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An aspect touched upon by our President in last week’s State of Union address last week is about whether we are willing to give every child in our country a chance to be successful. Is this a question of whether we will or how are we going to? Well, I believe it is the latter.

In order to raise graduation rates and test scores, there is enhanced effort by the government, civic leaders and educators. Such massive effort should yield results fast but is not. Is there a reason behind this? There certainly is. The only reason why large scale efforts like this fail is because there is no rallying of stakeholders around a common goal achievement agenda.

The goal is massive and any individual effort definitely falls short. It is imperative to provide every child with high quality education through our collective efforts and reach out to every single student.
Education is a continuous process and starts right from the cradle. The educational structure right from birth till as our President put it, the person is in his last job has to be maintained and our educators certainly want no mutual responsibility towards this endeavor.

Even if a single individual or organization is highly passionate and visionary, it is not possible to fix higher education as a separate entity. It is imperative for private and public higher education institutions, elected officials, school districts, state education departments, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders if we wish to see substantial results.

Interventions must be evidence and expectation based and there must be no territorial finger pointing. Progress must be evaluated at regular intervals in a transparent manner and each one must be held accountable. Of course, our economic situation today demands that all these efforts must come at an affordable price tag.

Though you may find this a little too unreal, let me tell you that it is indeed happening in certain places like Houston, Cincinnati and Richmond and is all set to be followed in other cities like Boston and New York. Here, innovative partnerships have been initiated through effective cradle to career networks in a bid to achieve the mutual goal of providing high quality education for every single student in our country.

These partnerships will be launched by community and higher education leaders in Washington DC shortly. This initiative will be modeled after Strive Together launched in the year 2006. Strive Together has witnessed phenomenal success in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati public school districts.

There will be a concentrated effort in increasing preparedness for kindergarten as well as improving graduation rates. The regional educational networks will be sustainable and bring together like minded partners who will strive towards strengthening the career to cradle education pipeline.

There will be a large scale development of collaborative programs in a bid to turn around public schools. It is the need of the hour for higher education to take up the responsibility seriously and take a lead in this vital national discussion.