MOTIVATE 2 EDUCATE

IMPROVING STUDENT OUTCOMES & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

 

 
American educational institutions and service providers are responsible for educating students
in their respective schools and communities. Common among institutional priorities of these
school districts, communities and service providers is the advancement of productive, healthy, successful and engaged students. Other prominently shared goals are the creation of learning environments delivering timely and pertinent curricula, along with the fostering of high student expectations and effective and culturally competent instruction. Key Educational Services (KEY)
is uniquely prepared to assist communities in achieving these and other goals.

To assist schools and communities in meeting the aforementioned goals and other objectives,
KEY works along side community stakeholders to maximize existing plans or to create new
strategic plans in collaboration with community and educational stakeholders. By design, these stakeholders include parents, civic and business leaders, educators, administrators and others.

KEY believes abundant opportunities exist in most American communities to establish and
sustain robust student, family and community engagement. However, our experience informs
us that sustained stakeholder commitment is most often the result of the implementation of strategic and evidenced based interventions designed to promote collaboration and ongoing planning, evaluation and engagement. Such continuing intervention necessitates capacity
building since any mission to “prepare all students to excel in college, career, and life.”
depends upon a community’s ability to impact every student, family, home and institution.
Capacity building does not usually occur automatically without community volition.

So, for the benefit of schools and communities, KEY has fashioned a community and
organizational advancement framework designed to implement improvement strategies.
In the educational arena, this initiative is branded as Motivate 2 Educate (M2E). Motivate 2
Educate, or (M2E) is a comprehensive and strategic intervention designed to foster positive community and educational outcomes. These outcomes include increases in community
stakeholder engagement, improved student behavior and higher graduation and student performance rates. To accomplish these outcomes, KEY helps communities and organi-
zations tailor Strategic Improvement Frameworks (SIF’s) that can assist in addressing
challenges facing large, as well as smaller and more targeted populations.

KEY’s services are designed to meet each school or community’s unique needs and our im-plementation strategies feature evaluative components to ensure sustainability and
culturally competent outcomes.

At a minimum, KEY would be honored to assist institutions and stakeholders in your com-
munity in the areas of communications, morale building, student and community partner engagement, career & life skills development of youth and adults, prevention and retention
and in enhancing organizational synergy.

Moreover, while KEY’s experiences reveal that most communities possess enough collective
capacity to address community needs, they also divulge that many can also benefit from
greater utilization of evidenced based strategies and collaborative frameworks to accomplish community objectives.

For example, often, with several “somewhat” independently managed schools spread through-
out a community, many districts and communities have a need to ensure that all outposts
work collaboratively to realize systemic success. KEY specializes in fostering such organizational
and community synergy.

KEY also has expertise in helping connect diverse sectors of communities and districts to enable
all stakeholders to appreciate and discover implementable solutions and opportunity paths
when administrative and community challenges such as low student outcomes, high teacher turnover rates and insufficient familial and community connectivity are present.
 
 

KEY'S Experiences Align With Community Needs.

 
Recently, a consortium of educational organizations launched a Community Engagement
Tour to explore achievement gaps and educational equality.

During this tour, community leaders, educators, students, and citizen participants in seven
locations caucused to discuss local educational challenges. It was discovered that while some challenges were geographically unique, the majority were similar obstacles confronting most communities.

Key Educational Services understands that the seven educational locales visited during this
tour are not outliers but only reflect general trends in many American communities. Indeed,
the data show that many communities are experiencing stress from a seeming inability to
keep pace with educational benchmarks. Nevertheless, Key Educational Services believes
there is room for optimism.

With over two decades of experience working to advance communities, our impressions
of American communities are positive and we observe that most communities are
positioned to maximize many transformative opportunities that can lead to sustainable
improvements in educational and social outcomes. Moreover, our view is that with
collaborative, targeted and measurable interventions, all communities can reduce risk
factors and improve outcomes.

In our epidemiological reviews of many similarly situated communities, we observed that
opportunities to improve educational outcomes by further engaging students, parental
stakeholders and community partners are plentiful. These observations advanced our understanding of the tremendous potential available to communities like yours to achieve
goals and objectives cited in your strategic plans.

As American schools and school districts continue transforming into the data and purpose
driven, community engaged agencies they must become to address contemporary factors,
we are optimistic that we can achieve considerable progress.

However, we concur with a growing percentage of educational leaders in recognizing that
for indelible progress to be achieved, communities must strategically engage stakeholders
at every level of the community in the solution discovery process. KEY can help foster and
enhance such stakeholder engagement in your community.
 
 

KEY’s Experiences Align With Educational Goals.

 
Based upon how many school districts have identified measurable indicators to define
success, there are several ways in which Key Educational Services’ experiences typically
align with the desired outcomes and expressed goals and guiding principles of institutions.
To underscore this alignment, a brief discussion pertaining to our experience and values
is presented below:

Schools exist to prepare all students to excel in careers and in life KEY’s Motivate 2 Educate
initiative features Career & Life Skills Development Curriculawhich is designed to ignite a
personal desire for success and learning in each student to a degree that motivates them
to become active stakeholders in their own lives & careers.

Schools seek to increase percentages of graduating students.

Working with Federal, state and local governments, the principals at Key Educational Services
(KEY) have promoted culturally competent graduation campaigns, along with prevention
related training, motivation and advocacy targeting more than 19 communities. All of this
community based outreach was implemented under evidenced based protocols.

Schools seek to decrease students not graduating high school.

KEY’s team of professionals involved in the Motivate 2 Educate Initiative includes team
members who underwent personal transformations to achieve in the educational arena.
Consequently, we offer personal and practical experience in helping students overcome
many challenges confronting them today. In addition, KEY has donated time on its urban
based radio programs to promote graduation and has provided career related motivational
training to thousands.

Schools seek to increase percentages of students in post-secondary education.

The principals at Key Educational Services have spearheaded campaigns which successfully
raised nearly $1 Million dollars towards providing scholarships to hundreds of urban high
school students from various locations around the country. This experience also pertains
to increasing percentages of students taking the ACT.

Schools seek to decrease student absences.

KEY specializes in helping students discover the intersections between learning achievements
and lifestyle freedom and quality. In particular, KEY has helped to foster increased student engagement through its “edutainment based” student seminars. These high energy, corporate
style gatherings motivate students to buy-in as stakeholders in their own educations and
careers. This produces outcomes of bothincreased engagement and also reduces absenteeism.

Schools seek to decrease student suspensions and expulsions.

In addition to promoting engagement, Key has seen success in motivating students and
communities to adopt healthy norms and mores and to shed and avoid risky behavior. This
success has been bolstered by our understanding of the negative impact oppositional defiant attitudes can have in limiting, or altogether blocking personal and community achievement.
In this way, KEY’s significant prowess at motivating individuals and groups is also helpful in
lessening achievement gaps, in increasing student commitment and connectedness with school
and in increasing student engagement in the classroom.

Successful schools require committed, diverse & effective teachers, administrators
& staff who produce successful & engaged students.

KEY’s services are currently being utilized by small agencies and by organizations with thousands
of employees. Through such diverse opportunities to serve we have discovered certain char-acteristics that permeate successful organizations both large and small. Among these corporate traits are committed and diverse stakeholders who produce measurable results. KEY specializes
in working with diverse team members to accomplish such targeted goals.

 
Schools seek engaged & empowered parents & families.

KEY prefers to develop epidemiological profiles of communities to allow for data driven analysis
of familial and community stakeholder norms to determine how best to achieve engagement and
buy-in. Ideally, this analysis is followed by collaborative, evidenced based implementation and evaluation of targeted strategies to create sustainable engagement and other positive outcomes.