United Community Schools (UCS) is a “teacher-inspired” non-profit operated by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that promotes a six-pillar community school model through consulting, local and national advocacy, and the operation of over 30 community schools in New York City and Albany, New York. Each school is supported by UCS’ strategic partnerships, honed over time to provide teachers and administrators with the tools they need to carry out this work effectively. UCS seeks to re-envision K-12 education through the creation of strong school-community partnerships, the coordinating efforts of school-based community school directors, and a robust cross-school support system that includes extensive professional development, supplemental social work, academic tutoring services, and investment in data-informed planning, reflection, and growth.
By developing a robust community school strategy, led by a community school director and an advisory board, and focusing on the six complimentary pillars of student and family health and wellness, educator support, rigorous academics, expanded learning time opportunities, family engagement, and community engagement, each UCS-led community school is “transformed into a sustainable, vibrant community hub, where parents, teachers and community members engage in collaborative and meaningful ways to produce stronger schools and better outcomes for students.”
Partnering to enhance a whole-child community school model
Over the past several years, UCS has tapped Metis’s grant writing expertise to leverage city, state, and federal funding as well as private dollars to support its network of community schools. External grant funds have been leveraged to support the build-out of a comprehensive set of services aligned to the UCS community school pillars, address service gaps, and create sustainable and replicable community school models.
In 2019, Metis responded to a competitive solicitation to become UCS’s primary evaluation partner, a relationship that has continued to mature over the past five years. Metis and UCS have established a foundation guided by a co-developed scope of work and overseen by an evaluation committee comprised of teachers, school leadership, union members, and staff representatives. This collaborative approach ensures that all stakeholders are included and part of the process, fostering a sense of unity and shared responsibility.
Over five years, we’ve offered an array of sequenced services that have cumulatively led to the transfer of knowledge and expertise from Metis to UCS leadership and staff:
- Co-creating a theory of change and logic model. We launched a highly interactive, iterative approach with the UCS leadership team and evaluation advisory committee to develop these tools, informing early drafts through stakeholder interviews and a nuanced review of program materials. Once finalized, the comprehensive logic model became an essential platform for subsequent evaluation, capacity building, and external communication campaigns. A living document, we revisited the logic model with staff in 2024 to learn more about how staff have used it and encourage further refinement.
- Establishing the UCS brand through a literature review. We developed a public-facing deliverable that positioned the UCS model within the broader field of community school practitioners by showcasing the history of the UCS approach alongside established community school standards.
- Identifying the needs of multiple constituencies through school-embedded data collection. We partnered with UCS to develop and co-administer annual surveys of caregivers and teachers, subsequently analyzing and bringing the findings back to Community School Directors and UCS leadership.
- Building data literacy through professional development workshops and presentations. We frequently design and offer interactive presentations to UCS staff and leadership on topics such as logic model development, evaluation results, and interpretation of data.
- Designing and leading a locally developed inventory of school-level practices to identify the extent to which the UCS model is administered with fidelity. We worked with multiple UCS stakeholders to create a sustainable process for engaging school staff to self-reflect on implementing the UCS model, identifying school-level strengths and cross-school needs for professional development and further support.
- Communicating the results of the community-school strategy to multiple audiences. We encouraged UCS to invest in a data dashboard, which we created, updated, and hosted on the Tableau online platform so that program data could be better accessed and utilized by UCS staff. In addition, we worked annually with UCS to identify key outcomes for outward-facing materials, including briefing papers and materials used to advocate for community school funding at the NYS and national levels.
- Identifying opportunities for growth in community-school-adjacent programs. At the behest of UCS, we have explored two additional programs offered by UCS as complementary supports to their community schools—one that capitalizes on retired UFT teachers to provide needed tutoring and another that places trained social workers in schools to offer stop-gap services for students seeking social-emotional support and counseling. Through focus groups, interviews, and reviews of program and administrative data, we provided formative feedback designed to increase each program’s quality and use of data for continuous improvement. This process of identifying and acting on opportunities for growth is a key aspect of our partnership with UCS, ensuring that the programs we support are constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of the community.
Rigorously assessing community school outcomes
Since 2021-22, we have completed a rigorous outcome study of the UCS model, comparing the outcomes of students enrolled in a UCS-led community school with students enrolled in traditional public schools across New York City through a quasi-experimental design using a student-level matched comparison group. Outcomes assessed included attendance, NYS English as a Second Language Achievement Test results, English language arts and math proficiency, and high school credit accumulation. For the 2022-2023 academic year, positive outcomes found through this rigorous evaluation included:
- A significant impact on school year attendance. UCS students attend approximately two and a half to three more days than similarly situated non-community school students in a 182-day school year.
- A significant impact on high school credit accumulation. On average, UCS students accumulate approximately 1½ credits more than similarly situated non-community school students.
UCS’s six-pillar model shows what’s possible when a strong community school framework is backed by a robust funding strategy and ongoing evaluation. Learn more about our Full-Service Community Schools focus area, grant writing services, and program evaluation services.