Citizenship and Sustainability

AT&T High School Success
Special Grants Program

In 2008, AT&T and the AT&T Foundation announced the recipients of over $29 million in high school success grants. This competitive grants program was designed to provide funding to local programs focused on high school success for at-risk students.

The 172 recipient programs of the High School Success grants are spread across 36 states and provide a range of support for students, including academic intervention, academic coaching and mentoring, and tutoring services focused on improving reading and math skills, reducing truancy, building teen confidence and preparing students for the transition to high school. The recipient programs are managed by a variety of non-profit organizations, school districts, townships, and Urban Leagues.

The primary focus was project support to existing high school retention programs with a successful track record of achieving effective results ($50,000-$100,000 per year for up to four years). There was also a secondary focus on planning/capacity-building support for communities that are serious about enacting remediation, but need additional planning time and resources ($25,000-$35,000 for one year).

The AT&T Foundation grants are a part of the company’s signature initiative, AT&T Aspire, announced in the spring of 2008 to help address high school success and workforce readiness. AT&T has committed $100 million in philanthropy through 2011 to schools and nonprofit organizations focused on high school retention and better preparing students for college and the workforce.

View the complete list of 2008 AT&T High School Success Grants recipients.

In 2009, we look forward to reaching out directly to additional schools and organizations to continue to address high school success and workforce readiness.

About AT&T Aspire

Each year, almost a third of all public high school students fail to graduate. When compared with high school graduates, dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, living in poverty, in poor health or even incarcerated. This issue also has significant long-term implications for workforce readiness and continued U.S. leadership in the global economy. Students unprepared to enter college cost the U.S. economy more than $3.7 billion annually in lost earnings and remedial education costs.

The AT&T Aspire program supports educators -- whose passion and commitment help students succeed each and every day. Working together, we will help students make the connection between education and future life success.

AT&T Aspire is a $100 million initiative focused specifically on high school success and workforce readiness. The program has four primary components:

• Grants to schools and nonprofits that help students stay in school and prepare for college or the workforce.
• A job-shadowing program involving 400,000 employee hours for 100,000 students throughout five years, giving those students a chance to see firsthand the types of job skills they will need to be successful in the future.
• Helping to fund 100 community dropout prevention summits, which are being organized by America’s Promise Alliance across all 50 states to engage education experts and community leaders around the crisis and ways to address it.
• In partnership with America’s Promise, commissioned major national research by John Bridgeland following on his landmark study “The Silent Epidemic,” which focused on the dropout perspective, and “One Dream, Two Realities,” which focused on the parent perspective. This new study, “On the Front Lines of Schools,” garners the practitioner perspective (teachers, principals, superintendents, and school board members) and rounds out the reports, which together represent key voices in the dropout debate – students, parents and now, teachers.This program is AT&T’s most significant education initiative to date and one of the largest ever corporate commitments to address the specific issues of high school success and workforce readiness.