JB Schramm

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1997

JB Schramm

College Summit

http://www.collegesummit.org

Washington D.C., United States

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

College Summit provides districts and schools with a strategy and tools to transform college going throughout the district. Equipping students, teachers, counselors, principals and administrators alike, College Summit builds the capacity, expectation and excitement for change at all levels.

College Summit was founded on the belief that all students can achieve in secondary and post-secondary education. For more than a decade, we have supported and watched every kind of student succeed in college. Our work empowering young people with the information, motivation and support to get to college has proven that with the proper tools, young people who otherwise were not going to college can enroll and stay in school.

At the urging of a high school guidance counselor, College Summit began exploring how our direct success with a small group of young people could be adapted to help high schools unlock the potential of even more students. Since that time, our work has focused on supporting high schools to build their own capacity to send all of their students to college.

When asked why they choose to partner with College Summit, schools and districts often cite:

• That our strategy allows them to serve all students across high schools and the district, and have direct management over the outcomes
• That we build our partners’ capacity to successfully send more students to college
• That we have a proven track record of success

Schools and districts across the country are showing that their students can achieve at the next level. It is our privilege to support educators in their efforts to unlock the potential of all students.

From its humble beginnings in the basement of a low-income housing project in Washington, DC with four students, College Summit now has programs in 10 states and has worked with more than 8,000 students. Seventy-nine percent of College Summit Peer Leaders enroll in colleges and universities, nearly double the national rate of 46% for high school graduates from the same income level. Perhaps even more remarkable is that more than three quarters of College Summit students, who were never even expected to enroll in college, graduate.

Biography:

J.B. founded College Summit in 1993 while directing a teen center in the basement of a low-income housing project in Washington, D.C. Since that time, in partnership with school districts around the country, College Summit has served over 20,000 students and trained over 700 educators. Widely recognized in the fields of college access and social entrepreneurship, in 2007 College Summit was named by Fast Company magazine and Monitor Group, for the fourth year in a row, one of the leading organizations “changing the world.” For its impact in helping communities raise college enrollment rates for low-income students, College Summit has twice been featured in an annual report on initiatives to diversify higher education by the U.S. Department of Education, received the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s highest award for improving college access, and was profiled in David Bornstein’s 2004 book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. The organization has also received awards in social enterprise from Ashoka, The Manhattan Institute, and The Skoll Foundation.

J.B. is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from Regis University, the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award and the Harvard Divinity School First Decade Award. He is a graduate of Denver Public Schools, Yale University and Harvard Divinity School. J.B. lives in Washington D.C., with his wife Lauren and their three children.