Research

How can we use "big data" from public provider systems to improve child outcomes in a complex urban environment?  

The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children was organized in 2014 to begin solving the technical challenges--data privacy, security, and protocols--and to develop a vision for sustained trust and shared uses that will benefit children through better-informed services, research, and local communities.  Along with core operating support from The Children's Trust since 2018, the grants below are now bringing these long-term goals into focus, step by step.  Our shared findings will posted below as we go along.

• The Children's Trust
• RW Johnson Foundation
• Spencer Foundation
• U-LINK
• Miami Foundation
• IES

The IDEAS Consortium was awarded a five-year research grant from The Children's Trust to develop a learning community that can better align interdisciplinary researchers, agency practitioners, and local community hubs for collective impact affecting young children. The 2021-06 Early Childhood Community Research Demonstration Project begins in October 2021, and our partnerships are described on our partner page.

The IDEAS Consortium was awarded a two-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in partnership with the University of Florida's Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies. The award for Equity-Focused Policy Research: Building Cross-Cutting Evidence on Supports for Families begins in October 2021 and uses data from Miami-Dade early childhood initiatives to inform local efforts and broader policies.

The IDEAS Consortium was awarded a three-year research-practice grant from the Spencer Foundation to strengthen and sustain our integrated data partnership. The award, Research-Practice Partnerships: Collaborative research for educational change, begins in October 2021 and will enable the Consortium to link information impacting young children and address the priorities of data-sharing provider systems.

The IDEAS Consortium has been advanced by two grants from the University of Miami's Laboratory for Integrative Knowledge (U-LINK). The 2018 award reflects the Consortium's interdisciplinary team approach to analyze child outcomes using linked administrative data.  The 2020 award reflects the Consortium's equity-driven approach by formalizing relations with lead community agencies serving black, Hispanic, and Haitian families, so as to give context to preliminary findings and shape new questions with collaborative local input.  See our Partnerships pages for more details.

The IDEAS Consortium partnered in a grant from the Miami Foundation awarded to Sant La in June 2020. The strategy reflects the Consortium's intent to utilize cross-system data to support the needs of children and to support collective efforts at the local community level. When complete, the project will pilot an application for Haitian and low-income parents, guided by the Early Learning Committee of the Together for Children initiative in the Northeast Corridor of Miami-Dade.

The partnership obtained a multi-year research grant from the federal Institute for Education Sciences beginning in 2014, in order to unite five institutions behind a strategy to give Miami-Dade a larger view of early childhood needs and potential solutions. The group surveyed child readiness for learning in public schools; linked and analyzed a dozen sets of data including administrative data from each of the partner agencies; and published research briefs (below) addressing the group’s initial shared questions.