Our Approach

Helping every child reach his or her full potential drives all our efforts to improve results from cradle to career. The current education system is failing U.S. students:

• Internationally, American students lag far behind most of their foreign peers.
• One in four high school students fails to graduate on time.
• Only about one in two college students earns a diploma.

No single program can solve these problems. That’s why StriveTogether communities bring together a wide range of groups that are committed to student success — not just families and teachers, but also businesses, civic organizations, nonprofits and investors. These cross-sector partners adopt common goals and expand on best practices for their local community. Our nationally recognized collective impact framework guides community partner progress to improve outcomes and expand opportunities for every child through guiding principles and a continuum of quality benchmarks. Partners commit to a shared community vision and hold each other accountable for getting results.

StriveTogether communities collect and share data annually on the progress they are making on at least six cradle-to-career goals. They use local data to identify gaps by race, gender and other demographics to understand the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable students.

Partnerships use these findings as evidence to make decisions in real time, improve and scale practices and target resources to support what works. In short, data gives StriveTogether communities the insight and information to make smarter investments in the success of every child, cradle to career.

As part of StriveTogether’s new strategic plan, communities will work toward better results and close gaps through stronger collaboration among traditional school systems, education-focused service organizations and other sectors, such as housing and health. With more communities accelerating progress in changing systems and improving outcomes, we will collectively move toward achieving our ultimate goal of supporting the success of every child, cradle to career.