AT&T Aspire

"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

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.

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