Program Rich and System Poor No More: Building Civic Infrastructure to Support 'Every Child. Cradle to Career'

Program Rich and System Poor No More: Building Civic Infrastructure to Support 'Every Child. Cradle to Career'

Registration is now open for Strive’s 2011 Convening

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, June 29, 2025

Byron McCauley - (513) 929-1310

Strive, the national Cradle to Career network launched in 2011, will hold its national convening in Portland, Oregon on September 15-16 at The Governor Hotel. Registration is open on the Strive Network web site.

The convening will explore how communities building a Cradle to Career civic infrastructure can identify, sustain and scale what works to support children. The Convening includes strands based on the four pillars of the Cradle to Career framework, a proven process to share expertise, identify and adapt programs that work and develop effective tools and resources that can be brought to bear on specific challenges.

“It has long been said of educational reforms that they are program rich but system poor,” said Jeff Edmondson, President of Strive. “This convening will show participants how they can begin to change that dynamic and create a successful system to improve education by focusing a community’s academic, business and civic sectors on programs of proven value.”

Since its inception in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky in 2006, communities in more than 20 states and the District of Columbia have demonstrated interest in replicating Strive’s Cradle to Career sustained-improvement approach. Recently highlighted in The New York Times and Stanford Social Innovation Review, Strive brings together community leaders to focus on its four pillar framework: Shared Community Vision; Evidence-based Decision Making; Collaborative Action; and, Investment and Sustainability.

Strive is catalyzing a national movement focused on the success of every child from cradle to career. Building on the principles of collective impact, Strive is helping communities create the civic infrastructure to unite stakeholders around shared goals, measures and results in education, and organizing a national network of cradle to career communities. Strive is a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks

KnowledgeWorks is bringing the future of learning to America’s high schools and creating widespread, lasting change in the communities and states we serve. Our portfolio of high school approaches includes New Tech Network high schools, EdWorks high school redesign, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and Early College High Schools.

To view the original release, click here.