Aspire’s 2024-2025 Mid-Year Results

Aspire is celebrating our 30th anniversary this year, as well as finishing the last year of our current three-year strategic plan (July 2022-June 2025). Halfway through our program year, we’re pleased to announce that this has already been a year of growth and impact for Aspire. We have built on the long-standing work and partnerships that Aspire has established in the Arlington community, allowing us to serve more students than ever before with rich, engaging learning opportunities that grow their confidence and ability.

Last year, Aspire piloted afterschool program sites at Randolph and Drew Elementary Schools, two Title I elementary schools in South Arlington. Because of last year’s success and the urgent demand for high-quality holistic academic programming available at no cost to students and their families, Aspire opened an additional classroom at each of these school sites with the support of new funding through the state of Virginia! These new sites are a big deal: they are a testament to Aspire’s impact and innovation, and they are already making a critical difference for students in our community. 

When we developed our current strategic plan in 2022, students and families told us to keep doing what we were doing, but do it for more students. Aspire’s enrollment this year has reached 140 3rd-8th grade students across three sites, and we’ll be increasing that number this spring. By the end of the school year, we’ll be serving 160 students in our afterschool program. That’s double what we were serving this time three years ago, which is truly remarkable.

Highlights from the first half of the year include:

• Students loved the summer camp theme of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which taught them about the different elements, the environment, and sustainability. They had fun participating in lessons like designing advocacy posters to protect sea turtles, constructing models of the solar system, and tending to Aspire’s Community Garden.
• We served 132 students for six weeks (7 hours per day) of educational summer learning camp (106 students in 3rd through 5th grades and 26 middle school students).
• Students had an average attendance rate of 72% and among students who participated in all six weeks of summer camp and had testing data from the spring of 2024 and the fall of 2024, 87% maintained or improved their reading level, and 65% maintained or improved their math level.
• One parent shared “I also want to publicly thank you all for all that you guys did during the summer. It really proved successful according to our beginning of the year conferences, so thank you all!!!”
• So far this school year, Aspire has supported 140 students across our sites. 99% are students of color, 98% come from low-income households, and 62% speak a language other than English at home.
• 87% of students this fall entered Aspire testing 1+ grade levels behind in reading and 90% of students tested 1+ grade levels behind in math. While these numbers continue to show that students are testing behind their pre-pandemic levels, of the students testing on grade level for math, 100% are returning Aspire students.

Aspire is proud to be a hands-on, direct service, and grassroots organization with strong ties to our community. We’re grateful to all of our partners who make this work possible. In the words of one student, “Thank you for making the fun stuff happen!”

To learn more about Aspire’s work and hear more student stories from the first half of our 2024-2025 program year, check out our full report here.