“We believe every young person deserves preparation for meaningful work and a meaningful life—not one or the other, but both. TNTP’s new strategy is built on that belief.”
There are moments in history when progress alters the landscape so fundamentally that it demands a pivot—not just in what we do but in how we think about our work.
TNTP has spent almost three decades helping expand access to opportunity—putting better teachers in classrooms, strengthening schools, and opening more pathways to college. That work mattered. It still does. It has delivered meaningful gains for millions of young people, and I’m very proud of the role we’ve played.
But I no longer believe that’s enough. Access remains absolutely essential, yet it cannot carry the full weight of what this moment demands. More is required.
The bar today is set at whether our education systems are equipping young people with the capability to shape their own lives and contribute meaningfully to their communities. Too often, they are not. That gap between access and capability is the defining challenge facing American education.
The social contract that held for generations—hard work, a degree, a path to stability—has quietly broken. Not just for young people in low-income communities. Middle-class families also feel the ground shifting in real time, wondering whether their children will do as well as they did. College remains the clearest route to economic security, but credentials alone aren’t delivering what they once promised. Millennials became the most-educated generation in American history and also the most economically precarious. Gen Z is following the same path: more credentials, less security.
The young people in schools today know they need something different. They’re telling us—not only in words, but in how they’re showing up. Chronic absenteeism has surged. Engagement is eroding. They are not disengaging because they don’t care; they are disengaging because what we are offering does not connect to a future they can see or trust.
That realization is shaping TNTP’s next chapter.
Our new strategy is built for this moment—one that holds access and capability together and focuses on building the solutions required to deliver both at scale.
It reflects a deliberate choice about where TNTP will concentrate its energy, expertise, and voice in the years ahead—and a conviction that incremental change will not deliver what the next generations need.
This strategy does not replace our core work. It extends it—strengthening access while ensuring it translates into real long-term mobility for young people. Our ambition is clear and measurable: to put 50 million young people on a path to economic and social mobility by 2035, each prepared not only to enter opportunity, but to navigate it—to build meaningful work and a meaningful life.
This work cannot be done by any one organization alone. It will require educators, system leaders, partners, and communities willing to rethink what student preparation truly means—and to build the conditions that make it possible. Fifty million young people are counting on us—on all of us.
I invite you to engage with our full vision—the case for why this moment demands a different approach, what we’ve learned from decades of work in schools and systems, and how we intend to move from access to capability at scale.
The moment is here. Let’s rise together to meet it.
