly with students and educators. By intentionally working to build the capacity of educational institutions and service providers, and engaging the community to work together toward student success, our region can work together to achieve higher outcomes for all students.
Early Matters Greater Austin
The United Way for Greater Austin and E3 Alliance formed Early Matters Greater Austin to facilitate the business community’s engagement in raising awareness and helping lead a strategic community-wide effort to set policies and priorities for early childhood education. Early Matters Greater Austin supports family friendly policies in businesses, fosters innovation in the child care system, and advances local and statewide support and advocacy for high quality early learning. Learn more at https://www.earlymattersgreateraustin.org/
Early Childhood Results Count
High quality early learning for all children can transform the economic trajectory of our region. After a precipitous drop in school readiness of children across our region, E3 Alliance gathered a coalition of health, mental health, and education partners who worked together to define five community strategies for increasing kindergarten readiness as the measure for child experiences 0-5. Based on these strategies, partners are working together to help assure every child in Central Texas enters kindergarten prepared for success.
Austin College Attainment Network (ACAN)
The Austin College Attainment Network (ACAN) is comprised of 10 core community-based organizations and five core Institutions of Higher Education in Central Texas. ACAN is the largest and most established collaboration of IHE and service providers in Texas, and is the model for similar work started years later both at the state level, Texas College Access Network, and in other regions of the state. ACAN members are committed to equitable student outcomes at scale, data-informed decision making to drive and sustain change within institutions, and continuous improvement and accountability. Since members work one-on-one with underserved students, they are best suited to share genuine knowledge and set specific aims toward postsecondary success. Since 2016, ACAN has implemented and managed a common FERPA-compliant, student data-sharing process — the first of its kind in the nation. This strategy allows partners to use benchmark data to identify common performance targets and to coordinate interventions, with the goal of improving postsecondary completion. As the backbone organization for education change in Central Texas and facilitator for ACAN, E3 Alliance provides objective data and longitudinal research, facilitates collaboration, and supports ACAN member direct-service programming, while setting high-level goals for the region.
Deliberative Dialogues
A deliberative dialogue is a regionwide, multicommunity discussion around topics of public concern in education with the goal of finding the most promising course of action forward. These discussions also inform the work at E3 Alliance with the voice and input from the community. In 2019, E3 Alliance launched a new regional deliberative dialogues “Pathways to Prosperity: What is needed for a successful career?” These community conversations focused on engaging a diverse range of community members across Central Texas to explore what college means to our region, and to address the underlying factors that are limiting student success. Learn more about these dialogues here.
Pathways of Promise (PoP)
With the support of the Greater Texas Foundation, E3 Alliance expanded our research agenda to better understand career and math pathways, and how secondary course-taking best prepares all students for post-secondary success. 13 school districts and five higher education institutions in our region support the commitment to increase the percentage of students entering more rigorous math pathways. More than 10,000 students have benefited from intense professional development provided to middle school math teachers, and 15 schools have launched an intensive, multi-year effort to improve equity in STEM outcomes. Pathways of Promise partners work together to implement equitable acceleration policies with the ultimate goal of improving college success.
Flu Immunization Campaign
Based on findings from E3 Alliance’s groundbreaking Absence Reasons Study, we know that almost half of student absences in our region are due to acute illness. Spikes in incidents of school absences directly matched the spikes in county flu reports. To combat this situation, E3 Alliance led a broad coalition starting in the fall of 2014 to undertake the largest in-school, flu immunization campaign in the state of Texas. By the fall of 2017, practitioners administered 39,117 immunizations at no cost to families or school districts in 386 Central Texas schools, which represented 18 school districts including Ft. Bend, New Braunfels, and Northeast Independent School Districts as well as districts across Central Texas. To continue to provide this crucial and no cost service to our Central Texas districts and their families, E3 will work again with Health Heroes, Inc., the clinic provider for fall 2019, as we plan for this coming flu season in 2020.
Click here for recording and presentation of the 2018 Fight the Flu Kick-off Event at Dell Medical School
Central Texas Math Alignment Taskforce (CTXMAT)
Together with the Charles A. Dana Center, E3 Alliance supports CTXMAT, a coalition of 21 Central Texas school district and higher education partners who are working together to better align mathematics course taking to help more students succeed in math into and through college. The work includes:
- Alignment of secondary and postsecondary courses and the counseling, admissions criteria, course catalogs, and advising to support courses that best align with student career aspirations
- Alignment of teaching and learning pedagogy and non-cognitive skills to help more students advance and succeed in math
- Changing local and state policies to help more students succeed in math and demonstrate college readiness
Read this comprehensive February 2020 report Emerging Solutions – It Takes a Village: Central Texas Mathematics Alignment Taskforce to learn about the progress.