Strive is a partnership of organizations who care deeply about the education of our children. Together, these partners represent all areas of our community.
We are
- the educators who teach;
- the nonprofits who support teaching and well-being;
- the philanthropies that provide financial support to both;
- the elected officials who create policy change;
- and the corporations who need a local, skilled workforce.
We believe that education
- must be holistic, because what happens outside of school is just important as what happens inside of school;
- providers must be accountable and make decisions based on data;
- is a cradle to career endeavor, and that working together is key to eliminating the “cracks” that children might fall through;
- must be fair so that every child, regardless of circumstance, can find the support they need to achieve their dreams.
With such broad partnerships and beliefs, finding an appropriate place to start was challenging. So we did our homework. By combing through extensive amounts of research, we created the Student’s Roadmap to Success, a map that lays out many of the key experiences and milestones necessary along a successful the journey of a child from cradle to career.
For EXAMPLE, did you know that recognizing the letters of the alphabet by age 4 is one of many skills necessary to be prepared for the first day of kindergarten?
But knowing where children should be developmentally is only the beginning. Where are they really? In Cincinnati, Covington and Newport we created a community report card that states what level of skills our children are at right now in various areas from cradle to career.
For EXAMPLE, we now know that in the 2007-08 school year, 55% of children who walked into a Cincinnati Public School on their first day of kindergarten were unprepared. In Covington Independent Schools, that percentage was 45%. In Newport Independent Schools, that percentage was 46%.
And while the report identified some areas of success, the overwhelming result was clear.
We have a lot of work to do.
We identified a few strategies to start with, such as early childhood education and college access and have added over a dozen more strategies since we launched. Learn more.