PROMISE ZONE NEIGHBORHOOD: NORTH HARTFORD ASCEND PIPELINE

Project Description & HDC Role:

The North Hartford Ascend Pipeline is a cradle-to-career effort to ensure children living in the North Hartford Promise Zone – which includes the Clay Arsenal, Northeast, and Upper Albany neighborhoods – have the supports they need to reach their full potential. This grant-funded project involves partners from the public, private, philanthropic and community sectors and started in January 2022.

Evaluating multi-sector efforts to improve academic and developmental indicators for children and youth in the North End involves data sharing and data linking across siloed partners. The Hartford Data Collaborative serves as the data integration hub for all program and individual data records for children and residents served by grant-funded or matched programs in the North End. The HDC role encompasses:

• Administration & Governance: executing and tracking key legal agreements, including data-sharing agreements

• Data Acquisition & Linking: collecting data from community data partners and sharing with the Connecticut State Department of Education

• Data Warehousing: retaining key unique identifiers to track individuals’ progress over time (longitudinal data)

• Public Data Dashboards: providing neighborhood maps and key indicators to the community on educational and health services, demographic data, and key indicators

• Community Engagement & Capacity Building: attending and leading community discussions on data; assessing and enhancing programs’ ability to collect and share data about their participants; and understanding how to use outcome data to improve programs and services in their community.

Who is Involved?

Evaluator/Requestor: University of Hartford Center for Social Research

Current Data Sharing Partners: Capital Workforce Partners, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Connecticut State Department of Education, The Children’s Museum, City of Hartford Department of Health and Human Services, City of Hartford Department of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation, Hartford Promise, Hartford Public Schools, Our Piece of the Pie, San Juan Center, United Way of CT, United Way of Central and Northeastern CT, The Village for Families and Children, and Wheeler Clinic

Philanthropic Support: The US Department of Education Promise Neighborhoods, City of Hartford

What types of data are being collected?

The North End community sets goals and milestones, with specific indicators established by the US Department of Education. These common indicators include kindergarten readiness; academic achievement; school attendance; high school graduation rates; postsecondary (college) enrollment; healthy students; students’ feeling safe; stable communities; family and community engagement; and student access to learning tools (internet and broadband).

Project Milestones

• October 2021: Grant awarded

• January-December 2022: data planning process

• January 2023: First data partners convening

• March 2023: First data report to U.S. Department of Education

• March-July 2023: Site Visits with Data Partners

• July 2023: IRB approval for individual data collection

• August 2023: Second data report to U.S. Department of Education

Planned Future Milestones:

• Initial Data Findings Shared with Partners: Fall 2023