Measures of Performance

• The Campaign is a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, business leaders, government agencies,
  states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career, and active citizenship.  The Campaign focuses on an important predictor of school success and high school graduation—grade-level reading by the end of third grade.
• The Campaign has recently formed working groups for each community goal. These work groups focus on school readiness, chronic absenteeism, and afterschool/summer programming and now meet regularly to develop strategies to guide the work.
• Winchester’s overarching vision is to increase the percentage of 3rd graders reading at or above the proficient level to at least 75% in the next 10 years based on the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) ELA assessment. We will achieve this mission by setting goals focusing on:
  1. School Readiness: Increase the number of children ready for kindergarten to at least 80% of children being ready based on their performance on the PALS-K. Focus will be on furthering develop high-quality preschool and daycare programs and offering families out-of-school options to further learning and growth.
  2. School Attendance: Reduce chronic absenteeism to rates at or below 10% among K-3rd graders at all four elementary schools by 2025.
  3. Summer and Afterschool Learning: Increase by 100% the number of K-3rd grade students who have access to summer and afterschool opportunities that focus on literacy-related learning and enrichment.
• Initial results:
  1. Access to quality daycare: We evaluate how many 4-year olds in the city of Winchester are attending a quality daycare program to help improve readiness leading up to kindergarten. At the end of 2022, we recorded 168 children attending daycare out of a total estimated 210 low-income children in this grade band, equaling 80%. We graded this “yellow” as there are still an estimated 40+ low-income children in informal care. As a planning factor, we use 330 live births per year and 67% of these considered low-income based on free/reduced meal eligibility.
  2. Academic performance:
     1. Pre-COVID, Winchester demonstrated 67% kindergarten readiness on the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program (VKRP) assessment, dropping to 64% readiness at the end of school year 2021-2022, and dropping further to 48% readiness in the fall of 2022. We coded this “red” for a health score.
     2. Pre-COVID, Winchester demonstrated 54% readiness on the 3rd grade reading Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment, dropping to 50% readiness at the end of school year 2021-2022. We coded this “red” for a health score.
     3. Winchester began Maze reading assessments post-COVID, beginning in the fall of 2022. Initial benchmark assessment reflects 61% readiness, scoring “yellow.”
  3. Attendance: For elementary school attendance, we measure chronic absenteeism rates, hoping to see reductions in loss of school time. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year (equaling 18 or more days in year) and includes both excused and unexcused absences. Pre-COVID, Winchester reported 16% chronic absentees, with an increase to 18% chronically absent by the end of the 2021-2022 school year, receiving a “red” health score.
  4. Out of School Time (OST) participation:
     1. During school year 2021-2022, the aggregated after-school attendance (inclusive of The Kids Club, the HIVE Club, and the YDC) was 135 students. At the end of calendar year 2022, the aggregated attendance was 204 children, scoring a “green.”
     2. During summer of 2021, the aggregated summer camp attendance (inclusive of The Kids Club, the HIVE Club, and the YDC) was 120 students. For summer 2022, the aggregated summer camp attendance was 252 children, scoring a “green.”
  5. In 2023, to further address reading achievement gaps coming out of COVID, Winchester Public Schools launched additional literacy interventions. One intervention is measured by the PAST assessment (Phonological Awareness Skills Test) for K through 2nd grade.
     1. Kindergarteners initially benchmarked, in the fall of 2023, with 77%, scoring “yellow.”
     2. 1st graders initially benchmarked, in the fall of 2023, with 68%, scoring "yellow.”
     3. 2nd graders initially benchmarked, in the fall of 2023, with 60%, scoring "yellow.”
  6. In the fall of 2022, the Campaign launched a “triple stack” program, offering free program interventions to families within the 22601 zip code. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) provides monthly age-appropriate, curated books to children birth to 5; ReadyRosie provides email-based parenting tips to families with children birth to 5; and Ready4K provides text messaging-based parenting tips to families with children birth to 4th grade.
     1. DPIL: Grew to 358 by the end of 2022, with a goal of 300, earning a “green” health score.
     2. ReadyRosie: Grew from 102 to 599 by the end of 2022, with a goal of 300, earning a “green” health score.
     3. Ready4K: Grew to 1,191 by the end of 2022, with a goal of 1,000, earning a “green” health score. Ready4K also assesses parent-determined “value added” with two surveys, both seeking at least 85% positive reviews:
        • Parental relationships with children: At end of 2022, this scored a “green” with 97%.
        • Ready4K help with literacy: At end of 2022, this scored a “green” with 95%.
  7. The Campaign also launched, in late 2022, two community education training programs:
     1. Community Literacy Education Program: Designed to provide staff and long-term volunteers that interact with children improved literacy training skills. By the end of 2022, we had a total of 8 participants receive certificates of completion. Our first-year goal was 15, so we scored this program as “yellow.”
     2. Parent Education Classes: This series of 8 courses of the course of a year provides various parent education classes to new parents. By the end of 2022, we had only 7 parents attend the first 2 courses, scoring an initial “red.” There are still 6 more classes to achieve the goal of 100 parents. However, as we continue this course and improve marketing and uptake, we expect this number to grow.
  8. The Campaign is working with Winchester Public Schools to improve school attendance by working to ensure more families are ready for the first day of school by offering opportunities for free physicals and vaccines. We ran the first health outreach project over the summer of 2022 and thus benchmarked the following numbers:
     1. Physicals provided: 91
     2. Vaccines provided: 22

We will look to offer this program again in 2023 and beyond.