What is The Education Trust?

Mission Statement

The Education Trust works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-kindergarten through college, and forever closing the achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from other youth. Our basic tenet is this — All children will learn at high levels when they are taught to high levels.

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What We Do

The Education Trust advances its mission along several fronts, from raising its voice in national and state policy debates to helping teachers improve instruction in their classrooms. Regardless of where it occurs, our work maintains a relentless focus on improving the education of all students, and particularly those students whom the system has traditionally left behind.

The Education Trust provides:

• advocacy that encourages schools, colleges, and whole communities to mount effective campaigns so that all their students will reach high levels of academic achievement;
• analysis and expert testimony on policies intended to improve education; and writing and speaking for professional and general audiences about educational patterns and practices — both those that cause and those that close achievement gaps between groups of students;
• research and wide public dissemination of data identifying achievement patterns among different groups of students;
• assistance to school districts, colleges, and community-based organizations to help their efforts at raising student achievement, especially among minority and poor students.

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History

The Education Trust was established in 1990 by the American Association for Higher Education as a special project to encourage colleges and universities to support K-12 reform efforts. Since then, the Ed Trust has grown into an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to make schools and colleges work for all of the young people they serve. We believe that it is impossible to achieve significant change in K-12 without simultaneously changing the way that postsecondary education does business. We also believe that postsecondary education needs improving as much as K-12.

The Ed Trust staff brings to our work a unique combination of experience from a wide variety of backgrounds: pre-K-12, postsecondary education, advocacy and community-based organizations. Our insistence on high academic achievement for all students at all levels pre-K-16, our teamwork with local education and community activists, and our single-minded attention to what is best for students ---especially low-income students and students of color --- sets the Education Trust apart from the many other Washington-based education groups.