The problem with today’s postsecondary support is not that there are too few people doing the work. It’s that there are too many.  Kids from low income homes; kids whose parents didn’t attend college; kids without documentation:  they don’t need more people.  They need less. 

When I arrived at the Urban Assembly (UA) five years ago, two of our high schools had three Summer Bridge coaches each.  One worked for us, and two worked for other nonprofits.  That’s three sets of hands supervised by three organizations inside one public school doing exactly the same thing.  We clearly weren’t talking to each other; otherwise, why pay a coach to complete work two others are already doing?  No wonder the gap between high- and low-income college graduates has increased over the past two decades:  the postsecondary access and success field is not efficient.  Thousands of organizations with near identical programming are working for educational equity, and they’re just as siloed as the systems they’re trying to dismantle.  This oversaturation gives the illusion of progress.  Photos of young people being mentored.  Stories of Ivy League acceptances.  Data on outcomes.

“Low-income students and students of color don’t take a gap year – they leave [high school] and then we’ve lost them in higher ed,” says Wil Del Pilar of the Education Trust.  How can 365 days in one student’s life – the year following high school graduation – matter this much?  Most organizations solve the problem by building programs and hiring people.  The UA did it in 2008 with its Summer Bridge and again in 2016 by adopting an Alumni Texting program.

In 2019 a few of us NYC Summer Bridge Program Directors presented a conference talk called “Bridging the Divide:  How Non-Profits & City Institutions Can Partner to Achieve Educational Equity.” We identified the oversaturation problem and argued that equity in education hinges on our ability to partner in clear, concentrated ways so that we can identify value adds and then innovate at scale.  One global pandemic later, we’re seeing the fruits of that labor:  for the first time ever, the Urban Assembly won’t offer Summer Bridge to all 21 high schools.  On the surface, we’re taking people away:  students will no longer have a dedicated alumni coach who communicates regularly with them and with three mission-aligned UA experts.  But here’s the thing.  Those 700 public school students don’t need attention from us – that’s what I was trying to say earlier.  They need access to a system with the muscle to nudge them into pathways that lead to social and economic mobility.  The UA is not that system anymore because CUNY and the DOE have stepped onto the field with College and Career Bridge For All (CCB4A).  When heavy hitters like this walk towards the plate, you owe it to your team – your students – to pause.  So from 2019 to 2021, the UA and five other NYC bridge programs met regularly with CCB4A.  We asked the hard questions.  We shared best practices. We aligned on data.  And when it became clear that CCB4A was the real thing, we started taking steps back. 

It would be easy for us to keep offering bridge to all UA schools. We could keep snapping pics, writing case studies, and promoting low summer melt rates.  But is that what kids need?  I think kids need us to figure out who’s got the potential to innovate at scale.  I think kids need us to ask: is this where we at the Urban Assembly or we at CUNY or we at iMentor can have the most impact?  When I look at this polished, well-oiled machine that is The Urban Assembly Bridge Program, I want to say yes, letting it run is the right move. But it’s not. The right move, in the face of CCB4A’s 60,000 students, guaranteed funding, and sweeping data, is to let it go.  Let it go so you can invest in other arenas equally capable of opening access and opportunity for your students. Things like texting. AI. Advocacy.

I asked earlier, how can 365 days in one student’s life matter so much?  I’m not sure.  But when programs, organizations, and districts prioritize collaboration and impact, impartiality will replace bias, innovation will replace inertia, and the shape of higher education will finally look pliable.  And maybe those 365 days – from this vantage point – won’t feel so absolute.