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If you live or work in the Bloomington area you may have noticed a group of women in business attire and athletic shoes walking around very quickly. They may be seen marching through the neighborhood or, during inclement weather, parading down the halls of the Mall of America. They have even been found locked in the stairwells of the BLN Office Park after making a wrong turn in their new workplace. Do not be alarmed! They are just the “IG Footnotes” taking power walks during their lunch hour.

It all started out as innocent support of our co-worker Brooke Ahlquist who was preparing for the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk, (August 16 to the 18th). Brooke asked if anyone would accompany her while she kept to her training. Staff members, Sarah Myott, Elizabeth Radel, Susan Murphy and President and CEO Leah Goldstein Moses joined the cause not only for Brooke, but for their own health as well.

Walks usually take between 20 minutes to half an hour and the pace is quick. Considering the Improve Group offices are located on the 6th floor the trip down the stairs is not too bad but the trip back up is a killer.
Besides doing good things for our bodies, we are learning about our new neighborhood and have stumbled upon interesting trails and green spaces.

So, if you see us in the area, give us a wave or join us for a few blocks. Be warned, good conversation is mandatory.

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Brooke recently completed the The Twin Cities Breast Cancer 3-Day , a three-day walk covering MANY miles, with nightime camping. The group raised over $6 million for breast cancer research - AMAZING! Despite her sore feet, Brooke is cheerfully working on analysis today of participants in professional development programs.

Way to go, Brooke!

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One thing that we truly value at the Improve Group is getting to know our clients on both professional and personal levels. What better way to do this than by “vacationing” together! The Minnesota Department of Human Services project will be taking us to all of the state’s 87 counties and we see this as an opportunity to soak up the local environment. We stop at every tourism office and it has been a joy learning what each county has to offer.

After our recent two-day site visit in Faribault and Martin Counties, the Department of Human Services and Improve Group team was ready for some fun before heading home. Faribault County staff let us know that Blue Earth’s famous Jolly Green Giant statue was a must-see and it was conveniently located next to a Dairy Queen. Stay tuned to see where our travels take us next!

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Becky Stewart just returned from Kerala, India, where she studied and applied the ILS method of evaluation, a method that collects pictoral journal entries from program participants about their acheivements and outcomes. She'll be contributing an article about the ILS method in our September newsletter and describing how it is used in the weaving cooperative she visited. She was located about 30 miles outside the capital, Thiruvananthapuram (shown here with its airport at the very bottom of the screen):

Watch for her article in our upcoming newsletter!

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What do you do when your evaluation finds mixed results? How do you let your client know that what you've proven is only modest success? This is one of the biggest challenges for external evaluators.

One of our current projects is showing limited success in an area where there were very positive findings in years past. Surprised by the results, we went back to our original data and found that our comparison group differs significantly in a number of ways from our treatment group. We will be working with the project staff in the next few weeks about how to interpret the findings and determine what they say about the program vs. what they say about our evaluation process.

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An interesting debate is going on on the website of the magazine Education Week. The debate is about where foundation money would be best invested. Although the debate is specifically about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it seems like it could be reframed as:

If you had basically unlimited resources (or, more specifically, over a billion dollars to spend each year), what would you do to build the best possible educational system for our children?

The answers range from restructuring the system, to researching and developing model programs, to broader implementation of specific standards-based initiatives. It's a question people have been debating at least since I was in elementary school in the 70's and 80's, and usually starting from the assumption that schools need to be fixed.

One group taking a different approach is the Center on Education Policy, which describes itself as independent advocate for public schools. Last year they published a report titled Do You Know the Latest Good News in Education? compiling a number of statistics showing positive trends in public education.

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It has been a busy week at the Improve Group. Several of our projects require us to prepare multiple reports for different audiences; this is incredibly important to make sure we place findings in the appropriate context. However, it also keeps us extremely busy! We currently are juggling four reports for one project, one report and three articles for another project, and annual reports for three other projects. These days you'll find most of us typing away at our computers, so we are all looking forward to a break over the weekend.

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Last spring, several Improve Group staff attended the "Every Girl, Everywhere" event of the Girl Scout Council of Greater Minneapolis. I've worked with a lot of programs that serve youth and always enjoy the chance to hear directly from kids. At the event, several girls shared their experiences, including a young woman in college who learned so much from her experience that she is already volunteering to co-lead a troop with her former troop leader, another young woman who found the Girl Scouts was the best way for her to have a comfortable place to be herself. Both stories were incredibly moving and really demonstrated how non-profits can fill a void for young people who are trying to figure out where they fit in. The Executive Director reported that this event was very successful, and the teary eyes in the room (including mine) probably were one reason.

The Girl Scouts sends out homemade thank-you notes that are really delightful!

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We are glad to have our research analyst, Liz, back from her trip to Tianjin, Beiging, Shanghai and Xi'an; so much so that we sent her on a site visit her first day back at work last Monday. Her trip to northern Minnesota helped her acclimate quickly back to the U.S.--she got to enjoy Bixby's bagel shop in Grand Rapids and try out the Dairy Queen in Cloquet. We missed her while she was gone, but because we've had several staff traveling internationally lately we are all feeling very cosmopolitan.

Liz was nice enough to send us a postcard which arrived today. What a stunning view of the Great Wall at Simatai!

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Our intern, James, just wrapped up his internship for the summer as he heads off to several camping adventures and finally St. Lawrence college. We enjoyed working with him a great deal. He helped keep us organized when we moved into our new office, cataloging our surprisingly large library and putting our supplies away. He also helped us in our analysis for several projects using Microsoft Access and Excel, and took photos of our staff. Thanks, James!

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