ERN: Year in Review

Blogs, Letters & Testimonials

December 19, 2019

As 2019 comes to a close, we are grateful to all of you who have joined us in our work to increase educational equity. 

With your support, we achieved over 50 policy wins across the country to improve public education for our nation’s students.

  • We were the driving force behind the recent bipartisan “Fast Track To and Through College Act,” which would help states develop “Fast Track” pathways to speed up time-to-degree for college-ready juniors — including students from low-income families and students of color — to cut the cost of college and increase graduation rates.
  • Our team also spent the last two years working with Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) to target federal loan forgiveness programs for teachers serving in low-income schools, which culminated in Senator Booker’s re-introduction of the “Supporting Teaching Profession Through Revitalizing Investments in Valuable Educators” (STRIVE) Act.
  • Each year, we lead efforts to increase funding for the federal Charter School Program (CSP) and, over the past five years, we have consistently grown congressional support for an increase in appropriations.

Additionally, we trained and supported more than 30 advocates through our groundbreaking Leaders of Color Initiative, which is designed to build a pipeline of pro-education reform Black and Latino leaders who are respected in their communities and provide them with a suite of resources to help these leaders advance a student-centered policy agenda.

Our work, however, is only just beginning. For too many of our students, access to quality education remains out of reach.

We look forward to building on these achievements to drive progress in 2020. 

Happy Holidays!