Category: Uncategorized

Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS), was named a Weatherhead 100 Upstart winner as one of the fastest-growing companies in Northeast Ohio. ACS is an all-female, minority-owned firm that has provided communication, advocacy, and strategy development services to early childhood education, K-12 education, Medicaid, health and human services, and workforce development organizations across the country for nearly 12 years.

ACS was awarded the number 16 spot in the “Upstart” category at a ceremony on December 3rd. Sponsored by the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio, the Weatherhead 100 awards ceremony recognizes Northeast Ohio’s fastest-growing companies based on revenue from the past five years.  Upstarts are fast-growing companies with fewer than 15 employees and net sales of less than $5 million last year. In the past five years, ACS has increased its staff from two to six employees and has grown revenues from $600,000 to nearly $1 million a year.

Recent research from Vanderbilt University regarding an evaluation of Tennessee’s voluntary preschool programs has prompted commentary from both early childhood champions and critics across the nation. This unique national attention presents an opportunity to set the record straight regarding what the results of the Tennessee study really mean. In response to this commentary, Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS) developed a briefing document that will help cut through the jargon and misconceptions, and provided a set of talking points that can be used to elevate this important dialogue among a broader audience.

We encourage you to review and share the response with your partners, internal audiences, colleagues, friends, policymakers, philanthropic leaders, and social networks in an effort to ensure that the crucial facts regarding high quality preschool are more broadly understood.

Download a pdf of the response and the talking points, both of which are also available on the ACS website under Special Reports.

 

Increasingly, individual stories have come to light about punitive and subjective zero tolerance policies that contribute to the school to prison pipeline. As we outlined in our recent Better than Zero report and through our work with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Forward Promise grantees we know how powerful stories can be to highlight an issue. This is one of those stories.

In NPR Illinois Public Radio’s series Black and White, education reporter Dusty Rhodes explores racial disparities in school discipline through the lens of student Paris Taborn.  Paris, who was a straight A student athlete in Springfield, IL, was frequently sent home from school as a result of tardiness and dress code violations.  She missed so much class that her grades began to fall.  As a result of this discipline policy, Paris chose to transfer to the Springfield NAACP Back-to-School/Stay-in-School Alternative Education Program, where she graduated in May.

Paris is not alone. According to the article, black students at Franklin House Middle School in Springfield, IL, for example, were five times more likely to get an in school suspension than white students in 2011.  In 2014, the likelihood of black students receiving in school suspensions increased, and black students were nine times more likely than white students to receive an in school suspension.  It is clear that black students in Springfield are being disproportionately disciplined at school, and as a result are at risk of falling behind in their studies.

This story is part of NPR Illinois Public Radio’s six part series Black and White, which was dedicated to exploring racial disparities in school discipline.

This November, ACS president Lori McClung and policy associate Cassie Gaffney, attended the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida to provide technical assistance to 14 state affiliates around NAEYC’s Early Ed for President campaign.

NAEYC’s goal is to make sure that early learning and the early childhood profession is a priority issue for all presidential candidates during the 2016 campaign season.

ACS worked with 14 early primary and battleground states to identify opportunities to develop and enhance their existing electoral advocacy activities.

For nearly ninety years the NAEYC has been the voice of high quality early learning in the United States and around the globe. Among its many accomplishments, NAEYC is known for developing a global standard for early childhood programs and professional development for early childhood providers.

We are pleased to announce that ACS policy associate Cassie Gaffney received the 2015 Excellence in Advocacy by an Up and Coming Practitioner Award at the Professional Women in Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C., for her work as an early childhood education and K-12 policy advocate. This year’s competition had more than 100 nominees.  We are proud to have her on our team!

To see the press release about this award, please click here: Cassie Gaffney Named 2015 Up and Coming Advocate.

To learn more about Professional Women in Advocacy, visit http://womeninadvocacy.com/

We are pleased to announce that Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC (ACS), was honored with a Platinum Award in the Communication Plan category of the MarCom Awards for its two-year strategic communication plan for PRE4CLE, Cleveland’s plan to expand high-quality preschool to all children in the city of Cleveland. An international creative competition that recognizes outstanding achievement by marketing and communication professionals–this year’s MarCom awards had 6,000 entries from 34 countries. Only 16% of winners across all categories achieve Platinum status. We are honored to take on issues that are close to our hearts, and to be internationally recognized for our work.  See the press release about this award here: marcom awards press release

ACS client, The Ohio 8 Coalition, released their 2015 Year-at-a-Glance Infographic that highlights the accomplishments and activity of Ohio’s eight city school districts. This year-at-a-glance document reflects The Ohio 8 Coalition’s commitment to support the unique educational needs of every student in each of their districts, no matter where they came from, the amount of money their family earns, the languages they speak, or the physical or cognitive challenges they face. One significant highlight is the fact that The Ohio 8 Coalition represents 11% of Ohio’s students attending public schools, nearly 200,000 students.

Other highlights include:

• The graduation rate for students enrolled in The Ohio 8 Coalition districts students is almost 72%.
• Ninety percent of third grade students enrolled in The Ohio 8 Coalition districts represented met the third-grade reading guarantee and were promoted to fourth grade in 2014.
• The Ohio 8 Coalition serves 15% of the state’s disabled student population and 30% of the state’s English Language Learners (ELL).
• The Ohio 8 Coalition represents more than 45% of the state’s multiracial, American Indian, Alaskan, Asian, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander students.
• Last year, The Ohio 8 Coalition invested more than $33 million in preschool opportunities for more than 8,000 children and provided more than 36 million meals to students.

The Ohio 8 Coalition is a strategic alliance composed of the superintendents and teacher union presidents from Ohio’s eight urban school districts – Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.  The Ohio 8 Coalition’s mission is to work with policymakers to improve academic performance, increase graduation rates, and close the achievement gap for students in Ohio’s urban communities.

See the Year-at-a-Glance Infographic here and visit www.ohio8coalition.org for more information about The Ohio 8 Coalition.

What is the effect on urban neighborhood schools when a critical mass of well-educated, well-off people move in? That’s a topic The Atlantic tackled last week, citing a variety of news articles around the country.

Unfortunately, in many neighborhoods around the country, gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door, according to the article “When Neighborhoods Gentrify, Why Aren’t Their Public Schools Improving?” Because newcomers tend to send their kids outside of the local system, often to private or charter schools, gentrification tends to have a neutral or even negative effect on neighborhood schools, at least in the short term, the article states.

When local governments prioritize better-integrated schools for everyone, all students benefit. Hartford, Connecticut, is one example where strong urban magnet schools attract students from outside the city. Nearly half of Hartford’s students now benefit from integrated K-12 education. “How exactly did Hartford do it? The city persuaded patrons to buy in,” the article explains. “It wooed children of diverse backgrounds. And instead of having students learn science through worksheets, the city gave students access to a planetarium, an outdoor garden, a butterfly vivarium, a trout pond, and a LEGO lab.”

ACS understands the value of a high-quality public education for all students. Through our work, we help local communities improve their public K-12 education systems in ways that work for them. ACS strives to support students from all backgrounds so all students can love learning, be inspired to graduate high school, pursue a career, and improve their futures.

Want to know hear about ACS’s K-12 education work? Click on our testimonial from one of our K-12 clients.

 

 

ACS Vice President Scarlett Bouder provided closing comments for the  BUILD Initiative’s national conference in Cleveland, Ohio on October  9th. She provided an outline of best practices when communicating to parents, policymakers and the community about early learning issues as well as perspective on the rapid growth of the early childhood field during the past 30 years. Attendees from 10 states and the District of  Columbia were present. Interested in a similar presentation about early childhood messaging and related history?  Contact Info@advocacyandcommunication.org