Promise Neighborhood Site Profile: Northside Achievement Zone

The Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) serves a contiguous 13-by-18-block area in North Minneapolis, selected because it encompasses a region with the highest concentration of negative indicators related to poverty, violence, and low educational achievement in the area. More than a third of NAZ residents (36 percent) live in households with incomes below the federal poverty level. Public schools in the Zone identified 25 percent of students as homeless or highly mobile during the 2008–2009 year. In 2010, just 29 percent of children entering kindergarten living in and near the Zone met literacy benchmarks on tests of kindergarten readiness.