The Challenge

Low-income Horizons students learning in the classroom All children deserve the opportunity to succeed. But it’s harder than ever to find a path out of poverty without a college education or technical training.

Under-resourced students are six times more likely to drop out of high school and fewer than one third of them will enroll in college.
A 6th grade student who misses more than 20% of class, whose teacher reports poor behavior, or who fails math or English is 70% more likely to drop out of school.
The current high school dropout rate is a primary contributor to stagnating U.S. economic mobility and results in over $300 billion in lost wages, taxable income, and health care, welfare and incarceration costs.
While states and the nation are trying to produce workers with skills to master new technologies and adapt to complexities of a global economy, school budgets have become tighter than ever.
Summer learning loss is a primary cause of the persistent academic achievement gap. Without programs like Horizons, under-resourced students experience a substantial and cumulative erosion of reading and math skills that can ultimately leave them years behind their peers.