My Brother’s Keeper
Addressing Persistent Opportunity Gaps
President Barack Obama started the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) initiative in February 2014 to address persistent opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color and to ensure all youth can reach their full potential. Today, the work continues as the MBK Alliance, an initiative of the Obama Foundation. The MBK Alliance has impact communities in major cities in the United States, with Chicago being one of the largest.
What We Do
MBK & THRIVE
Thrive Chicago stewards the implementation of My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) in Chicago. MBK Chicago is part of Thrive’s broader strategy to work collectively to address and eliminate inequities for boys and young men of color (BYMOC). MBK Chicago’s focus areas include: education, mentorship and narrative change.
The Obama Foundation awarded Thrive the MBK Alliance Impact Grant in 2018 and work began on creating the MBK Chicago Action Plan. To ensure the co-creation of an action plan that centers the needs of BYMOC in Chicago, Thrive talked with more than 200 BYMOC from across the city, conducting focus groups and in-depth one-on-one interviews with young men to hear their stories, wants and needs. In order to understand the holistic needs of BYMOC, Thrive also convened and interviewed community-based organizations (CBOs), civic and business leaders.
In 2019, Thrive formed the MBK Action Team of more than 60 public systems partners and organization leaders to translate the action plan into reality. In the midst of our data-driven strategic planning—and centering on the lived experience of our community through recommendations in the plan—MBK Chicago has led the development of a holistic educator pipeline strategy. The goal is twofold: to help BYMOC identify their purpose in life through an Intro to Urban Education course curriculum; and to help our city cultivate a new pipeline of educators.
Our Collective Achievement
Sixty Black and Brown high school students have enrolled in a pilot program to learn about urban education, diversity and representation and the teaching profession.
IMPACT STORIES
EDUCATOR PIPELINE
The largest initiative in Thrive’s MBK Chicago portfolio is the Educator Pipeline. Black and LatinX men only make up 2% of the American teaching force. Additionally, adolescent and teenage Black males have, historically, faced the largest gaps in academic achievement, the highest dropout rates and the lowest college attainment rates in the country. Research links BYMOC achievement to the presence of high-quality educators of color, particularly males. For example, Black students, particularly males, with a Black teacher in elementary school are 39% less likely to drop out of high school and 13% more likely to enroll in college than peers without Black teachers.
In interviews and focus groups, BYMOC that they want more in-school classes devoted to helping them find and pursue their purpose in life. In response as a community, the MBK Action Team collectively built a strategy to create a holistic pathway for BYMOC to become educators.
The Educator Pipeline initiative starts with the Intro to Urban Education course for BYMOC who are seniors in high school. This course launched in the Fall of 2021 at three high schools on the South and West sides of Chicago. These young men will go through a purpose- and identity-driven course to help them realize their greatness and develop the skills of an educator.
An educator pipeline responds to Chicago’s pressing talent needs now. Chicago Public Schools’ teacher workforce does not reflect its student body; 83% of CPS students are Black and Latinx, compared with just 42% of teachers, a startling 3% of whom are Black males. Just 51% of new CPS Black teachers stay at least three years, lower than the district average and depriving Black students of the many benefits such experienced educators have. CPS has set the 2024 goal to add 3,000 more educators of color. Its executive leadership team has asked MBK and Thrive to partner strategically to strengthen its male educator of color pipeline, as has the Chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) and two of its Presidents. In starting with an educator pipeline focus, MBK solidifies key systems partnerships and enhances structures and supports benefitting BYMOC aspiring to teach AND those pursuing other careers.
At the population-level, educator pipeline strategies drive BYMOC outcomes, improving college readiness, enrollment and completion and teaching profession readiness, entry, retention and leadership development. The strategy has a lasting, compounding impact on earlier-grade outcomes as more BYMOC benefit from same-race teachers. The Educator Pipeline initiative targets a 50% net increase (~660 more than the ~1,330 now) in Black and Latinx male CPS teachers by 2025 and 125% net increase (~1,660 more) by 2030, countering years of below-target hiring and low retention rates.
At the systems level, educator pipeline strategies pursue structural changes in policies, practices and resourcing benefitting BYMOC and male educators of color. Thrive’s rigorous use of data to prove practices, and close relationships with CPS, Department of Family and Support Services, and CCC—public entities who collectively oversee ~$8 billion in annual budgets—to adopt those proven practices enable such structural change. Thrive’s strategic relationship with Advance Illinois enables educator pipeline public policy efforts at the Illinois level. Finally, Thrive’s work with dozens of community-based organizations provides a through-line to assets and networks on the ground in the communities, to strengthen their relationships, enhance their capabilities, and build their power to advance the big changes they desire with BYMOC.
ACTION TEAM PARTNERS
The MBK Chicago Action Team is a team of more than 90 individuals representing approximately 60 organizations. The Action Team scales across sectors like education, mentorship, policy, media and other fields that are necessary to collectively impact systemic change. The team co-designs solutions to respond and eliminate inequities for BYMOC.
