2025 Dallas County Economic Mobility Report

Thirteen years ago, our Partnership was formed with a simple but urgent belief: that by working together across historically siloed sectors, consistently grounding our actions in data, and relentlessly placing the interests of our students first, we could tackle our region’s long-standing academic challenges. If successful, we would be providing unprecedented opportunity for tens of thousands of additional students to thrive and truly participate in the ever-growing regional prosperity of Dallas County.

That belief continues to guide us today—and this year, there’s much to celebrate.

Since 2012, the percent of young adults (ages 25-34) living in Dallas County earning a living wage has grown from 22% to 31%, increasing by almost 45,000 residents. Conversely, the percentage of Dallas County young adults living in poverty has declined from 16% to 11% since 2017, a decrease of over 16,500 residents.

These gains are in part the result of our region’s steady academic gains since both our founding in 2012 and the “Covid-19 trough” of 2021. Pre-K enrollment and Kindergarten Readiness are now at 51% and 53%, respectively, while the all-important metric of 3rd grade reading grew another 5 points last year to 44%, led by a 6-point gain for our economically disadvantaged students. Across all tested subjects and grade levels, Dallas County’s 2% increased proficiency rate doubled the growth seen by Texas students overall, and the number of students educated on a Dallas County campus rated either A or B by the state grew by over 60,000 students, over 10% of the county’s total enrollment, in just one year.

These gains are a testament to the positive, systemic change that is ongoing in our region. Increased pre-K participation, adoption of high-quality instructional curriculum, evaluating and paying our best teachers to work in our most challenged schools, expansion of early college and career high schools and increasing the number of advisors to support our students in their transition to college or career are just a few of the systemic changes underway across our region. School boards increasing their focus on rigorous goal setting and progress measuring is another factor, as is the growing alignment of our K-12, community college and four-year university systems to collaborate and work together to increase postsecondary enrollment and completion.

A final critical factor is the growing alignment of philanthropy to support systemic change given the substantial amount of sustainable public funding, exceeding $6 billion, that is spent annually to educate our children. Evidence of that is most recently seen in both the breadth and the depth of funding aligning behind our Dallas County Promise joint venture effort with Dallas College and our numerous four-year higher ed institutions, led by an unprecedented gift of $110 million by the O’Donnell Foundation to accelerate our community’s achievement of its True North Goal of seeing at least half of all young adults in Dallas County earning a living wage by the year 2040. Their tremendous investment is both historic and reflects a deep belief in the amazing potential of our students—and in our collective ability to create lasting change together.

I continue to marvel at the number of student-centered leaders across Dallas County who are willing to collaborate and collectively prove every day what’s possible when systems work better for kids. Let’s continue to support them. Let’s continue to learn from what’s working. And let’s stay committed to creating the conditions that allow every young person to thrive.

Thank you for walking alongside us in this important work. To learn more about these insights, access the report here.

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In gratitude,

Todd Williams,

Founder, Chairman & CEO, Commit Partnership