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Live United with United Way Capital Area

Community Impact Focus Area: Education

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Goal: To create opportunities for children and youth to learn, grow, and engage

Perhaps no other “building block” is more essential to future success than a quality education. But sadly, many groups in Central Texas don’t have the same opportunity to learn, thrive, and succeed as others. So United Way Capital Area has made providing educational opportunities to everyone a major priority.

The United Way Strategy

We decided to address educational disparities in two major ways.

First, we make sure that every child in our community is “healthy, happy, and smart” by the time they enter the first grade. We call this initiative “Success By 6.”

Second, in order to boost and lagging high-school graduation rate, we are focused on middle school students—where many future drop-outs begin to fall behind and where we can make the greatest, longest lasting impact. We call this our “Youth Education” initiative.

Defining Success

United Way is committed to constantly measuring the success of our efforts, because this is about community-wide, long-term change—not just short-term solutions. Here is a small sample of how we intend to determine how well we’re doing:

Success By 6
  • Increase in percentage of children that receive early screening, assessment, and intervention for social/emotional developmental challenges
  • Increase in percentage of parents that access parenting resources with 6 months after their child’s birth
  • Increase in percentage of full-day early childhood care and education programs serving at least 5% low-income families will improve their “quality rating” as measured by Texas Rising Star

Youth Education
  • Increase in the percentage of youth who are promoted to the next grade level, attend school at least 90% of the time, and who report increase college aspirations
  • An increase in percentage of youth with positive connections to at least one adult, are involved in extra-curricular activities, and who avoid negative peer influences
  • An increase in the number of youth engaged in volunteer and leadership efforts, who continue such efforts, and who report having improved their leadership skills