Mayor Rybak Presenting Minneapolis ‘Cradle to Career’ Approach to Youth Development
Mayor participating in Gates Foundation ‘Mayors in Education Convening’ to learn about opportunities for resources, other mayors’ success
February 2, 2012 (MINNEAPOLIS) — Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will be leading a discussion about “cradle to career” approaches to youth development with mayors from across the country as part of the “Mayors in Education Convening” that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is hosting in Seattle today.
The Mayors in Education Convening is bringing together 17 mayors from across the United States who are national leaders in innovative approaches to boosting college and career readiness. The Convening is an opportunity for mayors to hear about resources or initiatives that might benefit their cities’ efforts to dramatically improve college-ready graduation rates.
Mayor Rybak will serve as a Lead Mayor in convening a roundtable discussion this afternoon on supporting the Pre-K, K-12, Higher Ed and workforce continuum. He will also attend other breakout sessions to learn from challenges and success in other U.S. cities.
Mayor Rybak said, “The Minneapolis Public Schools, and programs like the Minneapolis Promise and the Northside Achievement Zone, are leading pioneers in helping our kids grow and thrive, and are prime examples of the kind of college-ready innovations that the Gates Foundation is helping to promote and expand.
“I look forward to hearing from other mayors and hope this conference will convince funders who haven’t been active in Minneapolis to invest here, where we’re changing kids’ lives every day.”
The Minneapolis Promise is an innovative cluster of coordinated efforts designed to eliminate barriers to college for Minneapolis students. It provides young people with:
·         Counseling to help them plan a vision for their future at privately-funded College and Career Centers, a program of AchieveMpls, in all seven general-purpose Minneapolis public high schools;
·         High-quality, STEP-UP summer jobs, jointly administered by the City of Minneapolis and AchieveMpls, to prepare them for the workforce; and
·         Financial assistance to attend college, through the “Power of You” at Minneapolis Community and Technical College and Metropolitan State University, the “U Promise” at the University of Minnesota, and Augsburg College Scholarships at Augsburg College.
Since the Minneapolis Promise began:
·         High-school graduation rates at Minneapolis public high schools have risen from 53% to 78%.
·         College enrollment has risen from 48% to 63%.
·         The rate of students who take the ACT has risen from 50% to 79%.
The STEP-UP summer jobs program, which has created valuable workplace experience for more than 14,000 youth since 2004, was highlighted as a national model at a White House conference in early January.
The Northside Achievement Zone, centered in North Minneapolis, is a collaboration of more than 50 organizations and schools who work with children and families in a defined area in North Minneapolis to build a culture of achievement so that all youth graduate college-ready. Families and children move through a “cradle to career” pipeline that provides comprehensive support from pre-natal through age 18, through three pillars of achievement: family engagement and opportunity alignment, education pipeline and whole-family wrap-around support.
In December 2011, the United States Department of Education awarded the Northside Achievement Zone a five-year, $28-million Promise Neighborhood Implementation grant. The Promise Neighborhoods program aims to address significant challenges that students and families who live in high-poverty communities face by providing resources to plan and implement a continuum of services from early learning to college and career. 
Other U.S. mayors attending the Mayors in Education Convening today are:
 
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Published Feb. 2, 2012