For discussion

February 2011

Counting all Kids: McKnight Foundation spearheads effort to gather better data on children and youth

By Christine Ganzlin, The McKnight Foundation

At the recent Compass annual meeting, Christine Ganzlin introduced the new Children & Youth section on the site, and told audience members why McKnight wanted to partner with other funders and with Compass to provide more and better data on our state's young people.

In the spring of 2010 we at McKnight wondered out loud with the Minnesota Compass staff about the utility of developing a cross-cutting indicator project focused on children and youth.

Similar to Compass projects focused on aging and on immigrants, it made sense to talk about a project to capture how Minnesota’s youth contribute to our communities and fare in their lives at home, in school, and in communities.

In the McKnight Foundation’s experiences with grantees and in advocacy work across many issue areas, we have seen firsthand how good data can help direct resources and attention to critical human development issues.

Likewise, we have often been challenged with not enough data.

For example, in 2005, despite decades focusing on youth issues, we were caught off guard by a Rand Corporation report, Making Out-of-School Time Matter that concluded there were only a limited number of studies documenting the unmet need for afterschool programs and services. How could anyone in the field make a case for resources, we asked ourselves, without access to credible data that illustrates the need?

We had also been struck by the 2009 KIDS COUNT report essay that challenged us all to examine our nation’s progress in tracking children’s well-being – in measuring the impact of public and private programs – and holding ourselves – all of us – accountable for the healthy development of our children.

Many of you in this room have stepped up to this challenge – and have supported original and new research about children’s issues. For example, as a result of the Rand study, a group of youth advocates came together and funded a study analyzing the gaps in afterschool programming in Minnesota, which included surveying hundreds of parents and youth across the state.

In Minnesota, we know we need solid data to help us promote a positive framework focusing on children and youth from many different socioeconomic circumstances, whose parents all want the same thing for their children — success. Success in school, success in work, success in achieving their dreams, and success developing healthy and loving relationships.

So, Minnesota Compass gathered a roomful of child and youth experts and advocates to help us shape relevant indicators. Our group faced several key questions:

What indicators can we use to measure the positive attributes of young people, and the important contributions they make in their families and communities every day?
What age span do we care about?
Do reliable data sources exist? (Many of us were surprised to learn the Minnesota Student Survey is the largest and most reliable data source for information about Minnesota’s young people.)

Many of us had been in these discussions before, and we will likely be in others in the future. But this was a unique chance where we were offered the opportunity to settle in for two half-day sessions and share our collective wisdom. It was this thoughtful process that sets this data gathering project apart from similar forums. The field came together — longtime partners and new collaborators alike — to decide collectively on the indicators of success for our children and youth.

As time goes by, our 50-plus participants will likely continue to meet and consider how we might work together to increase the number of reliable data sources to capture a holistic portrait of Minnesota’s children and youth.
Our hope is that we will continue to refine this data and use the site to unify several efforts aimed at counting Minnesota’s children.

It is clear that we funders and nonprofits in the field are hungry for such data. We already know we share common goals for positive outcomes for Minnesota’s children and youth. To do this well, we also know we need to better understand the contributions young people bring every day to our families, to our schools, and to our communities.

Strong data will help ensure young people’s contributions are counted, and ultimately also help inform investments statewide that make sure they understand how much we value them.

Christine Ganzlin is a senior program officer at The McKnight Foundation. Ganzlin has worked at the Foundation for 20 years, including serving as director of the Children and Families program. Prior to her work at McKnight, she held positions in state and local government and the nonprofit sector. She received a master's degree in public policy and administration from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Opinions in the For Discussion columns are the authors' alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Minnesota Compass. Compass welcomes a range of views about issues pertaining to quality of life in Minnesota.