myFutureNC Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives
myFutureNC Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives
Launched by ncIMPACT Initiative
Building Local Capacity to Achieve the State’s Goal of #2Millionby2030
It’s Time for Our Forum Finale!
Please join us behind the curtain on the first day of our final forum for North Carolina’s Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives in New Bern on December 7, 2022.
This event will be packed with insights from state experts on how this project began and what has been learned through its evolution. In addition to sessions led by current LEAC teams and their Regional Impact Managers, there will be inspiration from a keynote speaker who offers a broader view of what’s possible through educational attainment. Don’t miss this special event!
Registration has closed for this high-interest public event, but you are welcome to add your name to the waitlist in case a seat becomes available. You will be alerted by Monday morning if a seat comes available.
Add Your Name to the Waitlist for Forum Five in New Bern on December 7, 2022:
Preview the Forum Agenda:
Read a LEAC Overview:
The ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government (ncIMPACT) and myFutureNC, with support from the John M. Belk Endowment, Dogwood Health Trust, and UNC Rural, launched a pilot program supporting 15 local educational attainment collaboratives across North Carolina, seeking to significantly increase the number of students successfully completing post-secondary credentials of value in the workforce: a degree, credential, or certification.
These collaboratives offered an organized way to respond to community challenges that no single institution or even an entire sector can effectively tackle.
This effort aligns with the state’s legislative goal of 2 million individuals between the ages of 25-44 who possess a high-quality credential or postsecondary degree by 2030.
Quick Reference: Downloads and Streaming
Announcement of the selection of 15 community collaboratives:
Download information about the program:
Recorded Information Session:
Kickoff Webinar Recording:
Preparing the Workforce for Economic Recovery:
Education NC Podcast Feature:
myFutureNC 100 Students:
Team share success stories:
Collaborating for Success from the Ground Up:
Four Tips for Engaging Employers in Workforce Initiatives:
Data Tools to Support Shared Attainment Measures:
Watch a brief video about this work:
Program Basics
North Carolina communities applied as teams to participate in this two-year program focused on increasing educational attainment and equity in attainment. Teams became the inaugural myFutureNC Network of Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives. This network offered:
- Deep local impact by increasing the effectiveness of the local
attainment collaboratives and connections among educational systems, employers, local governments, and other stakeholders within the participating communities; - Capacity-building across the state by creating collaborative cross-community learning and partnerships, and delivering model policies to inform North Carolina’s broader policy landscape; and
- Access to key resources including federal, state, and philanthropic funding, as well as data tools and metrics to measure collaborative progress toward achieving their goals.
Network collaboratives also received these benefits:
- Valuable resources responding to immediate concerns about learning loss during the pandemic and helping to prepare for longer-term planning;
- Deep expert and peer support during five forums at which teams developed goals, made plans for implementation, and collaborated across sectors;
- Robust technical assistance throughout the process;
- Critical financial support in the form of $15,000 to compensate a community project manager and $10,000 of implementation funding for their action plan; and a
- Local Attainment Collaborative Toolkit to implement and sustain demand-informed local collaboration with regional employers.
Team Formation
After selection for the program, the core team identified in the application engaged the full community team (local collaborative). Each collaborative brought together a diverse team of community stakeholders, all committed to active participation in the two-year program. ncIMPACT assisted communities with stakeholder identification to build the collaborative team. Given differences between communities, the composition of the teams varied.
Commitments: Each community collaborative met monthly over the course of the program to develop and implement a cogent strategy that (1) leveraged existing assets and activities, (2) increased the community’s educational attainment, and (3) improved equity in attainment. A community project manager supported this work (with funding provided by the program) in addition to the technical assistance provided by the partners.
Case Studies on Sample Collaboratives from 2019
STEP (Edgecombe and Nash Counties)- SECURE (Wake County)
- Wilson 2020 Youth Master Plan (Wilson County)
- Gold Rush Grant (Mecklenburg County)
- K-64 (Catawba County)
- Made in Durham (Durham County)
- Career Accelerator Program (Alamance County)
- Project SEARCH (Buncombe County)
- STEM East (12 Counties)
- Profound Gentlemen (Mecklenburg County)
Data Resources
- myFutureNC County Data and Resources
- NC Department of Commerce Labor & Economic Analysis
- myFutureNC Dashboard
- NC Labor Market Data
- NC OSBM Open Data for Various Categories
- NC Department of Public Instruction Data & Reports
- Peer Counties Tool from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- U.S. Census Bureau’s Data Profiles
- NC Community College Dashboards
Promising Approaches Profiled by ncIMPACT Initiative
- A Focus on Non-Completers: One Strategy for Upskilling the Existing Workforce in North Carolina (June 2018)
- Adverse Childhood Experiences in Cumberland County
- Building a Local Talent Pipeline – Alamance County
- Education and Skills for Tomorrow: Is Your Workforce “Future Ready”?
- Get Set Transylvania
- Our Future Workforce: The Rise of the Individual
- Pre-K Expansion in Forsyth County
- Providing Opportunity for Youth – Scotland County
- Reentry from Incarceration to Workforce (Pitt County)
- School Justice Partnerships (New Hanover County)
- Talent Recruitment & Retention: Work in Burke – Burke County
- Transitioning Veterans to the Civilian Workforce – Craven County
- Women in Construction (Chatham County)
- Workforce Credentials Increase Employability & Wages (video)
- Workforce Credentials That Increase Employability and Wages (Blog)
- Youth Suicide Prevention
Resources for Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives
- National Scan of Postsecondary Attainment Practices
- This National Scan of Postsecondary Attainment Practices compiles practices from institutions across the country that are shown to help increase attainment. Each example provides basic information about a practice, the community it serves, why it has been successful, and major takeaways of the practice.
- Setting Local Attainment Goals
- myFutureNC and Carolina Demography explain local attainment goal setting in this resource, along with calculated county-level goals for all 100 counties in North Carolina.
- 100 County Attainment Goals Spreadsheet
- myFutureNC offers this tool to help local leaders dive deeper into the numbers needed to reach attainment goals.
- County Attainment Profiles
- Click on the map to select your county or use a searchable list to view or download your county attainment profile, offered by Carolina Demography.
- myFutureNC Educational Attainment Report 2021
- This report was compiled by myFutureNC and contains information about higher education attainment rates across the state, as well as impacts seen from the COVID-19 pandemic. The second half of the report contains recommendations on how to move forward and increase attainment across the state.
- Collaboration Spectrum Tool
- This is a tool developed by the Tamarack Institute to help organizations move through the stages of collaboration and be able to harness the benefits of a collective impact approach to an issue.
- NC Rural Student Home Internet Access Pilot Program Initial Report
- This is a report about recent pilot programs attempting to bring highspeed internet to students in rural Hyde and Chatham counties. In general, the programs have been successful in getting students and families connected.
- Dreams Interrupted: A Mixed-Methods Study Assessing Latino College Completion
- This is a study looking at enrollment rates of Latino students across the country in post-secondary programs. In addition to general findings, the report also details the challenges now faced by Latino students in the wake of the pandemic, as well as the critical takeaways which can help inform policy decisions.
- FAFSA Completion Promising Practices
- Decade Undone: 2021 Update to Measure of America Youth Disconnection Series
- Pathways Initiative Task Force Report: NC Counties Guiding Our Next Generation to Brighter Futures
- What Happens When You Combine High School and College? Serve Center at UNC Greensboro
- Opportunity America: Indispensable Institution (innovative practices in community colleges)
- Data in Collective Impact: Focusing on What Matters
- Centering Equity in Collective Impact
- NC Workforce Credentials List: identified priority non-degree credentials that are valued by employers
- myFutureNC Attainment Trends Workbook: trends in educational indicators at the state- and county-level
- Brookings: How has the pandemic affected high school graduation and college entry?
Scroll through this additional list of resources helpful to communities working together to increase educational attainment: Resource List PDF
Categories covered within the resource list:
- Pre-K Education and Early Childhood Learning
- Improving Public Education
- Value of Increasing Post-Secondary Education Attainment
- Determining Career Paths
- Determining Career Paths Continued
- Racial and Gender Equity in Postsecondary Attainment
- Cost of Post-Secondary Enrollment and Attainment
- Proposals and Actions to Increase Post-Secondary Education Attainment
Contact Us
Anita Brown-Graham, Professor & Director, brgraham@sog.unc.edu
This project is a collaboration between:
Funding for this work was provided by:
