American Idea Foundation

Measuring Results, Expanding Opportunity, Improving Lives.

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College Possible expands access to higher education in a data-driven way

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By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President and former House Speaker Paul Ryan has long believed that education is essential to helping individuals experience upward mobility and economic prosperity. There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and educational attainment, which is why the American Idea Foundation is working with organizations who are expanding access to higher education, helping students (often first-generation students or under-represented communities) to complete their degrees, and doing so in an evidence-based way.

One of these groups, which was awarded a grant from the American Idea Foundation in 2025, is College Possible.

Founded by Jim McCorkell, who was a first-generation college student, in St. Paul, Minnesota, College Possible was built on the belief that every student, regardless of their individual challenges, should have a chance to attend and succeed in college.

Starting with 35 students and a group of AmeriCorps coaches, College Possible has helped nearly 100,000 students since they began twenty-five years. Their expansion is due in large part to their unique programming model and their fidelity to data and evidence.

College Possible matches eligible students with near-peer coaches and provides an intensive curriculum designed to help these students overcome the most common barriers to getting into college and completing their degrees at no cost to students or their families.

These peer coaches operate from one of College Possible’s 8 sites across the country and provide students who have been identified and selected as having high academic potential and who come  from low-income backgrounds, with 5 critical services: 

(1) academic support through ACT/SAT test preparation;

(2) college application assistance;

(3) financial aid consulting;

(4) guidance in the transition to college; and

(5) coaching throughout college to support the academic confidence, financial literacy and resilience needed to graduate.

Originally conceived as a program centered around “test prep help for students who can’t afford Kaplan,” College Possible has expanded methodically. It now has a presence in 8 regions of the country, with sites stretching from Austin, TX to Seattle, WA, and College Possible’s near-peer coaches have assisted nearly 100,000 students on their college journeys.

To see the impact College Possible has had on the lives of young Americans, check out this video featuring testimonials from students enrolled in the College Possible Wisconsin program.

Beginning in 2008, College Possible began working with the Milwaukee Public School system, deploying their model to help students successfully apply and complete an undergraduate degree. In 2018, a multi-year evaluation was commissioned to measure how students participating in the College Possible program performed relative to a peer group, who were also in the Milwaukee Public School system.

The results of the evaluation were impressive. Among them:

  • College Possible students were 30% more likely to enroll in college immediately after high school.
  • College Possible students completed 1.4x the number of scholarship applications relative to the comparison group.
  • Enrolled students were 30% more likely to attend a 4-year college or university.

Equally important was the finding that the more often students participated in the College Possible program, the higher their college enrollment and persistence rates were.

These state-specific results lend credibility to a 2013 randomized controlled trial conducted by Professor Chris Avery of Harvard’s Kennedy School. This evaluation, which consisted of 238 Minnesota juniors and seniors who were randomly selected and split into treatment and control groups, found the following:

  • Participating in College Possible led to a statistically significant increase in college enrollment by around 19 to 21%.
  • Utilizing College Possible increased the likelihood of applying to a “highly competitive” or “very competitive” school and increased the number of applications submitted, particularly to four-year programs.
  • The effectiveness of College Possible’s programming was limited when it came to standardized test scores and the positive impact diminished over time as students enrolled in college degree programs.

As College Possible has matured as an organization, they have tweaked their model to account for some of these research findings. In 2016, to ensure that the robust, hands-on support continued throughout students’ college journeys, College Possible created the Catalyze program, which is a partnership where peer-coaches work with student support teams directly on campuses to help 1st year and 2nd year students remain on track towards degree completion.

In 2024, the Catalyze program helped 4,000 students graduate from 9 partner schools. It works by having coaches, who are often recent graduates of the same institution and partner campus, work directly with enrolled students to navigate registration, financial aid renewals, degree requirements, and connections to on-campus resources. These college freshmen and sophomores benefit from a trusted relationship with their near-peer coach and access to College Possible’s tech-enabled curriculum, which hopefully increases the likelihood of their remaining in school through graduation.

College Possible has recognized the importance of evidence and data in measuring success and the organization has gone a step further by augmenting their programming in response to early studies and experiments. They are committed to meeting the long-term needs of students and have worked tirelessly to help under-resourced students not only gain acceptance to colleges but to succeed and graduate upon admission.

The data from College Possible alumni is a testament to the program’s impact. In a 2024 survey of alumni, 95% of college graduates were employed, 71% were saving for retirement, 57% have experienced material career advancements, and nearly 40% were pursuing or had completed an advanced degree.

College Possible was created with the noble goal of helping every young person in America pursue higher education and because of the effectiveness of their peer-coaches and their reliance on evidence and data in shaping their programming, they are well on their way to succeeding. The American Idea Foundation looks forward to partnering with them as they continue to scale and assist more deserving students get into college and ultimately graduate.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

CarePortal: Harnessing technology and civil society to help America’s at-risk youth

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By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has long believed that America is at her best when civil society, which he often defines as the space between citizens and their government, is strong. Rather than simply waiting on government to help fellow citizens in times of need, Americans have always prided themselves on assisting their neighbors and community members who are struggling, often utilizing churches, philanthropic, or civic groups to organize these efforts.

This community-driven approach to solving some of America’s social challenges is what animates the work being done by CarePortal, one of the organizations that the American Idea Foundation will be supporting in 2025 with financial assistance and technical expertise.

CarePortal is an online hub, a digital platform, and a networking community that links caseworkers, social service agencies, churches, local philanthropists, and aid organizations with individual families and children in times of crisis.

CarePortal predominately serves those involved in the child welfare system or those who are at risk of entering the child welfare system due to preventable causes like poverty and neglect. The organization’s mission is to keep families together, keep children healthy and happy, and harness the power of technology and networking to create a community of caregivers that those in-need can turn to during trying times.

Each service provided or request met via CarePortal is designed to prevent children from entering foster care, to strengthen their families, to improve their educational or health outcomes, and to do so before a breakdown occurs.

Here’s a quick example of how CarePortal works:

  • A social worker or caseworker identifies a specific need for a child, ideally before they enter the foster care system, and enters a request for assistance via the CarePortal platform or app.
  • This request for assistance is then shared with local churches, businesses, non-profits, and individuals, giving them a real-time opportunity to immediately respond and help those in their community.
    • These requests can be for financial assistance on rent, transportation, food, clothing, or any type of support related to a child’s well-being and safety.
  • These requests are met by these civic or faith-based organizations and ideally, a family is strengthened, or a child is helped in a way that prevents them from going into the foster care system.

This video drives home further how CarePortal works with individuals and organizations to help local families and children in need.

CarePortal’s growth is driven by individuals and communities’ desire to support their neighbors in-need. The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler described CarePortal as “The Uber of Foster Care,” and explained the organization’s maturation in this way: 

“The origin story: Healthcare executive Adrien Lewis and his wife began fostering children in 2011 and spent two years trying to get churches in the Kansas City area to recruit foster parents—no easy task. Then, “out of nowhere,” Mr. Lewis says, “I get a vision for CarePortal, to leverage technology to connect. In crisis, those touched by the child-welfare system could connect with churches and people who care in proximity that would want to help if they knew. What would happen if you could expose people to the reality that a bed or crib or car seat, or paying a bill, things that were small, like 6-inch barriers, would actually make a difference to keep kids out of foster care and reunify biological families?” Heck of a vision.

So “with shoestring and duct tape, we pulled together different software platforms and kind of jimmied them together. A pilot of CarePortal hit the market in Austin, Texas, in late 2014. People went nuts over it. The very first request was for a family with a bedbug problem who was trying to adopt a cousin who had been in foster care. Supplies and volunteers solved their bedding problem.”

From those earnest beginnings, CarePortal has developed a network of 1,000 agencies and 6,000 local church and aid response teams across 37 different states that serve a projected 140,000 children and families annually.

In the same Wall Street Journal piece, CarePortal CEO Joe Knittig summed up the group’s work succinctly:

“Uber is to ride-sharing what CarePortal is to care sharing—community-based care sharing. Every day, we have 350 children that are actually being served by their neighbors through CarePortal.” The plan is to scale it to thousands.

Mr. Knittig explains, “CarePortal at its essence is a request-response loop.” On one side are social-service professionals, social workers and others who enter “real-time vetted needs of kids and families in crisis” into the CarePortal app. On the other side are local churches and community responders who see the need and jump into action. “Bedding is the No. 1 need entered into CarePortal. But there could be relational things like ‘I need a mentor.’”

Today, there are over 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. The United States spends $30 billion on foster care annually, yet research increasingly shows that preventing foster care is more cost effective and yields better outcomes for both children and families. CarePortal leans into this idea by providing a proactive, connected system of local support for families and children facing immediate crisis.

By combining modern technology with local civic, philanthropic, and faith-based organizations’ desire to help society’s most vulnerable children, CarePortal has hit on an innovative and impactful strategy to keep families intact. The American Idea Foundation is proud to support their efforts to strengthen civil society and assist our neighbors in times of crisis.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

At Aspen Economic Strategy Group Meeting, Ryan details how to advance America’s prosperity

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By: AIF Staff

Aspen, CO – Earlier this week, as part of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Study Group, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan participated in a panel discussion with Professor Jason Furman of Harvard University and Professor Melissa Kearney of Notre Dame entitled: Advancing America’s Prosperity.

The conversation touched on a variety of topics: the One, Big Beautiful Bill and its impact on the American economy in the short-term; the Trump Administration’s “America First” economic policy agenda; long-term fiscal challenges; and how public and private sector leaders can help America maintain its strategic edge on Artificial Intelligence, geopolitics, and economic competitiveness.

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks, edited lightly for clarity, follow. Video of the discussion is accessible here.

On the pro-growth aspects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

“Generally speaking, I think they got the bill right…. The good stuff, in my opinion, are the expensing provisions and the stuff that is really good pro-growth policy.

They made Section-199 permanent, which is very important for medium and small size businesses. They made full-expensing permanent, which is very good growth policy. This means that companies can write off their investments in plant and equipment in the year in which it takes place, that’s very good for productivity which leads to higher living standards. And they made the rates permanent, which reduces uncertainty.

They put other stuff in there that I wouldn’t have done, but they were more campaign promises… then they put some spending in this bill. It is spending that I think is good, but I would have preferred to put that in the regular course of the budget. The thing that Trump could never get in his first term was a full year of funding for his wall. He has got that in this…

All in all, there is a lot of good stuff, but there are things that could have done better. In my opinion, I would have had more entitlement savings to have a bigger debt reduction number coming out of this bill.”

On macroeconomics and trade policy:

“I had the distinct honor of teaching my three kids how to drive, something my wife delegated to me. All three of them started driving with two feet: One on the brake and one on the gas. We are driving the economy with two feet right now.

On the gas, we have good supply-side tax cuts and certainty. We have an unfolding regulatory relief that will unlock a lot of economic activity, but on the brake, we have these tariffs and a possible debt crisis around the corner after interest rates get cut.

On the tariffs, building on what Jason said, I would add to that [they are causing] a lot of uncertainty. What tariffs do is they raise prices on consumers, they raise prices on inputs for producers, and that lowers productivity and that means living standards go down.

I will concede – and I’ve never been a tariff guy – that the politics are pretty good. It is good, populist politics. I will concede that… but in the long-run, I think it is pretty easy to say this is not good for living standards, it’s not good for productivity, and what you end up doing is propping up American businesses and making them less competitive globally. I don’t think that is the smart way to go.”

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“The St. Louis Federal Reserve did a study on the steel industry. It’s a very protected industry. President Trump has done these massive Section 232 tariffs on steel. For every 1,000 jobs that were saved in the steel industry, we lost 75,000 jobs in steel-consuming industries in America. For one job saved, 75 were lost, but they were spread around the country.

So, you can point to the steel-worker jobs that you saved, but it’s much harder to point to the dispersed damage that is done to the economy you. In the short-run, you can point to the victories politically and you can use populist rhetoric. In the long-run, it’s corrosive to our economic well-being, living standards and competitiveness.”

On utilizing evidence in fighting poverty:

“I really believe we can move the needle on poverty-fighting by getting out of these ideological, partisan fights that we have been in for 30 years and go to what works by using evidence and the field of economics….

We are making a difference in the War on Poverty. There is a bipartisan solution to solving poverty problems with all of this economic data and evidence that we are accruing. I wrote this bill with Patty Murray, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, so there’s nothing partisan about this. It is: Do what works and measure your success based on outcomes, not on inputs, and I think we’re making good progress on that.”

On immigration and addressing labor force needs:

“I think President Biden really screwed up and messed up the border. It’s probably the greatest reason why President Trump was elected. And so, I think it goes without saying that having a secure border is in our national interest. So, let’s put that particular issue aside.

This is a big fight in my party as well and the question is: If you let in immigrants who are lower-skilled, are you going to depress people’s wages?

This is the key political debate. I would argue, with today’s technology, you can have visas and guest-worker programs designed in such a way that you can hopefully guarantee that you are not depressing a person’s wages. Because, I have to tell you, the best cheese in the world is made in Wisconsin but we need people to help us out. We don’t have enough people to literally make the cheese and milk the cows, so we need immigrants to help us do that.

Let me put it this way: We had Phil Swagel, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, with us. They do the big, long-term, macroeconomic forecasting and their projection is that the next 30 years of GDP growth will be an average of 1.3%, which is about half the rate of what we grew in the past 30 years, and it’s basically due to one reason: Labor Supply….

With better entitlement and safety net reforms, we can maximize the labor force participation and get every able-bodied person into work. I would argue that was a key feature of the Medicaid proposal in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We need to do that, and even with that, our birthrates are now 1.8% and they need to be 2.4%.

The thing we have going for us in America, unlike Europe and other countries, is we have the best and the brightest and the hardest working who want to come here. We can have smart immigration reform on the legal side: high-skilled, low-skilled, and everything in between, and do it in a way that makes sure that the able-bodied young man who is not working actually works, but even after that, you’re going to still need to people. And if you do this right, you can get us back to 3% trend economic growth.”

On the future of American energy policy:

“I think Chris Wright, the current Secretary of Energy, is dialed in pretty well on a good policy with an all of the above strategy… I think nuclear is extraordinarily important. With the kind of computing power we’re going to need for AI and data centers, the only real, viable source in my opinion is nuclear. We are getting to the point where we can process fission waste, so that’s almost waste free. We have been 20 years away from fusion energy for the last 60 years, but maybe we’re actually 20 years out now. The point being you need a national strategy for that. There’s basic scientific research and the Energy Department does that. Then, you need to clear the regulatory brush.

They just built a nuclear power plant in Atlanta a year ago and that was like the first one built in 30 years. We need to build more of these. They are scalable. The small module nuclear reactors are right around the corner, so personally, I think that’s a far better bet for us than subsidizing renewables and the rest.”