Fund for Educational Excellence
Project Title
For core support of Grads2Careers
Date
Jun. 06, 2024
Duration
15 months
Description
Grads2Careers (G2C) was established through collaboration prompted by a 2017 study tracking 4,280 Baltimore City Public Schools graduates. The study revealed issues like a 26 percentrate of opportunity youth with low incomes, racial and gender disparities in college degree attainment, and 29 percentof young residents living in poverty. G2C addresses these challenges by providing career-track opportunities for recent City Schools graduates, emphasizing wraparound support services, centralized recruitment and testing, and summer academic acceleration. G2C’s commitment to rigorous learning involves continuous improvement, evaluations, and feedback loops. Despite challenges, G2C achieved remarkable success in Phase I, enrolling 536 youth, transitioning to virtual training amid COVID-19, and raising median annual income for completers by over $10,000 compared to 2009 graduates. Phase II addressed recruitment and testing issues, adopting Salesforce, and diversifying funding sources. Key learnings include overcoming data sharing challenges, prioritizing instructor quality, and integrating early career readiness into Summer Prep. G2C aims for sustainable, system-level change, demonstrated through successful outcomes for youth in Baltimore City. Support for this work comes through the Education Programs Profiles in Collective Leadership initiative, which seeks to support organizations that are delivering learning opportunities that consistently put young people on a path to thriving futures and engaged citizenship.