EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Oakland has a great new data source -- the Early Development Instrument (EDI). This instrument gives us a way to explore, from a neighborhood level, children’s strengths and the challenges they face both pre-kindergarten and once they enter school.
Based on observational assessments by kindergarten teachers, the EDI is a community snapshot of young children’s health, development, and school readiness. Outcomes are coded to where children live, giving community members a strong sense of place by showing neighborhood-level results. OUSD has created an interactive dashboard that allows community members to observe strengths and inequities across the city.
The Starting Smart and Strong Initiative supported and funded use of the EDI in Oakland. We’re also gathering a group of EDI Ambassadors to learn about the data and present it to neighborhood and community groups. Please reach out if you’d like to partner with us in spreading the word about the EDI and using the data to drive action!
Turning Data into Action
We each have a role to play in using the EDI results to improve conditions for children.
Here are some ideas about what you can do with these data.
Based on observational assessments by kindergarten teachers, the EDI is a community snapshot of young children’s health, development, and school readiness. Outcomes are coded to where children live, giving community members a strong sense of place by showing neighborhood-level results. OUSD has created an interactive dashboard that allows community members to observe strengths and inequities across the city.
The Starting Smart and Strong Initiative supported and funded use of the EDI in Oakland. We’re also gathering a group of EDI Ambassadors to learn about the data and present it to neighborhood and community groups. Please reach out if you’d like to partner with us in spreading the word about the EDI and using the data to drive action!
Turning Data into Action
We each have a role to play in using the EDI results to improve conditions for children.
Here are some ideas about what you can do with these data.
- Parents can use neighborhood-level EDI results to identify community assets and programmatic gaps, as well as advocate for programs and services that support child development. Parents can influence local policymakers on health, education, housing, public safety and family support.
- Educators can use EDI to inform curriculum and teaching strategies, enhance communication with families, justify increases in ECE slots & centers, and improve school transition and alignment activities between preschool & kindergarten.
- Service providers can use EDI to inform their own strategic plans, inform grant writing, and promote effective coordination and collaboration with other partnering organizations and initiatives.
- Policymakers can use EDI to facilitate community mobilization to create a “young children’s agenda.” EDI can elevate, improve and align early childhood activities, investments and policies across citywide efforts for equitable systemic change.
- Funders can use EDI results to improve grant making, needs assessments and other activities that benefit from real local data.
Spring 2020
New EDI to Drive New Action
After three years, the Early Development Instrument (EDI) is back! In January, 155 OUSD Kindergarten teachers each took a day to fill out the EDI on all of their students. With this new data (which will be released this spring), the Oakland early childhood community will be able to see how much we’ve grown since the EDI was last administered in 2017. The EDI data also provides the community a tremendous opportunity to come together around strategies to ensure that all Oakland children and families have full and equal access to opportunities to realize their potential.
Oakland Starting Smart and Strong is excited to build on our community engagement work from the first round of the EDI three years ago. We have a lot to celebrate. We built a user-friendly interactive dashboard for community members to view EDI data, we put together a short document explaining the EDI, we met with community groups such as the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative and the San Antonio Family Resource Center to discuss how they can use the EDI to advocate for community needs, and we shared the data with policy leaders such as First 5 Alameda County and Mayor Libby Schaaf.
With this new wave of EDI data, our goal is to center community engagement and ensure that the data is used to drive action. We are looking forward to engaging more deeply with community groups to explore each neighborhood’s EDI results and identify action steps that could build on the community’s assets and improve outcomes for children. We’re also excited to partner with elementary schools to strategize around how they can best support this incoming group of students.
We’re also gathering a group of EDI Ambassadors to learn about the data and present it to neighborhood and community groups. Please reach out if you’d like to partner with us in spreading the word about the EDI and using the data to drive action!
Contact: keith.welch@ousd.org
Oakland Starting Smart and Strong is excited to build on our community engagement work from the first round of the EDI three years ago. We have a lot to celebrate. We built a user-friendly interactive dashboard for community members to view EDI data, we put together a short document explaining the EDI, we met with community groups such as the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative and the San Antonio Family Resource Center to discuss how they can use the EDI to advocate for community needs, and we shared the data with policy leaders such as First 5 Alameda County and Mayor Libby Schaaf.
With this new wave of EDI data, our goal is to center community engagement and ensure that the data is used to drive action. We are looking forward to engaging more deeply with community groups to explore each neighborhood’s EDI results and identify action steps that could build on the community’s assets and improve outcomes for children. We’re also excited to partner with elementary schools to strategize around how they can best support this incoming group of students.
We’re also gathering a group of EDI Ambassadors to learn about the data and present it to neighborhood and community groups. Please reach out if you’d like to partner with us in spreading the word about the EDI and using the data to drive action!
Contact: keith.welch@ousd.org
Summer 2018
Data for Action
|
|
With the right data, we can understand how young children are doing in Oakland -- and we can better target solutions together.
That’s what drew members of the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative to examine the results of Oakland’s rich new data source, the EDI. At a recent meeting, the group dove into data that indicates, on a neighborhood (not individual) level, child development strengths and challenges across 5 domains: physical health, social competence, emotional maturity, language & cognitive development, and communications skills & general knowledge.
“What was most interesting about the results was to find out that 80% of Havenscourt children have some preschool experience,” said Anita Kumar, Manager of the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative. “The EDI also indicated that there are many early childhood education resources in Havenscourt. This says to me that there’s an opportunity to positively shift the narrative around early childhood education and kinder readiness in the neighborhood.”
Added Elise Washington, K12 Specialist with the United Way Bay Area, “in the past Zone 12 (the Havenscourt neighborhood) has been labeled as a community where the majority of students are ‘not ready’ for kindergarten. This data displays the strengths of students in this neighborhood.”
“This tool will help assess kinder readiness from an equity lens,” continued Anita, “and will help us to better assess which populations need targeted supports. For example, African American boys in Zone 12 do not perform as well as African American girls or Latinx children. We can refine strategy development so as to support those populations with the most need.”
Attendees at the meeting also included members of Oakland Parents Together, representatives from First 5 Alameda County, OUSD’s Executive Director of Early Learning, and the Resident Services Coordinator at Lion Creek Crossings. Actions that the group brainstormed included setting up a meeting with the OUSD Office of Equity to discuss the racial justice issues they saw in the data. They also planned to deepen their collaboration with the principals of Futures and Community United elementary schools, two schools that many children living in the Healthy Havenscourt area attend.
Click here to explore the EDI’s interactive dashboard and see trends by neighborhood across the entire city.
That’s what drew members of the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative to examine the results of Oakland’s rich new data source, the EDI. At a recent meeting, the group dove into data that indicates, on a neighborhood (not individual) level, child development strengths and challenges across 5 domains: physical health, social competence, emotional maturity, language & cognitive development, and communications skills & general knowledge.
“What was most interesting about the results was to find out that 80% of Havenscourt children have some preschool experience,” said Anita Kumar, Manager of the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative. “The EDI also indicated that there are many early childhood education resources in Havenscourt. This says to me that there’s an opportunity to positively shift the narrative around early childhood education and kinder readiness in the neighborhood.”
Added Elise Washington, K12 Specialist with the United Way Bay Area, “in the past Zone 12 (the Havenscourt neighborhood) has been labeled as a community where the majority of students are ‘not ready’ for kindergarten. This data displays the strengths of students in this neighborhood.”
“This tool will help assess kinder readiness from an equity lens,” continued Anita, “and will help us to better assess which populations need targeted supports. For example, African American boys in Zone 12 do not perform as well as African American girls or Latinx children. We can refine strategy development so as to support those populations with the most need.”
Attendees at the meeting also included members of Oakland Parents Together, representatives from First 5 Alameda County, OUSD’s Executive Director of Early Learning, and the Resident Services Coordinator at Lion Creek Crossings. Actions that the group brainstormed included setting up a meeting with the OUSD Office of Equity to discuss the racial justice issues they saw in the data. They also planned to deepen their collaboration with the principals of Futures and Community United elementary schools, two schools that many children living in the Healthy Havenscourt area attend.
Click here to explore the EDI’s interactive dashboard and see trends by neighborhood across the entire city.