Abstract
In 2008, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in partnership with the Nellie Mae Foundation, funded the Postsecondary Success Initiative (PSS), an ambitious multi‐site effort to develop new pathways to and through postsecondary education for what have come to be known as “Opportunity Youth” – low‐income youth who had dropped out of the traditional education process without a high school diploma or who faced significant barriers to further education and success in the labor market. Nationally, an estimated 6.7 million youth aged 16‐24 are in this group. Of those, it is estimated that 1% will have completed a postsecondary degree by age 28.
The PSS initiative provided grants to 15 local community‐based organizations (CBOs) to develop partnerships with area community colleges that would enable formerly disconnected youth to acquire a high school diploma or GED or needed academic skills, make the transition into postsecondary education or training, and persist through to graduation. The grants to local programs were made through two national program partners ‐‐ YouthBuild USA and the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC) ‐‐ who served as vital program intermediaries, selecting sites, providing training and technical assistance for the local programs, and monitoring the progress of the effort as a whole. A third partner, Jobs for the Future (JFF), in turn supported the national partners and sites through research on promising practices, the development of service‐delivery models, support for the design of cross‐site training, and management of a leadership group that coordinated the overall initiative and served as advocates for the broad program approach. Brandeis University’s Center for Youth and Communities served as the Initiative’s evaluation partner.