The vision of the Promise Neighborhoods program is that all children and youth growing up in Promise Neighborhoods have access to great schools and strong systems of family and community support in order to prepare them to attain an excellent education and be college and career ready. The Promise Neighborhoods program aims to significantly improve the educational and developmental outcomes of children and youth in the nation’s most distressed communities, and to transform those communities by

• identifying and increasing the capacity of eligible entities that are focused on achieving results for children and youth throughout an entire neighborhood;
• building a complete continuum of cradle-to-career solutions of both educational programs and family and community supports, with great schools at the center;
• integrating programs and breaking down agency “silos” so that solutions are implemented effectively and efficiently across agencies;
• developing the local infrastructure of systems and resources needed to sustain and scale up proven, effective solutions across the broader region beyond the initial neighborhood; and
• learning about the overall impact of the Promise Neighborhoods program and about the relationship between particular strategies in Promise Neighborhoods and student outcomes, through rigorous evaluation.¹