The Poughkeepsie Children's Cabinet has launched a groundbreaking Cradle to Career community dashboard, marking a significant step in the collective efforts to support the success of the city's youth. Similarly, the Poughkeepsie City School District recently published its district goals to support its school, home and community approach to addressing the needs of its students (See Superintendent Brief Issue 13 Vol.6).
This powerful tool serves as a starting point to align residents, local government, the school district, nonprofits, philanthropy and business partners around a common purpose: long-term success for young people in Poughkeepsie, including socioeconomic mobility.
The Poughkeepsie Children's Cabinet invites all to explore the dashboard at pkchildren.org/cradle-to-career.
The cabinet recognizes achieving long-term outcomes for students doesn't happen in isolation. With 80% of children's waking hours spent outside of school, it's crucial to address the broader factors that impact their success. The dashboard highlights the critical connection between socioeconomic status and educational attainment by tracking both education and household outcomes, disaggregated by race.
By providing transparent and accessible data, the dashboard enables the community to:
- Set common goals across sectors
- Track progress on key indicators from early childhood through career
- Advocate for policies that support thriving youth and families
- Address neighborhood-level factors that impact student success
The dashboard helps focus on solutions that go beyond the classroom, recognizing the impact of factors like prenatal care, affordable housing and thriving wages, on a child's ability to succeed. Through this collective impact approach, the cabinet is engaging everyone to work collaboratively to transform the community.
The dashboard demonstrates the cabinet's commitment to data sharing, accountability and a two-generation approach to disrupting the cycle of poverty. By aligning with the StriveTogether education benchmarks and Promise Neighborhoods outcomes, the initiative is connecting Poughkeepsie to a national movement for youth success.
The cabinet is guided by its North Star mission to ensure that by 2033 more than 5,000 City of Poughkeepsie young people and their families will be connected to transformative opportunities that place them on pathways to postsecondary completion and socioeconomic mobility.
