News

2019 Updated Community Dashboard

Updated Community Outcomes Dashboard Shows
Brown County Youth Improve in Areas Related to Future Success

Five-year collaborative effort positively affecting young people from “cradle to career”

Results of a five-year effort involving dozens of Brown County organizations show significant improvements in five areas deemed to have critical impact on the future success of area young people.

“These results affirm what we hoped when we started this effort in 2014,” said Mark Kaiser, President/CEO of Lindquist Machine Corporation and chair of Achieve Brown County’s Community Leadership Council. “The schools, health care systems, youth-service providers and other community organizations that have come together to focus on these outcomes are seeing the fruits of their labor. This is very encouraging for those of us involved with Achieve and for the future of these students.”

There are about 80,000 young people under the age of 25 in Brown County. Achieve Brown County’s 2018 Outcomes Dashboard, which reflects information available on more than 90 percent of them at important milestones in their lives, reveals the following:

83% of 5-year-olds entering public and private schools met the benchmark for literacy, an indicator of readiness for Kindergarten. This is up one point from the 2017 study.
91% of students who entered high school four years ago completed their education and graduated. This is up one point from the 2017 study.
61% of students continue their education after high school or enter military service. This is up three points from the 2017 study.
45% of young adults complete college within six years or less. This is up 5 points from the 2017 study.
41% of 22- to 24-year-olds working in Brown County earn at least $26,128 annually (200% of federal poverty level), an indication that wages are improving. This is up 1 point from the 2017 study.

“Although improvements within each area may seem small,” said Kaiser, “hundreds of young people have shown measurable gains compared to last year at these specific milestones. This indicates improvement for all kids within every age group, which is our goal. We’re on the right path.”

While Achieve Brown County has played a supportive role in stewarding the collective impact model behind this effort, it is the community organizations themselves that have done “the heavy lifting,” according to Spencer Bonnie, Interim Executive Director.

“When you look everything that has been accomplished over the past five years, it’s clear that our community partners are driving the impacts we see in the data,” said Bonnie. “We facilitate the processes that bring everyone together to create a shared vision for impact, collect and analyze the data, and then develop collaborative solutions that make the biggest difference in the lives of young people. But our partners implement those solutions, and it’s ultimately their actions that produce the results.”

Achieve and its community partners, through their ongoing collaborative efforts, are continuing to focus on affecting positive change in each of these five outcome areas, as well as a sixth: engaging children, youth and young adults as community volunteers.

Data for this report were drawn from several sources. These included: Brown County Schools, Green Bay Area Catholic Education Network, Oneida Tribal Schools, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, and the National Student Clearinghouse. The full dashboard and underlying data are online on our website.

Published: June 7, 2019