Mitigating External Conditions on Educational Outcomes

Collaborative approaches to complex public problems are increasingly being used by public private and non-profit organizations. Unfortunately many collaborative endeavors fail to materialize or end prematurely. The strategy development process is crucial to success. However frameworks to inform and assess collaborative strategies are lacking. This book develops describes and assesses a new strategy development tool called the collaborative assessment framework (CAF). Although the CAF can be applied to any issue that requires a collaborative response it was applied to one of the most important issues in governance today: the academic success of our children. The book starts by demonstrating the substantial impact that crime and poverty have on academic achievement. The CAF then demonstrates the flaws in current approaches informs ideal strategies and provides a path to close the gap between them.