Public Media is Expanding Knowledge and Dialogue Around Challenges and Solutions to Improve Community Outcomes

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) released a new report from the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education confirming the impact that public media stations continue to have in helping to improve high school graduation rates.

The report finds that the American Graduate initiative has succeeded in building community capacity to meet the national priority of ending America’s high school dropout crisis. Public media has achieved this success by raising awareness and building knowledge of the issue, highlighting proven solutions, ensuring a sustained multi-sector response and fostering collective community action toward common goals -- key strategies identified in the Civic Martial Plan for a Grad Nation as essential for progress. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s initiative, American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, has demonstrated that by combining personal communication with high-quality media products, public media have a critical, unique and valuable role in meeting this national priority. The evidence from the first 18 months of American Graduate shows the value of public media’s role in helping communities understand and address pressing national challenges. The initial successes set the stage for sustainable on-going work and show that American Graduate has the potential for long- term impact through its public media stations, in partnership with each community they serve.