The MassGrad Coalition Challenge: Collaborating as a Community to Decrease Dropout Rates

 

The MassGrad Coalition Challenge - teams representing four communities (Worcester, New Bedford, Franklin County and Malden) - participated in a day-long training event hosted by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and facilitated by School & Main Institute. A special group within the larger MassGrad district network, these four communities are focused on decreasing the dropout rate and increasing graduation rates using the power of school-community collaboration, rather than asking schools to address the dropout challenge alone. We believe the strongest responses to education, health, employment, and other community issues take hold when stakeholders collaborate. Easy to understand but actually pretty hard to do!

At this training event, Coalition Challenge teams analyzed the functions of collaborative infrastructure and how they can organize themselves to get their work done - again, no small task when working across organizations rather than managing within a single organization. Teams reviewed the development of their coalition to date and used SMI’s Infrastructure for Powerful Partnerships tool to guide their thinking:

• Where are we strong?
• Who do need to engage?
• Who will outreach?
• Challenges and potential responses?

For more information about SMI's Powerful Partnerships training support, click here.