News & Features
May 16, 2013 -- Civic Enterprises in partnership with America’s Promise Alliance and The Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Education released an updated Community Guidebook as part of the Grad Nation campaign. The guidebook can help communities take action to increase the number of students who graduate from high school, college and career ready. You can find the guidebook here. Read the press release here.May 14-15, 2013 --
John Bridgeland and Mary Bruce attend CASEL’s (Collaborative For Academic Social and Emotional Learning) forum in Chicago to release Civic Enterprises latest report, The Missing Piece: A National Teacher Survey on How Social and Emotional Learning Can Empower Children and Transform Schools.
May 11, 2013 - John Bridgeland gave the Commencement Address at the College of William and Mary--Thomas Jefferson Program for Public Policy for both Bachelors and Master Degree candidates.
April 30, 2013 -- John Bridgeland joins Robert Balfanz, codirector of Everyone Graduates Center, John Gomperts, CEO of America's Promise Alliance and Bob Wise, President of Alliance for Excellent Education for a webinar focusing on the success in addressing the dropout crisis taking place in high schools and school districts all across the country. You can watch the webinar here.
April 26, 2013 -- General Stanley McChrystal, Walter Isaacson, John Bridgeland and Alan Khazei presented the draft plan of action for large-scale civilian national service to the Franklin Project Leadership Council, including Madeleine Albright, Arianna Huffington, David Gergen, Sandy Berger, Rick Stengel, Richard Danzig and other top leaders working on this Aspen Institute initiative.April 19, 2013-- John Bridgeland calls dropping out a "dream buster" on WAMU's "Yesterday's Dropouts: Adult Education in DC" segment.April 17, 2013 -- John Bridgeland participates in a Hamilton Project roundtable discussion with Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Results for America Director Michele Jolin, followed by Senators Rob Portman and Mark Warner, CEA Chair Alan Krueger and former U. S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on a second panel.April 16, 2013 -- Civic Enterprises joins Attendance Works to recognize September as Attendance Awareness Month. The Count Us In! toolkit, released by Attendance Works last week, helps schools and communities plan for September activities. It details how everyone in the community- parents, faith leaders, housing authority workers, businesses, after-school programs, mayors and, of course, educators- can get involved. Attendance Works also released a new video on how chronic absence has become a crisis in our schools that can be used to educate and motivate your community to participate in planning and implementing activities for Attendance Awareness Month. April 15-19, 2013 -- American University's radio station WAMU 88.5 is airing its new series this week, Yesterdays Dropouts, at 6:50am and 8:50am, Monday through Friday. This five part series highlights the challenges still faced by a generation of adults who left high school many years ago without a diploma. The series will be rebroadcast by Metro Connection Friday at 1:00pm and Saturday at 7:00am. March 23, 2013 -- John Bridgeland Co-Hosts the Social Entrepreneur Conference at the College of William and Mary and introduces Neville Isdell, former Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola and author of the book, Inside Coca-Cola, which advocates for a new approach called, "Connected Capitalism." Check it out here.
March 17-20, 2013 -- John Bridgeland, AnnMaura Connolly, Shirley Sagawa, Jim Balfanz and Sophie Livingstone do a whirlwind tour of a school in London, meetings with top officials in the Cameron Government, the Shadow Government, MPs, and the Royal Family's Foundation to continue the trans-Atlantic dialogue on national service. City Year London is a flagship now that could lead to a "BritCorps."
April 9, 2013 - Count Us In! Launching Attendance Awareness Month Across the Country. Join us this September for the launch of the first-ever Attendance Awareness Month. Rally your community around the importance of attendance and its role in academic achievement. Click here to learn more and to register for a webinar on April 9 from 1:00-2:15pm EDT that will explore how YOU can catalyze change by getting involved in this important effort.
March 12, 2013 - John Bridgleand calls for creating a smarter government through evidence evaluation and good management in his latest Examiner op-ed, Washington Can Also Learn to Spend Smarter.
March 6, 2013 - John
Bridgleand and Melody Barnes call on Congress to reform career and
technical education in America to create enterprising pathways to
college and career success in their new Politico op-ed, Enterprising paths for new economy.
February 25, 2013 - The nation’s work to improve high school graduation rates took a significant leap forward according to a report released today by Civic Enterprises at the 4thGrad Nation Summit in Washington, D.C. The report, Building a Grad Nation, found that for the first time the U.S. is on track to meet the national Grad Nation goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate by the class of 2020.February 25, 2013 - John Bridgeland will address the 2013 American Legion Auxiliary conference in Washington, DC. Bridgeland will discuss the privilege of service and veterans in service. Click here for more information on the conference.
February 22, 2013- Civic Enterprises Senior Education Advisor Mary Bruce discussed the latest report from the Equity and Excellence Commission on Al Jazeera’s Inside story. See the full clip here.
February 15, 2013 - John Bridgeland attended the President's Citizen Medal ceremony where Senator Harris Wofford was honored for his lifetime of national service. To find out more about Sen. Wofford and his achievements click here.
February 13, 2013 - John Bridgeland kicked off the One Night, One EARTH
gala at the Organization of American States, attended by nearly 300
guests, Ambassadors and Representatives from a dozen Latin American and
African countries, four U.S. Senators and Members of Congress, and
officials from U.S. AID and NASA. EARTH University in Costa Rica is a
four year rigorous undergraduate program in sustainable agriculture and
natural resource management that draws students from throughout Latin
America, the Caribbean and Africa. Civic Enterprises' Fellow Lily
Rubino spent six months organizing this event.
January 22 - More than 60 leaders from the Millennial Generation gathered at Aspen to
generate ideas for the Franklin Project, an effort chaired by General
Stanley McChrystal and co-led by John Bridgeland, Alan Khazei and Harris
Wofford to envision and create a civilian national service system on
par with our military.January 16 - Mary Bruce, Senior Education Advisor, has just launched her new blog In Schools in Service. Visit today's post to read her latest EdWeek article, "From Grit to Graduate."
January 11 - John Bridgeland gave a "Ted-Style" talk at the Vice President's Task Force on Gun Violence and School Safety, sharing his experiences co-chairing the President's Task Force on Citizen Preparedness in the War on Terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11.January 10 - John Bridgleand and Melody Barnes call on Congress to
invest in what works and to support bipartisan solutions to our nation's
biggest challenges in their new Politico op-ed, "Lesson to Congress: Invest in What Works".
January
9 - John Bridgeland, Alan Khazei, and Harris Wofford convened the
Franklin Project policy council at The Aspen Institute, bringing
together leading experts from around the country to begin to develop a
civilian counterpart to military service.
December 6 - John Bridgeland joined dozens of former cabinet and elected officials, civic leaders, small business owners, and more than 300,000 Americans to sign an Open Letter to Congress and the President calling for action to address our nation's national debt. This effort was organized by the non-partisan Fix the Debt campaign.
November 30 - John Bridgeland is the Chair of the Aspen Institute's newly launched Franklin Project -- a new initiative to make the case for scaling a voluntary civilian national service counterpart to military service in the United States.
November 27 - American Graduate is featuring Civic Enterprises as a featured Graduate Day Champion -- an organization that spotlights solutions to the nation’s dropout crisis. You can also check out the video of John Bridgeland discussing our research on the reasons why students drop out of school here.
November 13 - Check out the newly launched Archives for our collection of past and present reports.
November 10-12: At the Annual Independence Sector Conference held in San Francisco, John Bridgeland facilitated the "Impact Master Class" session and spoke at the CEO Session with Diana Aviv and Jonathan Greenblatt.
November 1: Fix the Debt held a "DebtFast" to convene business leaders in both the public and private sectors who are working towards a solution to the national debt and impending fiscal cliff. For more information on DebtFast or signing of the Fix the Debt petition, please visit http://www.fixthedebt.org.
October 31: John Bridgeland participated in the NETA conference held by Corporation for Public Broadcasting in St. Louis, MO to discuss the importance of public media in addressing the dropout crisis.
October 24-26 - Join other school counselors, district directors, superintendents,
principals, higher education professionals and leaders from
community-based organizations at the College Board Forum, and participate in the official release of findings from the 2012 National Survey of School Counselors. Civic's own Mary Bruce will be participating in the panel.
October 23 - Momentum is building around the country for career and technical education (CTE) reform. John Bridgeland joined U.S. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan on a panel about the future of CTE in America at IBM's Classroom to Career conference. For more information on how we can build high-quality CTE programs for the 21st century, see the recent Enterprising Pathways report by Civic Enterprises and IBM.
September 26 - John Bridgeland is participating in a live chat with PBS Frontline on the ongoing high school dropout epidemic.
September 22 - John Bridgeland and Robert Balfanz are featured on public television's American Graduate Day. It is a multiplatform event focused on improving high school graduation rates.
September 19 - Check out John Bridgeland's newest HuffingtonPost op-ed on using enterprising pathways (CTE programs) to help restore the American Dream.
September 19 - The 2012 Opportunity Nation Summit was held earlier this week. To learn more about the shared plan presented during the summit, including Civic Enterprises' contributions, click here.
September 17 - Spotlight on Poverty featured John Bridgeland's recent commentary on the importance of reconnecting America's opportunity youth to improve both their lives and the economy.
September 12 - Civic Enterprise partner the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) released its newest report detailing the importance of civic health to the economic success of communities.
September 11 - John Bridgeland, Civic Enterprises' CEO, traveled to London to brief ministers and senior staff at 10 Downing, the William and Harry Foundations, members of Parliament and to help launch City Year London. Read more about his experience here.
August 29 - A new campaign to spur employers,
policymakers, and all Americans to take action to accelerate job
creation in America is being launched at the Republican and Democratic
conventions. Read about it here.
August 17- Civic Enterprises Education Policy Analyst Mary Bruce attends White House convening on national service, highlighting Americorps as a pathway to opportunity.
June 27- Pearson Foundation launched Five Things I've Learned project featuring John Bridgeland as one of 54 leaders in education reform. June 8- Paul Schmitz, CEO of Public Allies, featured the Civic Enterprises report Opportunity Road in his Huffington Post blog entry, advocating full implementation of the 2009 Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act as a way to improve opportunities for 'disconnected youth.'
ABOUT OUR WORK
Education
In 2010, a coalition of leading institutions adopted as part of the Grad Nation campaign the Civic Marshall Plan to end the dropout epidemic and reach the national goal of having 90 % of U.S. students graduate from high school and obtain at least one year of postsecondary schooling or training by 2020.
Download the Report
Econ.
Mobility
Civic Enterprises, in partnership with Opportunity Nation and Hart Research Associates, is working on a research effort to marshal low-income Americans’ voices on the challenges of fulfilling the promise of economic opportunity and mobility in the United States.
Visit our Partner's Website
Global Affairs
To coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Peace Corps Act, Civic Enterprises released the first large-scale, independent, nationally representative survey of the more than 200,000 Peace Corps volunteers who have served since 1961 to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Peace Corps Act.
Download the Report
Environment
Civic Enterprises works with the National Parks Conservation Association, the National Parks Service, and the Department of Interior to insure that the greatest national resources in America are available for all. Civic Enterprises will play a key role at the Summit on National Parks: Taking Action for a New Century, in Washington, D.C. on January 24-26, 2012.
Healthcare
Civic Enterprises is working for The Heritage Foundation to develop a defined long term Medicare reform strategy and health proposals to tie together the health and entitlement LFA teams, working closely with the Director for the Center for Health Policy studies and the Director of the Roe Institute.
Download a Sample of our
Work on Healthcare