Welcome to the Seek Common Ground (SCG) Innovation Hub!
Since 2019, SCG has supported over 90 projects by 43 organizations across 10 Action Accelerators seeking to engage those most impacted by education policy and practice—students, families, educators, and communities—in the decision-making process.
The SCG Innovation Hub is designed to do three things:
Feature exemplary work conducted through SCG Action Accelerators that deserve to be shared broadly because the projects are relevant, innovative, and replicable by others.
Explain how other leaders in the field can learn from and replicate the work shared in their own local context—and avoid having to “reinvent the wheel.”
Connect like-minded leaders and organizations with leaders from SCG Action Accelerators.
To make it easy to use, this page has been organized by topic to show both what has been developed (final products) and how the work was developed (the process to get to the final product). This is not a static page but rather an evolving space. SCG will continuously update this page.
Explore by topic
These resources are helpful examples of student voice on complicated policy matters. They show how youth and intergenerationally-led organizations can effectively lead conversations.
Community Engagement in Setting Budget Priorities
These materials are helpful for organizations interested in engaging communities in budget decisions, including setting priorities for federal relief funding.
These resources are helpful for families and caregivers interested in connecting with educators and schools about their children’s education.
Student Leadership
WHAT IF - TOMTOD ideas
TomTod Ideas is a youth development organization that focuses on middle schoolers in Northeast Ohio through programming that listens to and honors their perspectives and developmental stage by allowing students to explore idea creation based in community. Through What If 101 and What If You Could programs, TomTod Ideas engages students in prototype creating through project-based learning. The tools here are some that TomTod Ideas adventure curators use to help students engage in design thinking principles to identify potential solutions to solve issues in their community
See more on WHole CHild Learning
Video shown at Kentucky Coalition for Advancing Education Kick Off Meeting (10/21/21)
MEASURING UP! - KENTUCKY STUDENT VOICE TEAM
The Kentucky Student Voice Team created assessment discussion guides for students, parents, and school and teacher leaders centered around assessments from elementary to pre-college. In these guides, participants are asked to read student quotes and respond to discussion prompts as they reflect on their own experiences in the classroom.
See more on MEASUREment, ASSESSMENT, and ACCOUNTABILITY
Visit the MAA Action Accelerator landing page.
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Community Engagement in Setting Budget Priorities
BUILDING SUPPORTIVE SCHOOLS FROM THE GROUND UP - INTERCULTURAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
The Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) conducted various listening and learning sessions (June/July 2021) with students, families, and community members in Texas to identify their priorities for federal relief funding spending plans at the district level. After conducting these sessions, IDRA wrote The Building Supportive Schools from the Ground Up report (January 2022) highlighting community priorities. This actionable report covers:
the importance and basics of COVID-19 federal relief funding
three key community strategies, backed by research
two-state plan examples of ESSER funds (Texas and Georgia).
See more on the AMerican Rescue Plan Act
We Demand - Alliance for Quality Education
The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) gathered and identified top funding priorities from parents in Albany, Buffalo, Kingston, New York City, Rochester, and Utica. The AQE team developed the We Demand report (June 2021) to capture the priorities, also creating district-specific Now What? fact sheets (October 2021) to support parents in advocating for their priorities with district leaders. The one pagers cross-reference parent priorities with district plans and layout specific actions parents can take.
When these priorities came under threat with a new budget cycle in NYC, AQE sprang into action by creating a new online toolkit for families to get involved in speaking out against cuts to the education budget. Additionally, AQE worked in partnership with the NYC Comptroller who prepared a report (April 2022) that has served as the research basis for this effort.
See more on the AMerican Rescue Plan Act
Statewide Town halls - New Mexico First
NMFirst has been conducting statewide town halls for over two decades and in June 2022, NMFirst held the Transforming Behavioral Health in New Mexico: A pathway toward hope and healing, a hybrid town hall allowing over 200 stakeholders from across the state to participate on the topic to identify actionable recommendations for state leaders. In preparation for the town hall, NMFirst conducted extensive research to inform stakeholders participating in the discussion in a background report well as facilitated a series of Community Conversations to engage small stakeholder group discussions to inform the town hall. After the town hall, NMFirst produced a final report including eight consensus recommendations, each garnering support from 85 percent or more of the participants. These recommendations strive to build a thriving behavioral health system across New Mexico by integrating behavior health and public education systems, offering internships and mentorship opportunities, trauma-informed professional development, and competitive pay for the behavioral health workforce, and addressing challenges around licensing, credentialing, data systems, billing, and agreements with
bordering states.
See more on the AMerican Rescue Plan Act
Tracking Spending - CivicLex
In addition to research and engagement, transparency is a key factor in ensuring communities can be engaged in setting budget priorities. CivicLex focuses on building civic health Lexington, Kentucky through education, media, and relationship building and has been diligently tracking the ARPA spending process and decisions by local leaders through their regular coverage, including meeting notes, as well as through their detailed ARPA hub, to inform the public on Lexington’s ARPA spending. Efforts like this enable residents to engage meaningfully in the decisions the shape the way they live.
See more on the AMerican Rescue Plan Act
Learning Through the Pandemic - Teach Plus Mississippi
Teach Plus Mississippi gathered educator spending priorities from Teacher Policy Fellows in Mississippi through a survey (July 2020). Mental health support was identified as the number one priority for educators in the state so Teach Plus MS developed a brief outlining their recommendations as well as a more detailed advocacy letter (December 2021) for local policymakers.
See more on the AMerican Rescue Plan Act
Visit the ARPA Action Accelerator landing page.
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Family Engagement Resources
Launched: 10/2021
FUTURE READY FAMILIES - COLORADO EDUCATION INITIATIVE
Future Ready Families is a landing page created by the Colorado Education Initiative (CEI) for readiness resources—in English and Spanish—to help families get a sense of their child’s current learning level, have critical conversations with their children’s teachers, and learn what their children need to know and should be able to do by the end of each school year. CEI’s new Understanding Assessment one pager in English and Spanish serve as an example of how a state can clearly lay out the various assessments students have to take with helpful definitions for key assessment terminology.
See more on MEASUREment, ASSESSMENT, and ACCOUNTABILITY
Assessment toolkit - Ready washington
Ready Washington created a 2021 Fall Assessment Toolkit for districts to respond to caregivers’ communication needs. This toolkit includes messaging and strategies such as sample text messages and social media posts.
See more on MEASUREment, ASSESSMENT, and ACCOUNTABILITY
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SCG ACTION ACCELERATOR MODEL
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