President Obama joins America's Promise Alliance Grad Nation campaign announcement
3/5/2010
By Caroline Brachman & Cynthia Hobgood
On March 1, 2010, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Washington, DC, America’s Promise Alliance (the Alliance) publicly unveiled the next phase of our successful two-year Dropout Prevention Campaign – called the Grad Nation Campaign: Mobilizing America to End the Dropout Crisis. The announcement was part of a larger education event that Alliance Chair Alma Powell and Founding Chair Gen. Colin Powell participated in with President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to discuss strengthening our schools so the United States can once again become the world’s leader in college graduates.
“This is a problem we cannot afford to accept and we cannot afford to ignore,” said President Obama, at the Grad Nation event. “The stakes are too high -- for our children, for our economy, and for our country. It's time for all of us to come together -- parents, students, principals and teachers, business leaders and elected officials from across the political spectrum -- to end America's dropout crisis.”
Grad Nation will place a specific focus on supporting the communities that are home to the nation’s 2,000 lowest-performing high schools, which account for approximately 50 percent of all dropouts. The Campaign will advocate for programs and policies that help both prevent dropout and bring back those students who have already left school.
“Just 12 percent of our high schools account for half of all dropouts,” said Alma Powell, chair, America’s Promise Alliance. “Through our national Alliance partners and their networks of local affiliates, we are harnessing the power of community partnerships in places where the need and potential impact are greatest.”
Patrick Breton, a YouthBuild Brockton graduate and a member of Alliance Partner, YouthBuild USA's advisory board for education, was chosen to introduce Gen. Powell. Breton told his story of dropping out of high school and finding himself making questionable decisions and in “deadend” jobs until he starting taking part in YouthBuild, which he credits for connecting him with caring adults that helped transform his life. Breton earned his GED and is now attending college.
Gen. Powell acknowledged the work of the Alliance that began in 1997, when he was chair, and the importance of ongoing efforts. The work of the Grad Nation Campaign centers on the goal of ensuring that 90 percent of today’s fourth graders graduate high school on time. To help achieve this goal, the Alliance is seeking to engage a broad cross-sector of organizations and corporations to work together to improve outcomes for young people, especially in communities where the need is the greatest.
“I want to ask you to continue to do your part in this noble effort we are involved in,” said Gen. Powell. “We want to make sure that in the years ahead, we can look at this event as one of the changing events – one of the transformational events – in our education and youth programs by starting to put us on a path to be a Grad Nation, a nation of graduates. We don’t do it just because it’s the moral thing to do, which it is,” said Gen. Powell. “We do it for our economic future and our future security. We 300 million Americans, in a world of 6.8 billion people, cannot afford to lose a single youngster. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves.”
To read more about the Alliance’s Grad Nation Campaign and ways to get involved, visit
http://www.americaspromise.org/Our-Work/Dropout-Prevention/Grad-Nation-Campaign.aspx
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To view pictures, articles and media clips from the March 1 event and about our Grad Nation Campaign, visit these links:
