Mission: “Education is the Great Equalizer”

As our newest practice area, CityBridge Education takes on a particularly difficult American problem: the persistent education gap between higher- and lower-income American children. Through partnerships with existing best-in-class organizations, we focus on expanding educational capacity and improving quality for lower-income children in Washington, D.C. Our work should contribute to building a city with excellent educational opportunity for all children—a distinctly American ideal that is central to our long-term status as a strong and just democracy.
                                                                                                                              
History
In 2000, CityBridge staff, led by Program Director Arthur McKee, began a multi-year study of national best practices for combating entrenched, multi-generational poverty. An intentional departure from our history of international work, we planned a new signature program in our home city of Washington, D.C. We considered ideas with promise in areas of greatest need: education reform, prisoner re-entry, workforce development, Earned Income Tax Credit sites, teen pregnancy, and neighborhood renewal. But our (small) size and scale meant we had to choose, and nothing we considered carried as much potential for lasting change as urban education reform; within that field, nothing would prove as leveraged as early education.

An intensive review of decades of painstaking scientific research convinced us that early educational intervention—in the form of highest quality, content-rich preschool—is the single best way to markedly improve a lower-income child’s educational future. Launched in 2006, the Early Years Education Initiative is a 5-year, $8 million plan to build a robust market for excellent, early childhood, urban education in the nation’s capital.