Cradle to Career

Quality Benchmarks for Cradle to Career Collective Impact

April 23, 2026

When the Collective Impact article appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review back in early 2011, our phones began ringing off the hook with communities wanting to learn more about the work of building cradle to career civic infrastructure. Thanks to support from Living Cities we had already worked to capture lessons and work with other [...]

Share
Read the full article →

The Challenge of Funding the Backbone

March 4, 2026

As we work with sites across the country to build cradle to career civic infrastructure, we are learning a great deal about how communities are overcoming both the adaptive issues that are so fundamentally critical for changing culture to align limited resources and the technical solutions for improving supports for children on the ground. Perhaps [...]

Share
Read the full article →

We Can’t Be Program Rich and System Poor

January 24, 2026

Jeff Edmondson, Managing Director of Strive, is guest blogging for Forbes about how we can make smarter social investments. In the second post of this series, he shares how we cannot program our way to better educational outcomes for students. To read the full blog post click here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2013/01/24/make-smarter-social-investments-we-cant-be-program-rich-and-system-poor/    

Share
Read the full article →

Pushing High Achieving, Low Income Students to Competitive Colleges is Critical

December 19, 2025

A new study by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University and Christopher Avery of Harvard University highlights how low income students with high academic ability never apply to a single competitive college. We need to be sure that the high achieving, low income students in our high schools are being encouraged to apply to competitive colleges. [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Head Start Report Recommendations Aligned with Cradle to Career Collective Impact

December 5, 2025

The Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation, established two years ago, recently released an outstanding final report containing recommendations for the future of the federal Head Start and Early Head Start programs. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius lays out 3 broad recommendations: a data-driven focus on school readiness and [...]

Share
Read the full article →

What If We Invested As Much Analysis In Our Kids As We Do Our Stocks?

November 19, 2025

Jeff Edmondson, Managing Director of Strive, is guest blogging for Forbes about how we can make smarter social investments. In the first post of this series, he shares the idea behind Strive and building the cradle to career civic infrastructure needed to make disciplined decisions about the investment of precious educational resources. To read the full [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Strive and Promise Neighborhoods release Strategies for Alignment

October 4, 2025

Strive and the Promise Neighborhoods Institute have recently released a white paper on strategies for aligning these two education efforts in communities across the country. The paper explores the similarities and differences between these two initiatives, offers a visualization of what alignment could look like, outlines the potential benefits for both efforts, and then delves into [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Highlights from Day Two of the Cradle to Career Convening

September 28, 2025

As the last day of the 2012 Cradle to Career convening comes to a close, I wanted to share some second day highlights: In the breakfast plenary, Reba Dominski of Target, Stacey Stewart of United Way Worldwide, and Michael Robbins of the USDoE spoke about how the business community uses data to impact practice, and [...]

Share
Read the full article →

The 2012 Cradle to Career Convening Begins Tomorrow!

September 26, 2025

As we are drawing near this year’s Cradle to Career Network Convening, we are once again energized by the interest and excitement around this work. With participants from 62 communities in 32 states, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, we are certainly looking forward to the diversity of topics and perspectives that will be shared [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Cincinnati’s Collective Impact Efforts recognized by Education Nation

September 25, 2025

Cincinnati’s efforts to improve academic achievement in the region’s urban core received recognition this past weekend by NBC’s Education Nation. Highlighted by NBC are the many improvements seen throughout the community, including a nine percent increase in kids ready to enter kindergarten and a 24 percent increase in eighth grade math scores. NBC’s story talked [...]

Share
Read the full article →

← Previous Entries