AT&T Aspire Success Stories
- Denver Kids Inc.
- Louisiana State Youth Opportunities Unlimited
- Jobs for America's Graduates - DC, Inc.
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AT&T Aspire Success Story: Denver Kids Inc.
In 2008, AT&T provided a $400,000 multi-year grant to Denver Kids, Inc., a preventive counseling and mentoring program. Once a student has entered the program, Denver Kids supports the child throughout his or her high school career through graduation. One such student is Doncey. Doncey failed all of his freshman classes, and experienced significant family challenges, including safety and mental health issues. Doncey's Denver Kids counselor found a more suitable, smaller school and created a tailored plan. Doncey and his counselor created a tailored plan so he could boast of a 3.4 GPA at the time of his graduation.
Eighty percent of Denver Kids' high school graduates attended college in 2009. In May 2009, 88 percent of Denver Kids' eligible seniors graduated from high school.
Denver Kids student, Doncey, posing at graduation with the mentors who helped him through a successful high school career.
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AT&T Aspire Success Story: Louisiana State Youth Opportunities Unlimited
The AT&T Foundation has agreed to contribute nearly $375,000 from 2008 to 2011 to the Louisiana State Youth Opportunities Unlimited (LSYOU), a case-managed dropout prevention program for at-risk students that provides them with long-term, relationship-based strategies designed to foster academic achievement and workforce readiness. The students served were all displaced by Hurricane Katrina, many of whom missed an entire year of school.
"The lessons that we learned [in the summer classes] have helped me out a lot in school as far as my attitude and behavior. I am getting better grades because I am able to get the help I need at tutoring. I understand my math class better now since I got help in division...I know my grades will be better... I will probably even attend college somewhere." – S, 9th grade student in New Orleans
Of students who exited the four-year LSYOU program in September 2009, 79 percent graduated as compared to 50 percent of students with similar characteristics in urban inner city schools.
LSYOU students spend a summer in residence at Louisiana State University.
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AT&T Aspire Success Story: Jobs for America's Graduates - DC, Inc.
Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) - DC received a four-year $360,000 grant to serve Ballou Senior High School in Washington, DC. Students at Ballou come from neighborhoods challenged by many financial and family issues. Students learn why completing high school is essential for employment and the character traits that are valuable in the work place.
"If I see students interested in JAG and not sure if they want to take the class, I would tell them to definitely take the class…if you are struggling and in a bad time in your life, the class could help and inspire you." — DJ, 10th grade student at Ballou Senior High School
Ninety percent of JAG DC graduates left the program with either a job, post-secondary enrollment or full-time military plans. As of now, all of the students in the JAG DC program at Ballou have stayed in school — not one has dropped out.
JAG student Jasmine Lee met with D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton to learn about life and work in the legislature.
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Nearly one out of three public high school students do not graduate with their class. 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. To respond to the drop-out crisis, in 2008, we launched AT&T Aspire, a $100 million philanthropic program designed to focus on the high school drop-out crisis. It's the biggest and most significant investment in education in our company's history, and it represents a shift in our philanthropic spending to focus on this topic. In 2009, we made progress on four Aspire programs launched in 2008.
- Grants to local schools and nonprofit organizations: Eighty-two local community programs initially funded in 2008 completed their first round of our evaluation process in 2009. We found that grantees faced significant obstacles in obtaining and reporting comprehensive student progress data to our independent evaluator. In 2010, we are enhancing the evaluation process to include additional data collection and reporting capacity-building training to help organizations demonstrate the effectiveness of their interventions to AT&T and others through measurable changes in student progress.
- Job shadowing initiative with Junior Achievement (JA): The job shadowing initiative by the end of 2009 had reached more than 23,000 students in more than 200 cities. By summer of 2013, this program is planned to have provided 100,000 students with the opportunity to learn more about career options and what it takes to be successful in today's workforce.
- Underwriting of national research: We funded research that explored practitioners' perspectives (i.e., teachers, principals, superintendents, school counselors and school board members) on the high school drop-out issue. AT&T worked closely with John Bridgeland of Civic Enterprises, Hart Research and America's Promise Alliance to publish the report, "On the Front Lines of Schools," available at http://www.civicenterprises.net/pdfs/frontlines.pdf. Following the launch of the report in June 2009, the Aspire program underwrote follow-up face-to-face focus groups by Civic Enterprises and Peter Hart Research, involving teachers, parents and students to help facilitate and address communication gaps among these critical groups.
On March 8, 2010, AT&T announced the results of a new report, Raising Their Voices: Engaging Students, Teachers, and Parents to Help End the High School Dropout Epidemic, addressing the high school dropout epidemic from the perspective of students, teachers, and parents. The report is the fourth in a series of ground-breaking studies by Civic Enterprises and Peter Hart Research with America's Promise Alliance that examines the causes of the dropout crisis, while working to identify solutions. Click to view the toolkit.
- Support for 100 state and community Drop-out Prevention Summits: Organized by America's Promise Alliance, these summits were convened to explore the high school drop-out crisis and ways to address it. As of the end of 2009, 27,000 stakeholders in 44 states participated in 84 summits in 46 cities. Each community has produced its own action plan, with tactics to ensure continued focus on resolving the underlying issues.
In 2009, we continued to expand Aspire, funding several additional major programs:
- Connecting high school students with the Roadtrip Nation Experience, an interactive curriculum that uses multi-media course work designed to facilitate self-discovery, inspiring students to take the educational steps required to identify and achieve their career goals
- Launching the Family Engagement for High School Success Program with United Way Worldwide, designed to help parents and other adult caregivers get more involved in their children's education
- Sponsoring Get Schooled, a national platform that connects, inspires and mobilizes people — from policymakers and corporate leaders to communities and kids — to find effective solutions to the problems facing America's education system.
This year AT&T has also partnered with the National Urban League's Centennial campaign, "I Am Empowered." AT&T has joined with the League and its 100 affiliates across the country, asking Americans to pledge their time and talent to ensure that by 2025, every American child is ready for college, work and life.
AT&T Aspire will continue to work together with educators, parents, organizations and government to be a catalyst for change on this issue.
To learn more about our AT&T Aspire initiative, visit www.att.com/education-news
