The Challenge

All children deserve the opportunity to succeed. But it’s harder than ever to find a path out of poverty without a college education or technical training. Students from under-served communities face inequities in access to technology, cultural enrichment, the arts, and more – resulting in gaps in vocabulary, academic and social-emotional skills, creativity, and health that have a profound impact on student achievement, engagement, and individual life success.

• Under-served students are six times more likely to drop out of high school and fewer than one-third of them will enroll in college.
• Children who cannot read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma.
• A 6th grade student who misses more than 20% of class, whose teacher reports poor behavior, or who fails math or English has a 70% likelihood of dropping out.
• Students who do not have access to summer educational opportunities lose 2-3 months of academic ground during the summer months.
• As of 2017, Hartford public schools reached a graduation rate of 68.8%, still well behind the state average of 88%.
• Only 76% of under-served Connecticut high school seniors graduate from high school, and only 56% of graduates enroll in college.