The Early Development Instrument or EDI is a tool to measure how a community prepares children for school and where young kids may face the most challenges.
Winnebago County is one of a handful of places in the U.S. that use it. Alignment Rockford collects the EDI data every three years and recently released the latest version as an interactive map.
The EDI measures kindergartners in five areas: physical health, emotional maturity, social competence, language and cognitive skills, and communication and general knowledge.
“The data tells us how the children are doing, whether as a group by neighborhood or census tract, if they're on track, at risk or vulnerable,” said executive director Emily Klonicki. “But then what the whole suite of the tool teaches us as a community is: where are they starting from.”
Now that the data is out, she says they’re sharing it with schools and organizations who can help.
“Where are the areas," said Klonicki, "where we feel like we can double down on some things that were going well and really try to push that, expand that, or where do we need to take a real look at, is there something missing here in these neighborhoods?”
This is the third wave of data since they started in 2019, so the map shows how these vulnerabilities have changed over time in Winnebago County neighborhoods.
“This map has a lot of the darkest blue, which means a statistically significant decrease in vulnerabilities,” she said. “There's also a pretty significant, much bigger number of neighborhoods that saw a statistically significant increase in vulnerabilities as well, and they seem to be in pockets in different areas of the community. So, that is something that we have to look into too.”
The interactive map also includes other data. It has information on things like domestic violence and household income. It can be used to explore where community resources like grocery stores, parks, and hospitals are concentrated in the county.
The map allows users to overlay multiple datasets for a more complex picture. Klonicki says one example that stuck out is when they combined the EDI with data from the National Neighborhood Equity Index. It allowed them to see which neighborhoods are under or overperforming compared to the perceived barriers they face.
“We have five neighborhoods," she said, "who are really overperforming compared to the social and economic issues in their community. So, we need to go in and find out, what do we not know there?”
Klonicki says they feel like the program has been a success because it's informed several new initiatives across the county, including Winning Start Winnebago, which helps connect new families with pregnancy support and home visiting resources.
She says they’ve brought in close to $1 million worth of initiatives since the EDI began.
The latest Early Development Instrument map is on Alignment Rockford’s website.
