The Strive Partnership is focused on the success of our children: every child, every step, from cradle to career. The Strive Partnership unites common providers around shared issues, goals, measurements and results, and then actively supports and strengthens strategies that work.
Journey To Success
The Partnership
We are:
Every Child, Every Step of the Way, From Cradle to Career
Education is perhaps the most important engine of economic growth and individual success. There is little doubt that growing a stronger economy and lifting incomes will depend on getting better results in education, cradle to career. To achieve these results, for every child, every step of the way, from cradle to career, Greater Cincinnati leaders of the education, nonprofit, community, civic, and philanthropic sectors are working together to tackle some of our most pressing challenges, and to take advantage of some of our biggest opportunities.
The Strive Partnership serves as a catalyst for working together, across sectors, and along the educational continuum, to drive better results in education, so that every child is Prepared for school, is Supported inside and outside of school, Succeeds in school, Enrolls in some form of postsecondary education, Graduates and enters a career. After three years of reporting on ten key student success indicators in the Partnership’s footprint (Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport), we are now rallied around eight critical outcomes: kindergarten readiness, 4th grade reading proficiency, 8th grade math proficiency, high school graduation rates and ACT scores, and postsecondary enrollment, retention and completion.
These eight outcomes drive the collective work of The Strive Partnership. the Partnership has identified the following strategic priority areas:
• Early Childhood Education: Led by United Way of Greater Cincinnati and Success By 6 ®, partners are coming together to invest in what works to prepare children for kindergarten.
• Teacher and Principal Excellence: Organized by the Partnership, we are better aligning efforts to make our region the destination for excellence in urban teaching and school leadership by improving educator preparation, induction, and career support.
• Linking Community Supports to Student Achievement: This “collective-impact” approach brings together nonprofits and school leaders to leverage nonprofit services to improve achievement.
• Postsecondary Access and Success: This collective effort is better leveraging local resources and building capacity to increase postsecondary access and success. Keys to the Partnership’s work, from early childhood success to postsecondary attainment, is a commitment to aligning advocacy and funding efforts across the Partnership along with promoting the effective use of data. The following areas serve as key supporting strategies:
• Advocacy and Funding Alignment: Partners have developed a “cradle to career” state policy agenda, and have begun to coordinate advocacy efforts. The Partnership is also supporting the Social Innovation Fund, which involves fifteen local funders investing together around what works.
• Promoting Data-Informed Decision- Making: To promote a shared commitment to data-informed decision-making, we track, publish, and post education results, offer continuous improvement training, and support the development of a regional data portal and the expansion of the Learning Partner Dashboard. To measure its success, the Partnership will track progress relative to its ability to align resources around what works, improvement on the eight indicators of student success, and key value judgments from our partners.