Above: Kelly, left, as a child with her family, looking forward to a vacation in Hawaii. Why All Hands Raised is challenging how educators think about skilled trade professions I still vividly recall the heart-to-heart conversation my father had with me long ago about college. He never went to college or graduated from high school.…
“Trust comes from truth telling,” Hanh Cao Yu from the California Endowment said from the plenary stage at the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Learning Conference last week in Seattle. Her words rang true from multiple perspectives. As I’ve learned in my work with communities across the country applying StriveTogether’s collaborative improvement approach, one of the most…
Guest post by Jon McGoh, co-founder and a trustee at Reach Academy in Feltham, England. For three weeks this spring, I was fortunate enough to tour the U.S. visiting a variety of cradle-to-career initiatives on a Winston Churchill Fellowship. The Fellowship enables UK citizens to travel the world looking at innovative solutions to the world’s…
I showed up on StriveTogether’s doorstep as a social worker. I knew I wanted to support organizations to do better for kids and families, but I didn’t know how important a human services orientation would be in the work we do with our Cradle to Career Network every day. And now, which likely comes as…
Last summer I got an email from David Brooks of The New York Times. He had heard about StriveTogether’s approach to building community-based partnerships and wanted to visit our partners in Spartanburg to see the approach in action. After spending an afternoon with Spartanburg Academic Movement, he reached back out to me to talk about…
Written and illustrated by Connor Johns, graphic design intern at StriveTogether. In the past 15-20 years, we have heard the words “innovation” and “design thinking” thrown around a lot in the corporate world. But what do these words really mean? How do they work in the nonprofit field? I’m a graphic designer and did not…
Guest post by Melissa McCoy for StriveTogether. The data is stark: Our schools are not preparing every student to succeed in life. Seeking change, educators try programs and initiatives to improve outcomes for kids. These reform efforts often treat students the same, using widespread, one-size-fits-all approaches. But each student is unique and a few solutions…
What happens when you bring together people from across the country who want the best for every child in their communities? If you’re familiar with StriveTogether, you’re probably familiar with this question: What does StriveTogether really do? I get this question all the time, every week, and have for six years. It never gets…
Earlier this month, I moderated a panel discussion, “Promise Neighborhoods at 10 Years Old,” at the Yale School of Management’s 2019 Education Leadership Conference. Promise Neighborhoods communities share our belief that every child should have the opportunity to succeed in school and in life, regardless of race, zip code or circumstance. The purpose of Promise…
We have provided a roadmap for communities seeking to support the success of every child from cradle to career since 2013. The StriveTogether Theory of Action™ is our proven blueprint for getting better results for kids and families in nearly 70 communities across the country. Through this framework, we help our partners define and measure…
Making systems more equitable is hard. It presents endless challenges with no known solutions. In the face of these challenges, imagine having a step-by-step process and tools to give you insight, clarity and early wins to show that your strategies are working. Through improvement science, that vision can be reality. I’m not saying that using…
In Salt Lake City, Utah, school staff and community partners are using improvement science to get better outcomes for kids and families. This week, I’m joining Tyler Asman from United Way of Salt Lake to share the story of this work at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education. The story started two years…