Are CCSPP grantees building their capacity to implement the approach?

Overview of Capacity Building Strategies in Year 3

Resources

Capacity Building Strategies (CBS): A Developmental Rubric

Rubrics

Capacity-Building Strategies: Self-Assessments

Self-Assessments

The Capacity-Building Strategies (CBS) section of the APR assesses how grantees are developing the core organizational, relational, and leadership capacities needed to implement and sustain the community school strategy. The questions focus on key strategies that support coherent, long-term systems change rather than isolated programming.

Overall, Year 3 APR data indicates that CCSPP grantees are making progress in developing the skills and knowledge to implement the community schools strategy. Across the 5 CBSs, we find that Strategic Community Partnership has the highest percentage of grantees with a self rating of being in the “Transforming” phase at 14%. For three CBSs—Sustaining Staff and Resources, Strategic Community Partnerships, and Collaborative Leadership—there are more schools identifying in the Engaging phase than Visioning. This pattern suggests that many grantees have moved beyond initial planning and are actively implementing core structures and practices in these areas, with full, system-level integration still in progress for most grantees. For Shared Commitment, Understanding, and Priorities, and Centering Community-Based Learning, there are more grantees in the Visioning phase than the Engaging phase. This findings indicates that while grantees are building shared understanding and exploring community-based approaches, these strategies may require additional time, support, and infrastructure to translate vision into sustained practice.

A closer look at Cohort 1 site-level implementation grantees (Year 1 = 450 schools; Year 2 = 431 schools; Year 3 = 435 schools) across the three years of implementation reveal that grantees are moving from the Visioning to Engaging phase of implementation, and from the Engaging to Transforming phase. Cohort 1 grantees have achieved great successes in several CBSs. Nearly one in three Cohort 1 grantees (32.4%) self-reported as being in the Transforming phase in Strategic Community Leadership in Year 3, compared to 14% in Year 1. The percentage of grantees in Visioning have decreased significantly. For instance, while 62% of grantees considered themselves in the Visioning phase in Year 1 for Centering Community-Based Learning, this percentage lowered to only 27.4% in Year 3. Taken together, these shifts indicate that Cohort 1 grantees are steadily advancing from early planning toward deeper and more sustained implementation of key community school strategies over time.