Each year, creating our annual report gives us a chance to reflect on a snapshot of our progress as a network of schools. In the midst of all the challenges 2020 offered, this unusual year also provided us a chance to look at our work from entirely new angles—and to have our zeal renewed by what we saw.

In our annual report below, we examined our work through some of the prisms through which we gauge our progress every year, such as:

• Academic progress: 75% of graduates accepted at top-tier high schools and earning $3.3 million in scholarships and aid, more than any previous class;
• Philanthropic support: $14.8 million for New York and Cleveland, with NY fundraising 10% higher than 2019;
• Parent satisfaction: Reflected in a dramatic 21-point increase in our net promoter score;
• Key Milestones: Such as expanding to St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem and signing the agreement to expand to Cleveland this year.

We were gratified as well to look back at our schools’ responses to the global pandemic: their rapid transition to remote learning in the spring, the entire Partnership community’s commitment to emergency support for families suffering economic hardships, and their tireless preparations over the summer to offer both in-person and remote learning options this year.

Yet as we viewed the work of Partnership Schools through the prism of the global and national events that touched our students’ lives so directly this past year, we saw more vividly how much our schools both draw strength from and advance a vision that transcends the tumult of our times: a vision of the good life we seek for our young people. It is not enough to have enough; the good lives we aspire to for our students are indeed lives of goodness. As 2020 reminded us all, it takes knowledge, virtue, and vision for communities to thrive together.

So when we look back on 2020, we see challenges and accomplishments for our families and our schools—and more than anything, we hear loud and clear the urgent invitation of the present moment: an invitation to redouble our efforts and to empower our students for lives of goodness, purpose, and hope-fueled ambition on behalf of their families, our neighborhoods, and our nation. The true measure of our ongoing success will be how well we do in heeding that call.

To read the report, click the image or the arrow below.