Critical Opportunities at a Critical Time

All children have a right to a quality education, but not all children receive one. In any city, residents and policymakers can easily identify the riskiest neighborhoods and schools — the ones in which students must overcome the greatest obstacles to learning.

Higher Achievement works in communities in which students are 10 times more likely to drop out of high school than are their peers in more affluent communities.

We give middle school students from these at-risk communities critical opportunities at a critical time. Higher Achievement intervenes right before the transition to middle school, lowering the risk of failure at the time when this risk typically increases. Our comprehensive program gives students the tools, training, and support they need to view education — both a high school diploma and a postsecondary degree — as a valuable, essential, attainable goal.

Why Middle School?

For all students, middle school is a time of extraordinary challenge. Students experience significant social and emotional changes as academic expectations increase. On average, grades and test scores plummet during the transition to middle school and continue to decline through 8th grade. Schools become more dangerous places, and students become more likely to disengage from family, experiment with unhealthy behaviors, and devalue education.

The challenges of middle school are exacerbated in at-risk communities, where students are more likely to lack quality schools, quality out-of-school-time activities, and positive role models — and where they are more likely to be surrounded by poverty, to encounter violence and gangs in their neighborhoods and schools, and to face significant barriers to learning.