From Cradle to Career; Promise Neighborhoods seek to uplift communities
Published:
Edited:
Every neighborhood should have “access to great schools, and strong family and community support systems” that will prepare kids for college and a career. That’s the vision of the Department of Education which funds nearly 50 so-called “Promise Neighborhoods.”
Where did the idea come from?
Children were falling through the cracks in Harlem, New York and many were facing intergenerational poverty without a future when in 1990 community organizers decided to create a path forward in a one-block pilot project. Over decades, Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) grew to nearly 100 city blocks serving thousands of children and their families.
Believing that “Poverty is often the result of a series of interconnected, systemic failures,” HCZ offers “responsive services and supports for everyone-from expectant parents to children of all ages, young professionals and senior citizens,” including:
- Education & Youth Programs, such as the Promise Academy® Charter Schools, which hold lotteries for admission. “When young scholars join our community, we promise to do whatever it takes to get them to and through college.”
- Health and Community-HCZ has opened two community centers in Harlem offering classes and services designed to be responsive to the community.
Former HCZ Founder and President Kwame Owusu-Kesse was so confident that he said in 2020, “This is no longer an experiment. We have two decades worth of data that tells us that this work is effective. We have effectively eliminated the Black-White achievement gap.”
Nearly 2,000 HCZ students have graduated from college since 2006, including Deondra Coston. (see his story below) Another 1,000 were enrolled in college in 2025.
HCZ model goes national
In 2011 the Department of Education established the national Promise Neighborhoods program, modeled after HCZ. Here is an interactive map of the diagram below showing the location of those receiving the federal grants.
A Promise Neighborhood, like HCZ, “is both a place and a set of strategies. Because of inequitable and exclusionary practices, many people living in the footprint of a Promise Neighborhood have experienced economic distress and its consequences.”
Goals include addressing struggling schools, high unemployment, inaccessible housing, persistent crime, and other problems “resulting from systematically under-resourced neighborhoods.”
An Indiana example
The Department of Education reports many successes, including Evansville Promise Neighborhood and IndyEast Promise Neighborhood.
Both faced chronic absenteeism. Evansville reported the rate dropped for students in grades 6-9 from 34 percent in the 2022-2023 school year to 29 percent during 2023-2024. For IndyEast it was a drop from 56 percent in the 2022-2023 school year to 30 percent in the 2024-2025 school year.
School districts understand the importance of setting good habits early on, like encouraging regular attendance at school. “The goal is to be college and career ready, and if you don’t have those foundations early, then you might not be prepared for college and career,” says Vice President, IndyEast Promise Neighborhood Diane Reynolds.
Here’s how they increased attendance:
- Building partnerships with the Thomas Gregg Neighborhood School and the John Boner Neihborhood Centers-which provide affordable housing across the street from the school.
- Mentorship and connection with students.
- Communication with families.
- Creating a positive and engaging school culture.
Omega is focused on Northwest Dayton
For decades, the Omega Community Development Corporation has been working to uplift seventeen neighborhoods in Northwest Dayton.
Over the years it has been buying land and providing services to help thousands of people who live in those neighborhoods, modeling the Harlem Children’s Zone. With the help of Dayton Children’s, Sinclair Community College, Learn to Earn and others, it opened the Hope Zone in 2021. Brick by Brick’s Emiko Moore reports what this one building provides.
But the organization is not stopping there. In 2025 it created a subsidiary called Rise Northwest which is focused on housing and economic development and is part of Purpose Built Communities.®
Omega has a goal of building more than 50 homes and offering financial literacy to the people who want to buy them, as Brick by Brick’s Hernz Laguerre Jr. Explains.
Through a grant, the federal government is funding Omega’s Promise Neighborhood through the end of 2027.
Residents of Northwest Dayton have hopes and dreams. They came together in 2021 to talk about how they could improve their community with the end goal of “significantly increasing wealth, especially Black wealth, student success, community pride, and amenities, especially for Black residents, so that families of Northwest Dayton thrive.”
To do that, they agreed to focus on things like making childcare more accessible, providing after-school support for students, beautifying their community, and providing educational and financial help to buy a home. These are all things Omega and the Hope Zone are helping them do.
In grades 6-9 Omega reports the average daily attendance rate has risen from 63 percent to 74 percent.
How well are Promise Neighborhoods working?
The evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences, investigated how well the first decade of Promise Neighborhoods went from 2011-2018. The report was released in June, 2026.
Most of the 25 Promise Neighborhoods provided after-school activities and training for teachers. Fifty-six percent supplied healthy food. Nearly half offered mental health services, including an “evidence-based suicide prevention program for youth.”
The report says, “Ultimately, the Promise Neighborhoods program seeks to improve children’s educational and other developmental outcomes.” But, they “did not outperform comparison schools academically.
Promise Neighborhoods are funded for five years.
The report asks, “Could it take longer than five years to see changes in educational outcomes, given the program’s requirements to also address a broad set of other service areas outside of K-12 education?”
And, “If changes in educational outcomes may take more than five years to emerge, should the program consider providing more or different kinds of support to help grantees continue their services after the grant period?”
Limitations
The Institute of Education of Sciences points to two limitations.
- Grantees had difficulty engaging schools and districts in grant activities and made it harder to deliver services to students and their families. (the grants are given to Promise Neighborhoods and not the school district)
- Because the program is so complex, sometimes it’s hard to implement it. One reason is the difficulty of “maintaining sufficient staff and consistent leadership to carry out grant activities.”
The Urban Institute evaluated Baltimore’s Promise Neighborhood. It found, “Stakeholders repeatedly said that while the grant invested money and time into Upton and Druid Heights, the programming alone would not disrupt multigenerational poverty and disinvestment without policy changes and investments across sectors.”
Looking ahead
Some wonder if Promise Neighborhoods will continue to be funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The answer appears to be yes. Applications were due August 6, 2026.
This was listed under Supplementary Information:
The purpose of the PN (Promise Neighborhoods) program is to significantly improve the academic and developmental outcomes of children and youth living in the most distressed communities of the United States, including ensuring school readiness, high school graduation, and access to a community-based continuum of high-quality services. The FY 2026 competition includes priorities, selection criteria, and requirements. The absolute priorities are: Non-Rural and Non-Tribal Communities, Rural Communities, and Tribal Communities. The competitive preference priorities are: Promoting Evidence-Based Literacy, Meaningful Learning Opportunities—High-Quality Interventions or Accelerated Learning Supports for Students and Supporting Families, and Meaningful Learning Opportunities—Career Connected Learning.
Omega says when its government grant expires at the end of 2027, it will apply for more federal funds and if that’s not successful, raise money locally.
Founder of LaRosa’s Pizza, Buddy LaRosa, sees the benefit of an Omega/HCZ/Promise Neighborhoods model. The Cincinnati Business Courier reports he will open a 52,000 square foot youth development center in 2027 in Elmwood Place. It’s designed “to bring together nonprofit organizations dedicated to empowering youth, strengthening families and creating pathways to lifelong success.” President of the Buddy LaRosa Center for Youth Bill Burwinkel told the Courier, “Now, there’s an opportunity for a tutoring program, for an after-school program, for financial literacy, mental health.”
What are you seeing in your community and neighborhood? Would the Promise Neighborhoods model be effective where you live? Sharing your thoughts and opinions helps us sustain this work. It also allows us to learn about the solutions near you. This “journalism for good” is not just a one-way communication; your feedback and thoughts.
Ann Thompson – Host, Producer
Over the last thirty years in Cincinnati, Ann Thompson has brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting. She has reported and anchored for WVXU, WKRC, WCKY, WHIO-TV and Metro Networks and freelanced for NPR, CBS and ABC Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press and she has won awards from the Association of Women in Communications and the Alliance for Women in Media. She is a former News Director and Operations Manager. Ann has reported from India, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Belgium as part of fellowships. Ann thinks of the Brick by Brick project as “journalism for good.” She serves as host and producer. Ann lives in Anderson Township with her husband Scott. They have two boys. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2022 and Kurt attends West Point.
