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What is the Data Collaborative?

From 2017-2020, Read Charlotte’s Data Collaborative team led a three-year initiative to change the way our community understands, depends on, and uses data to improve children’s literacy outcomes. We held our final participant workshop via Zoom. 

Eight nonprofit organizations participated in this initiative for the full three years: Above & Beyond Students, Ada Jenkins Center, Charlotte Bilingual Preschool, Freedom School Partners, Lakewood Preschool, The Learning Collaborative, YMCA, and YWCA. The goal of the initiative was for organizations to depend on, understand, and use literacy data to improve children’s language and literacy and development.

We are incredibly grateful to the Skeebo Foundation, Mecklenburg County, and the Read Charlotte Transformation Fund for approving funding for this project in 2017. Our work was possible because of your generous contribution.

Watch a short video explaining our work over the last three years.

Three Year Results

100% of organizations who participated adopted a new common literacy assessment tool.
All organizations adopted new ways of using data; at least 6 out of 8 organizations were able to adopt 3 out of the 4 data routines in Year 3
The Data Collaborative initiative was highlighted at a poster session for the Carnegie Foundation of Advancement of Teaching’s annual conference in April 2020.
The Data Collaborative team documented our model, process, and approach in order to support local, state, and national replication of the Collaborative.
Created an open source learning management system (available to anyone in our community) that includes documenting over 80 lesson plans created by the community and a contact list to encourage continued collaboration.
Over the course of three years, the Data Collaborative team delivered to the community of partners:

70 workshops

290 coaching sessions

Responded to over 100+ technical assistance requests

Developed and refined 6 major digital tools 

RESOURCES

Are you interested in accessing lesson plans and instructional resources? Access our Data Collaborative Portal below. You will find other resources on this site related to: continuous improvement, implementation science, and evidence based practices. 

Data Collaborative Portal

Do you want to hear what our partners think of the work? Hear from our panelists who participated in the initiative: Sheila Ijames (YWCA), Amanda Wilkinson (YMCA), Leslie Wilson (Ada Jenkins Center). Click below for the slide deck and recording from this session.

Session Materials

Do you want to implement parts of the Data Collaborative in your organization? Click below for documentation on how we did our work as well as our approach.

Learn More

Are you curious about our conference?  Click below for a copy of our poster.

View Poster

The partners below were integral to helping us build the Data Collaborative initiative. We appreciate all of our partners who made this a success for our community:

The Involvement Practice