Supporting Metro Atlanta Students: Stronger K-12 Schools for Brighter Futures

Even while school is out for summer, education remains top of mind at the Community Foundation. This month, we’re spotlighting our role in metro Atlanta’s education ecosystem—as a funder, founder, convener, and partner to exceptional nonprofits working to expand opportunity and help students build brighter futures.

In this month’s feature, we’re highlighting two long-standing partners: RedefinED Atlanta and Learn4Life.

Over the last decade, these organizations have remained close partners of the Community Foundation. Through operational support, we help them focus more time and resources on impact—serving as an incubator for critical community organizations that strengthen the region.

RedefinED Atlanta: A Public Education Ecosystem That Works for Every Student

Following a series of community-driven conversations about the future of Atlanta’s schools, RedefinED Atlanta was founded in 2016 out of a clear and urgent challenge: too many students lacked access to a high-quality public education, and too often, a child’s zip code determined their future opportunities.

RedefinED works to level the playing field in K-12 public education by engaging communities, advancing equity, bringing innovative partners to the region, and funding critical work. Since 2016, the organization has raised and infused more than $75 million into the metro Atlanta public education ecosystem. And as an education insight leader, the organization uses data, community voice, and cross-sector partnerships to help more students access excellent schools.

Its 2026-2028 strategic plan focuses on four priorities:

• Advancing system improvement: Improving the conditions that support student success, from talent and governance to school support and community alignment.
  
  Proof point: RedefinED helped bring Relay (GSE) to Georgia to support teacher and leader training for Atlanta Public Schools. Since 2018, the program has trained more than 250 teachers and 40 APS school leaders, with 100+ more teachers added annually.
  
  
• Launching and growing trajectory-changing public schools: Expanding access to high-quality district, charter, and innovation schools that help more students succeed.
  
  Proof point: RedefinED is helping launch AIM, a proposed public charter school in partnership with Grady Health System that will serve 850 students in grades 6–12 and provide direct pathways to healthcare careers.
  
  
• Elevating insights and galvanizing around best practices: Turning data and community knowledge into action by identifying what works and helping stakeholders act on it.
  
  Proof point: The Atlanta Schools Data Project brings together key information about local schools in an accessible format, helping metro Atlanta families, education leaders, and community members ask questions, get answers, and take action.
  
  
• Investing and activating: Mobilizing funding, partnerships, and coordinated action to accelerate student success and sustain long-term change.
  
  Proof point: RedefinED provided the funding that supported APS’s strategic plan and the development of its Goals and Guardrails policy—setting measurable targets, ensuring community voice, and advancing equity and accountability to drive lasting, student-centered improvement.

Before she joined the team here at the Community Foundation, Vice President of Community Impact Ayana Gabriel-Turner was a founding board member of RedefinED and remains involved as a volunteer leader. As a former teacher, seeing the organization’s impact over the last decade is especially meaningful to her: “There has to be someone beyond the classroom, beyond the school, and beyond the district who is going to dedicate resources, expertise, and the rigor of best practices to make our schools what they need to be. In Atlanta, that’s RedefinED. Seeing the impact of this organization is, for me, truly full circle.”

At its core, RedefinED Atlanta is working to rewrite the story of educational opportunity in metro Atlanta—so that every student in every Atlanta community receives a great K-12 education.

Learn4Life: Scaling What Works Across Metro Atlanta

There are pockets of excellence in metro Atlanta, but because of the size and complexity of the region, too many students lack access to programs and strategies that can improve their educational outcomes.

That’s why in 2016 the Community Foundation partnered with the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and the United Way of Greater Atlanta to launch Learn4Life (L4L), the Metro Atlanta Regional Education Partnership.

Learn4Life concentrates on improving student progress across the cradle-to-career continuum—from early learning through postsecondary success—in metro Atlanta’s five core counties, which include eight school systems. Together, these systems serve more than 600,000 students, most of whom are low-income students and students of color.

To do this work, L4L convenes cross-sector partners into Change Action Networks. These networks study local data, identify the factors most predictive of student success, and uncover “Bright Spots”—ten strategies producing exceptional results for traditionally underserved students. L4L then helps scale those strategies across the region so more underrepresented students can reach their full potential.

Bright Spot(light): The Atlanta Vision Project

Vision care is an essential first step in teaching children to read. Yet many children across metro Atlanta have not had access to this critical service. Since 2017, L4L has partnered with Vision To Learn to support its expansion throughout metro Atlanta, helping provide more than 50,000 pairs of glasses to local students. From 2025-2028, with added partnerships from Lions Lighthouse and Prevent Blindness Georgia, L4L has launched the Atlanta Vision Project, which will provide a free pair of glasses to any student in the region in need. The Project will screen 165,000 children across 270 elementary schools, providing 57,000 eye exams and 47,000 pairs of glasses.

L4L is guided by a Leadership Council is composed of the region’s superintendents, together with influential business, civic, nonprofit, and higher education leaders, who help set the strategic direction for the organization. Their leadership shape L4L’s priorities, strengthens cross-sector collaboration, and mobilizes the partnerships and resources needed to drive meaningful, system-level change for the students and communities of metro Atlanta.

Each year, L4L reports on the region’s educational promise, creating a clear call to action for improving outcomes for the 600,000 students in our region. You can explore persistent barriers to better outcomes and bright spots having an impact in L4L’s 2025 State of Education in Metro Atlanta Annual Report.

Together, RedefinED Atlanta and Learn4Life show what becomes possible when communities align around student success. Through partnership, shared data, strong schools, and coordinated action, metro Atlanta can build a more equitable education ecosystem—one where every student has the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive.