Education Impact Area: what did we learn in 2016?

In 2016, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta launched Impact Areas with measurable objectives as a way to focus our financial, partnership and advocacy investments in the Atlanta region. As a starting point for future trend analysis, we have created an Impact Area dashboard that captures baseline values. The following narrative, drafted by Lesley Grady, our Education Impact Area lead, provides analysis and commentary of that data. The full set of metrics, in addition to all demographic and socioeconomic variables, can be found on the Foundation’s dashboard.

Education
Lesley Grady, senior vice president, community

In metro Atlanta, too many students are not achieving the academic success needed to thrive in work and life. Educational attainment, particularly high school graduation, has been shown to predict health, mortality, teen childbearing, marital outcomes and crime.

Metro Atlanta’s educational challenges are even bleaker for students from minority populations and students living in poverty. Even when these students have high academic potential and performance, they are statistically less likely to have access to quality early and K12 education and less likely to enroll in and complete certification beyond high school. The baseline data for the Foundation’s education metrics indicate that nine of the ten largest school systems in the Foundation’s 23-county service area graduate less than 80% of their students. This is compared to a state average graduation rate of 78.8%. This is not unusual of large urban school systems serving high numbers of students in densely populated areas. These systems typically have high concentrations of poverty, greater racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity, and frequent rates of student mobility.

For metro Atlanta students who graduated from high school in 2015, more than half or 51% did not enroll in post-secondary education. Further, projections based on 2010 data indicates that of students who do enroll in post-secondary education immediately after graduation, only 30% will earn a degree or certificate within five years. The two major reasons for this low completion rate are inadequate academic preparation and a lack of financial resources for tuition and other basic needs. For students from low income families, this may be exacerbated by limited community support systems.

The Foundation will help students graduate from high school and complete post-secondary education by building coalitions across the philanthropic, business, educational and civic sectors, and encouraging investment in students from public and private sources.