The Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children advances science, implementation, and innovation to promote healthy child and youth development, learning, and thriving.
The Center supports applied research and evaluation to uncover and better understand the impacts of programs, policies, and practices that hold promise for bettering the lives of young people through systemic change.
We support the development, implementation, and refinement of best practice for educators, programs, schools, and agencies interested in more effectively addressing the complex needs and strengths of children and families. The Center is an incubator for collaborations between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.
We translate knowledge to inform policies, budgets, and practices at scale.
We pursue new frontiers so that every child can receive supports and opportunities that promote healthy development, learning, and thriving.
City Connects
All children deserve a chance to learn, but many face obstacles too steep for them to climb alone. City Connects builds a network of support for students, their families, and the schools that serve them, improving outcomes now—and for years to come.
Resources for professionals
Practitioners
Through City Connects, the S3 Academy, custom consultations, and our action guides and practice briefs, the Center helps schools, districts, and early childhood programs improve their approach to student support/family engagement.
Researchers
Our research aims to improve understanding of effective approaches to student support by leveraging scientific advances and cutting edge methodologies capable of analyzing the impact of complex, comprehensive interventions.
Policymakers
The Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children develops policy briefs, toolkits, and impact summaries for legislative leaders throughout the country who are advancing integrated student support policy and practice.
Our Most Recent Publications and Reports
Select publications and reports
Building Systems of Integrated Student Support
Federal Policy Brief
This brief distills insights from the sciences and lessons learned from practitioners to provide leaders at the federal level with policy recommendations and guidance to advance effective systems of integrated student support that transform disjointed and siloed resources for children, youth, and families into a coherent and potent system that supports healthy child development and learning.
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Effects of the Pandemic on Students, Familes, and School Staff in 2020
Research Brief
As schools reopened for remote, hybrid, or in-person learning in Fall 2020, what student needs arose, intensified, or persisted? As schools reopen in Fall 2021, how might we learn from education stakeholders' needs and challenges from Fall 2020? How might evidence-based approaches help?
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City Connects: Intervention & Impact
Progress Report 2020
The studies described in this report reveal the many and varied positive outcomes resulting from the intervention. Across a wide age span, and on varied outcomes, findings confirm the power of integrated and systemic student support -- specifically, the City Connects intervention -- to enhance opportunity and life chances for schoolchildren living in poverty.
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The Whole Child
Building Systems of Integrated Student Support During and After Covid-19
This guide also draws on the sciences of child development and learning, and field-tested, evidence-based approaches to 'wraparound' student support to offer practical steps to build a more resilient school community, and more resilient students, through development of a system of integrated student support.
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The Impacts of City Connects on Student Outcomes
Students who received City Connects in elementary school (grades K-5) demonstrated on the 8th grade statewide test that theyclosed about two-thirds of achievement gaps in Math, and half of the achievement gap in English Language Arts comparedto their peers who did not receive City Connects support in elementary school.
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