Data Update | Quarter 2 | April 2026

By Noah Shore, Data Analyst, and Yezi Gugsa, AmeriCorps Groundwork Fellow

Data Dashboard Updates

We are excited to announce the forthcoming update to our population-level indicators dashboard on our website. This dashboard is designed to make key community benchmarks more accessible to everyone in our community. This updated dashboard will provide a clear and easy-to-navigate view of the indicators that matter to our community. These indicators include Access to Adequate Prenatal Care, 3rd Grade Reading Proficiency, 8th Grade Math Proficiency, High School Graduation Rates, and Post-Secondary Enrollment and Completion. Our goal is to ensure that these data are not only available, but understandable and meaningful for everyone in our community.

These population-level indicators are at the heart of how we measure progress and drive meaningful change across our community. Just like our organization's name, these benchmarks reflect the journey from cradle to career of those individuals who live in our community. Using this population-level data as the benchmark, we collect additional information on the strategies that our networks implement and compare them to the indicator data. By tracking this over time, we can evaluate whether the strategies and tactics our networks implement are making a difference in the outcomes they are designed to improve. This helps to keep our efforts accountable and data-driven.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

This year, Cradle 2 Career, in partnership with 21st Century Community Learning Center and Rochester Public Schools Community Education, has begun expanding how we learn about and support the experiences of youth in out-of-school and afterschool programs across Rochester. In addition to our regular program quality observations, we are piloting ways to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) and youth voice into this process. SEL builds skills such as managing emotions, developing positive relationships, collaborating with others, and solving complex problems. Rooting our observations in SEL will help us better understand how these programs support youth’s development and create environments where youth can thrive.

Additionally, we are exploring the implementation of youth interviews and surveys to track youth participants’ experiences and perspectives. These efforts will help strengthen program quality by keeping youth voices at the center. This work will begin with a pilot at select sites this summer, where we will gather feedback from youth participants and program staff. In the coming months, we hope to expand these efforts across additional programs and create opportunities for youth to take a more active role in the process by serving as student evaluators. By centering youth voices in this process, we aim to strengthen belonging, engagement, and overall program quality for youth across Rochester.