This report presents findings from a process study evaluation of the Promise Heights Promise Neighborhood in the West Baltimore communities of Upton and Druid Heights. As a grantee of the federal Promise Neighborhoods program, Promise Heights created a cradle-to-career pipeline of support for children and families that aimed to address systemic challenges of child poverty, educational disparities, and community disinvestment. The pipeline included coordinated early childhood, K-12, health, and community supports that aimed to improve academic outcomes, strengthen family stability, and foster community resilience. As the evaluation partner, Urban worked alongside Promise Heights to understand the program’s implementation over the years, identify its measurable impacts, and offer lessons for future place-based strategies.
Why This Matters
Place-based initiatives can improve people’s lives and strengthen communities. Promise Heights staff and partner organizations in Upton and Druid Heights have worked for nearly a decade to build community partnerships and deliver services to families and children. These efforts saw measurable improvements in several of the results areas defined by the Promise Neighborhoods program. At the same time, the challenges that Promise Heights encountered over the years—funding instability, data-sharing barriers, and systemic challenges beyond a neighborhood’s control—underscore that more is needed to support the sustainability and long-term impact of future place-based initiatives.
What We Found
A key lesson learned during our evaluation of Promise Heights Promise Neighborhood was the importance of strong partnerships between schools and community. Promise Heights successfully built partnerships with schools, community organizations, and families. These partnerships served as the infrastructure for expanded access to a cradle-to-career pipeline of resources and supports aligned with the goals of the Promise Neighborhoods program. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the flexibility of grant funding enabled Promise Heights to pivot from its long-term strategy in order to meet urgent needs that arose in the community.
Although Promise Heights made a shift toward a partnership-based model and established a child care center to sustain programming, the initiative faced barriers to sustainability in the final years of the grant. Without long-term investment at the scale of the original Promise Neighborhoods grant, stronger community governance structures would have been needed to build lasting capacity beyond the close of the grant.
How We Did It
Urban conducted a process study evaluation to document the implementation of the Promise Neighborhoods grant and to support the Promise Heights team’s work to adjust and refine programming. Annual focuses of the process study included assessing the communities’ assets and needs, documenting the impacts of COVID-19 on the initiative, understanding the impacts of a major leadership transition on Promise Heights, evaluating the interest in and feasibility of transitioning Promise Heights from a service-delivery approach to a backbone model, and considering how best to sustain the Promise Heights model. Urban conducted interviews and focus groups with Promise Heights staff members, community members, and school-based staff and partners and observed events and activities. During the final year of the initiative, Urban organized a data workshop to share findings from the final process study about the impact of Promise Heights and to gather feedback from families.
