Achieve Twin Cities

Achieve reaches students early on in their high school years to introduce them to the full spectrum of college and career pathways and provide them with increasingly personalized advising, career exploration experiences, and resources that help them graduate prepared to take ownership of their future. We envision a future in which all our young people have full and equitable access to postsecondary education and career opportunities, creating a more just and vibrant community.

Our central goal is that all students:
- Develop a broad, yet thorough, knowledge of career and college pathways
- Build social capital and resumes through paid internships
- Attain graduation-ready milestones
- Leave high school prepared to successfully transition into postsecondary programs and/or the workforce on pathways to living wage careers

Our Career and College Initiative (CCI) is a continuum of school- and community-based postsecondary advising, career exploration, and experiential paid internship programming that provides students with the resources, support, and experiences they need to make informed decisions about their future and develop robust post-graduation plans that help them start on paths toward long-term financial independence.

CAREER & COLLEGE READINESS (CCR): As a regional leader in career and college readiness, Achieve is the sole universal provider for two of the largest districts in Minnesota, annually providing 1:1 and group advising to ~18,000 Minneapolis and St. Paul public school students on 20+ campuses. We partner directly with school and district leadership to foster a future-oriented culture and plan and implement career and college readiness strategies. Through direct counseling, our Coordinators help students develop a breadth and depth of awareness of career and postsecondary pathways and, as they progress through high school, align their educational interests, financial requirements, and vision of the future in which they achieve their own definition of success and leave high school on pathways toward engaged citizenship. We partner with districts, schools, local employers, and postsecondary and workforce institutions to do systems-level work, ensuring we are responsive to community needs and opportunities.

BIPOC and low-income youth who work with our Coordinators enroll in postsecondary programs at 79% and 69% higher rates, respectively, than those who do not. The services we make available for free to all students normally cost a family $3,000-$6,000 in the private market.

STEP UP: In partnership with the City of Minneapolis, we annually recruit, train, and place 1,000+ Minneapolis youth, ages 14-21, facing significant barriers to economic opportunities, in paid internships with local employers or in paid, remote, rigorous Career Exploration Programming. Internships last, on average, nine (9) weeks, 20-30 hours per week. Collectively, interns earn $2M to support themselves, their families, and their future education, and most become eligible to earn academic credit.

Step Up internships are high quality and take place in environments where students can work with professionals, learn key workplace skills, and completing robust, resume-building tasks. Internships give students early access to a network of support that provides much-needed social capital and work experience they can build upon. Moreover, through Step Up, youth build confidence in themselves and their abilities, hope for the future, and awareness of their place in and contributions to our community. Over 70% of Step Up interns say their experience helped them make critical decisions about their future plans and 90% of employers say their interns made a valuable contribution to their workplace and better prepared them to integrate the next generation workforce.

Achieve stands at the critical intersection of our public schools, private employers, postsecondary institutions, and the public sector, serving as a bridge between them and our young people. Historically, prestigious educational opportunities and high-wage, upwardly mobile career pathways were designed to benefit certain groups of people and exclude others, which still negatively impacts our students today. Our work puts students on more equitable pathways to meaningful, family-sustaining careers, particularly those young people who have been systemically excluded, such as BIPOC and low-income youth. Simultaneously, we serve as a critical connection between postsecondary institutions and students, and to employers who rely on a skilled workforce to ensure the continued strength of our local economy.

We recognize and value the expertise of our diverse staff and board that reflect the community we serve. Our 50-member staff is split between two direct service teams and a small administrative support staff. Our school-based Career & College Readiness Coordinators are full-time, direct-service professionals with backgrounds in counseling, social work, and college admissions; half are BIPOC and many are public school alumni. The Step Up team has a dual-service model with some members devoted to Youth Services and others to Employee Engagement so that they develop long-term relationships with both and a deep understanding of their needs and goals so that we can create high-quality, mutually-beneficial internship experiences. We purposefully recruit leaders who understands, and can best advocate for the needs of the communities we serve and can connect us to their networks to affect community-wide change. Our board consists of local leaders in public education, government, community, and private business, more than a third of whom are BIPOC and many are Achieve program alumni. Achieve is led by our President & CEO, Danielle Grant, a member of the Little Shell Ojibwe tribe, who has spent 20+ years working on racial equity and restorative justice in education.

Achieve’s leadership team serve as consultants and advisors to several regional planning committees. Our President & CEO is a member of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and the Minneapolis Federal Reserve’s Community Advisory Board. We have consulted several communities replicating our Step Up program model. Our CCR team members work with postsecondary institutions and present at local, regional, and national conferences on our advising model and use of data to improve student postsecondary outcomes. Program evaluation is led by our Manager of Monitoring and Evaluation (MME) who collaborates with program leadership and staff from the City of Minneapolis, MPS, and SPPS to monitor our progress and evaluate our impact. We use student surveys, application materials, interviews, focus groups, and other metrics to identify opportunities to improve our programming.

A handful of our examples of our long-term impact include:

1.) A third-party researcher calculated the return on investment of the CCR program to the greater community through students attaining higher-wage jobs and thus increasing their lifetime earnings, at $3.74 for every $1 invested.

2.) BIPOC and low-income youth who work with our Coordinators enroll in postsecondary programs at 79% and 69% higher rates, respectively, than those who do not.

3.) From SY18-19 to SY19-20, National Student Clearinghouse reports that national postsecondary enrollment rates dropped by 6.8%, but, predictably, the most vulnerable students were disproportionately impacted as low-income districts saw a drop of 10.7% and 9.4% for high-minority districts. While we saw similar trends at MPS with postsecondary enrollment rates falling, overall enrollment rates for MPS students was and still remains higher than national trends for schools with similar characteristics. MPS Class 2020’s enrollment rate is 6.7 percentage points higher than our peer low-income districts and 7.7 points higher than high-minority districts.

4.) According to a five-year longitudinal study, young people who participate in Step Up have higher attendance and are more likely to be on-track to graduate. A separate study found interns also experienced significant growth in Responsible Decision Making, Relationship Skills, and Social Awareness.

5.) We provide a connection to employers, many of whom were already struggling with a pre-pandemic labor shortage, to the next generation workforce. Simultaneously, we help employers prepare for the workforce of tomorrow through trainings, events, and panel discussions on cultural adaptation and responsive work environments.