Confronting the System: How Local Cross-Sector Education Collaborations Address Barriers to Postsecondary Access & Attainment

Cross-sector education collaborations—sometimes termed “collective impact” or “cradle-to-career” initiatives—have emerged in recent years across the U.S. as local interventions attempting to align services among educational institutions, local government, businesses, other community-based organizations, and philanthropies to improve educational outcomes. In my dissertation, I utilize case study methods to focus on how one cross-sector education collaboration, Graduate Tacoma, works to improve postsecondary degree attainment in its local community and ensure equitable outcomes across student groups in the process. Drawing on 26 interviews with organizational stakeholders, internal documents, and a variety of other secondary data sources, my research addresses three facets of cross-sector collaboration implementation: strategies utilized in Graduate Tacoma’s Tacoma College Support Network (TCSN) to address postsecondary readiness, enrollment, and attainment; how those strategies relate to postsecondary-related outcomes and equity in outcomes; and conditions contributing to how those strategies connect to targeted educational outcomes.

My findings suggest that strategies are most shaped by organizational missions and leadership of those stakeholders willing to collaborate. Those strategies where the local school district was heavily involved have had the most influence in shaping targeted educational outcomes. The relationships created among collaboration stakeholders generate feedback loops that also produce other kinds of public value, improving understanding of how sustained collaboration strategies impact organizational responses addressing postsecondary enrollment, attainment, and educational equity concerns.

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