Education & Economic Mobility

Research is clear that an excellent, diverse educator workforce boosts students’ academic and post-secondary outcomes, improves social and emotional development, and increases earnings later in life. Unfortunately, students of color and students in marginalized communities are the least likely to have fully licensed, highly effective, and diverse educators. Moreover, educators are not prepared for the complex classrooms they face, and schools continue to employ antiquated staffing models that overburden principals and stunt the reach of the best teachers. The Foundation supports efforts to advance federal, state, and district policies that ensure a strong pipeline of highly trained, diverse and talented educators, and schools staffed for success.

The Foundation's educator quality investments will focus largely on Chicago, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis and on state policies in Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. But we will also support national and federal educator effectiveness policy reforms.

There is overwhelming evidence that a post-secondary credential significantly improves earning potential. But not enough young people from historically underserved neighborhoods earn them. There are many obstacles. The pathway from K–12 through post-secondary and into the workforce is not aligned. Students do not have equal opportunity to earn college credits and valuable work-based learning experiences in high school. And too many are forced into remediation once in college. The Joyce Foundation seeks to help underserved K-12 students prepare for college and career success by supporting federal, state and district policies that ensure they have access to high-quality college in high school courses and work-based learning opportunities. We also support policies that ensure K-12, post-secondary and workforce systems are aligned. The Foundation's College and Career Readiness investments will focus largely on Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. But we will fund national and federal efforts when it makes sense.

A college education has become ever more essential to getting a stable job with good wages. But decades of success in getting more students of color and students from marginalized communities into college has not translated into more equitable college attainment. Race and family wealth are ever more predictive of who will get a college degree - suggesting that we are moving further away from equalizing college opportunity. Worse still, post-graduate salaries and debt repayment outcomes are deeply inequitable, especially by race - the median Black student owes more on their student loans than they borrowed twelve years after enrollment. Indeed it appears likely that a subset of colleges, especially in the for-profit sector, are leaving students worse off than if they had avoided higher education altogether. The Foundation supports research, public policy development, and advocacy on how our nation’s higher education system can increase economic mobility and racial equity in the Great Lakes region. Removing barriers to college attainment for students of color and students from marginalized communities is essential to keeping our nation, states, and cities economically competitive.

Over the past two decades, the labor market has changed, adding low-wage jobs that do not offer economic stability, mobility, and which undercut worker dignity. In particular, troublingly, a subset of “gig” jobs employ millions but do not offer basic employment and safety net protections. More generally, state and federal policymakers need to take stock of how new technologies are affecting economic stability and mobility for low-wage workers. Thus, the Foundation seeks to fund applied policy research on how to improve economic stability and mobility for low-wage workers, including “gig” workers. The Foundation also seeks to support applied policy research and advocacy about how state and federal policymakers can ensure economic mobility, stability, and dignity for low-wage workers in the years to come.