America's Promise and United Way work together to help shift the odds for struggling kids by expanding education and economic opportunities. A major focus of our combined efforts is increasing the number of youth—especially low-wage youth of color—who successfully graduate high school and college.
America's Promise packages high school graduation data and hosts Grad Nation Summits to help engage leaders in this work. United Way often hosts these summits with America’s Promise. In Arizona, for example, United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona, hosted a Grad Nation Summit to engage leaders and organizations in the effort to boost Arizona high school graduation rates. The Grad Nation Summit brought employers, educators, parents, youth and community leaders together to look at what's working—and how those solutions can be expanded to a larger scale. The event was the beginning of an ongoing initiative—supported by AT&T and other partners—to raise Tucson's graduation rate to 90%.