Media Kits

AT&T Aspire

Every 26 seconds, another American high school student drops out — 1.2 million students each year. In fact, nearly one-third of all U.S. public high school students fail to graduate — and the rate jumps to nearly one-half for African American, Hispanic and Native American students.

In addition to the personal challenges this creates, it also means too many future workers won't be prepared to compete in a rapidly changing, always-connected global marketplace. In years to come, that's a threat to continued U.S. leadership in the world economy.

To do our part to help address this issue, AT&T is launching AT&T Aspire, a $100 million philanthropic program to help strengthen student success and workforce readiness. AT&T Aspire, the largest education initiative in AT&T's history, includes four primary components:

• Grants to school districts and nonprofit organizations focused on high school retention and better preparing students for college and/or the workforce.
• Job shadowing for 100,000 students, in conjunction with Junior Achievement, giving students the chance to see firsthand the job skills they will need to be successful in the future.
• Commissioning the next chapter of major research on the high school dropout issue and solutions by directly engaging education practitioners.
• Underwriting Dropout Prevention summits, organized by America's Promise Alliance, that will explore the high school dropout crisis and ways to address it.

"This initiative is our commitment to helping the next generation aspire to do great things. Investing in a well-educated workforce may be the single most important thing we can do to help America remain the leader in a digital, global economy."

— Randall Stephenson,
AT&T Chairman and CEO