The problem
Children spend 75% of their waking hours outside of the classroom, yet our nation does shockingly little to capture educational value from this time for low-income kids. All too often, our system treats their families as liabilities, rather than as assets.
The achievement gap
Students in under-resourced communities lack continuous access to learning at home and school, resulting in slow progress during the school year and chronic regressions over the summer. Research finds that two-thirds of the achievement gap among high school students is attributable to summer learning loss in elementary school. This is symptomatic of an underlying challenge: schools struggle to bring low-income parents into the process of educating their kids.
Connecting the dots from elementary school to adulthood tells a sobering story…
13x dropout
A low-income student who cannot read on grade level by 4th grade is 13 times more likely to drop out of high school than his or her middle-income, proficiently reading peer.
9% college
Nationally, only 17% of low-income 4th graders are reading proficiently; not coincidentally, only 9% earn a college degree.
14% poverty
A McKinsey & Company report found that the achievement gap is costing the US economy $300-500 billion each year, the equivalent of a permanent national recession. Alongside this economic imperative is an ideological one: America cannot deliver on its promise as the land of opportunity while the achievement gap persists. With the US losing its global competitive edge—and the American dream in peril—we can’t afford not to solve this problem. What’s more, we can solve it by better leveraging the people and assets already in every school community.
Next: Our methodology
