By Degrees Foundation

We believe education is a community effort and recognize the transformational impact incremental changes can make on a student’s life. Partnering with public schools, we work to increase high school graduation and postsecondary readiness rates through an expansive, K-12 culture of future-focused preparation, exploration, and postsecondary planning and saving. We engage community partnerships to meet identified needs that uplift all students and families at our partner schools. Our approach was developed from previous extensive experience supporting small groups of students from elementary through high school graduation. With our whole-school, in-school model, we now partner with Findley Elementary, Harding Middle, and North High on Des Moines’ northside. Our work addresses the complex obstacles influencing student success (from food/housing insecurity to postsecondary awareness and affordability) while building a pervasive future-focused culture. Each partner school receives a dedicated By Degrees program manager who adds capacity to the school and assists in identifying needs, developing solutions, recruiting partners, and creating and implementing our future-focused programing.