Opportunity 2040: How Dallas Is Building a Path to Economic Mobility

In our first TribFest 2026 conversation, we asked a big question: How can communities move from identifying persistent challenges to actually changing outcomes for children and families?

The answer, at least from Dallas, starts with something that sounds simple but has taken years to build: people and institutions agreeing on what they want to accomplish together.

At the Texas Tribune Festival, Commit President of Dallas County Impact Miguel Solis joined Jennifer Blatz, CEO of StriveTogether, and Liz Cedillo-Pereira, Assistant City Manager for the City of Dallas, for “Opportunity 2040: Dallas’ Bold Plan to Cut Child Poverty in Half and Put 150,000 Residents on a Path to Prosperity.”

Moderated by Results for America CEO and Co-Founder Michele Jolin, the conversation explored how Dallas has built a network of education, government, nonprofit, business, and community partners around shared outcomes and what other communities might learn from that experience.

The discussion was also part of the launch of Results for America’s Do What Works: Smarter Government, Better Results, which includes a chapter examining the work underway in Dallas.

But the story the panel told wasn’t about a single program, policy, or organization.

It was about building the infrastructure to solve problems together.

Start with a goal big enough to organize around

Miguel took the conversation back to 2011.

At the time, roughly one in three Dallas third graders was reading on grade level. Relatively few children were enrolling in high-quality pre-K. And only 15% of Dallas County high school graduates were earning a postsecondary degree within six years.

Dallas ISD had also experienced significant leadership turnover, while schools and communities were navigating substantial financial and economic challenges.

But civic leaders and institutions across Dallas were increasingly willing to approach those challenges collectively.

That helped lead to the creation of the Commit Partnership and a model built around a shared agenda, common goals, data, and relationships across sectors.

Fifteen years later, that same idea has evolved into an even bigger community ambition.

“By the year 2040, at least half of all 25- to 34-year-olds in Dallas County are attaining a living wage. We also want to ensure that by that same year, that we are halving child poverty,” Miguel told the audience. “That is a bold, ambitious, perhaps audacious goal, but it serves as the thing that fuels us.”

Opportunity 2040, developed by Commit and the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL), gives partners across Dallas County a shared destination: put 150,000 more young people on a path to economic mobility and cut child poverty in half.

There is no single intervention that gets a community there.

From programs to systems

For Commit, Opportunity 2040 means concentrating on systems where evidence suggests change can have an outsized impact on a student’s trajectory.

Miguel pointed to three major areas of work: high-quality educator talent, rigorous instruction and curriculum, and postsecondary access and success.

Teacher talent offered a particularly personal example.

Miguel recalled receiving an exemplary rating after his first year teaching in Dallas ISD in 2009.

“I felt great for like five seconds, and then I realized there is no way on Earth that I am an exemplary teacher,” he said.

At the time, nearly every Dallas ISD teacher received a proficient or exemplary rating, Miguel recalled, while the district’s college-readiness rate was around 10%.

Those data weren’t telling the same story.

“Systems are designed to get the results they get,” Miguel said.

Dallas ISD ultimately redesigned how it evaluates and compensates educators, including financial incentives designed to attract highly effective teachers and principals to campuses where they are most needed.

The broader lesson wasn’t simply about teacher pay. It was about looking closely at the results a system produces and changing the underlying incentives and structures contributing to those results.

Dallas’ experience also informed statewide conversations. Texas’ 2019 House Bill 3 established the Teacher Incentive Allotment, creating a state-funded pathway for designated highly effective teachers to earn additional compensation, with greater funding associated with higher-need campuses. House Bill 2 later expanded the Teacher Incentive Allotment and established additional teacher-retention funding.

For Miguel, that illustrates another part of Commit’s approach: test and learn locally, understand what produces results, and work with partners to determine whether those lessons can inform change at a larger scale.

Data should change decisions

Throughout the conversation, data kept coming up. Not simply as something to put in a report, but as a tool for deciding what to do differently.

Liz shared one example from the COVID-19 pandemic, when students across Dallas were struggling to access reliable internet for school, with some families doing homework outside fast-food restaurants to catch a Wi-Fi signal.

The City of Dallas, Commit, CPAL, school districts, nonprofits, chambers, and other partners began meeting regularly to understand the scale of the problem. Partners gathered and mapped data, aligned available resources, and worked through schools, libraries, and other community institutions to distribute laptops, hotspots, and other supports.

“We can align, and we should align,” Liz said. “There’s a part for every one of us to play.”

That approach is now informing the city’s broader Drivers of Opportunity framework, which looks across areas including educational attainment, opportunity-rich neighborhoods, employment, public safety and wellness, environmental conditions, and health.

The question isn’t simply how much activity is happening.

It’s whether people’s lives are changing as a result.

Economic mobility doesn't fit neatly into one system

One of the most important threads of the discussion was how quickly the lines between education, housing, workforce, and economic mobility disappear when you look at the experience of an actual family.

Liz shared her own experience with housing instability as a high school student. After her parents separated, her mother worked three jobs and moved the family to an apartment two blocks from Liz’s high school.

“That was a game changer for my brother and myself,” Liz said. Today, that experience shapes how she thinks about city policy.

Instead of viewing education, housing, workforce development, libraries, and other community infrastructure as entirely separate systems, the panel explored how those pieces interact in the lives of the same families and how partners can use data to better understand those connections.

Trust may be the most important infrastructure of all

Data alone, however, doesn’t create collective action.

People have to trust one another enough to act on it.

Liz identified something less visible that has helped sustain the work in Dallas: organizations being willing to care more about the outcome than who receives credit for it.

It means, as she put it, “taking the ego out of the work.”

Miguel described the same idea another way.

“We operate at the nexus of data, ideas, and trust.”

Data can illuminate a problem. Ideas can provide potential solutions. But Commit itself doesn’t operate most of the programs or systems where change ultimately occurs.

Partners do.

That means relationships aren’t incidental to the strategy. They are the strategy.

“We operate at the speed of trust,” Miguel said. As partners begin seeing progress, Miguel explained, data becomes easier to discuss honestly. New ideas become easier to test. And organizations become more willing to work together on the next challenge.

Good ideas should travel

Dallas isn’t alone in trying to build this kind of infrastructure.

StriveTogether works with more than 70 place-based partnerships around the country that organize around cradle-to-career outcomes, from kindergarten readiness and third grade reading through postsecondary attainment and ultimately earning a living wage.

Jennifer described the underlying concept as civic infrastructure: communities aligning around a shared vision, using data to understand where young people are succeeding or being left behind, and coordinating institutions around strategies that can improve those outcomes.

“What we’re really asking communities to do is align around a shared vision for their kids and their community,” Jennifer said.

That also allows communities to learn from one another. Jennifer described what StriveTogether calls the “network effect,” where an approach demonstrated in one community can inform another rather than forcing every city or state to start from scratch.

The goal isn’t to copy Dallas.

It’s to learn from what works and adapt it to local circumstances.

Local progress eventually hits a ceiling

That exchange of ideas raised another important lesson: Local partnerships can prove that something works. But scaling that progress often requires changes beyond the local level.

“Local impact hits the ceiling without state enabling conditions and state infrastructure,” Jennifer said.

That is why place-based work increasingly connects neighborhood, regional, and state systems, which is what Jennifer called “nested civic infrastructure.”

A community organization may understand what’s happening within a neighborhood. A regional partnership like Commit can connect outcomes across systems and institutions. Statewide coalitions can address policies, funding structures, data systems, and other conditions that influence what communities are able to do.

Each layer has a different role.

The opportunity comes when those layers work together.

Public dollars should produce public outcomes

Money matters, too. But the panel pushed beyond the question of simply spending more.

The bigger question was whether public resources are aligned with strategies that evidence suggests can improve outcomes.

Liz brought that lens to city government, where fiscal constraints are making partnerships increasingly essential.

Facing a difficult budget cycle, Dallas initially considered reductions in library staffing and hours.

Community members pushed back, arguing that libraries are essential civic infrastructure. The resulting conversation shifted toward creating seven flagship libraries designed to operate as neighborhood hubs, with partners helping bring adult-learning services into those spaces.

The example reinforced one of the day’s recurring themes: Sometimes the infrastructure a community needs already exists.

The question is whether partners can use it differently. 
 
And what about people who have already fallen off the path?

The final audience question brought the conversation to young people whose education or career paths have already been interrupted.

What happens when someone drops out of school, stops out of college, becomes a parent, needs to work, or simply finds that the traditional path doesn’t fit?

Miguel pointed to the Dallas County Promise and partnerships involving the Economic Mobility Center and Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas as examples of efforts to better identify and reconnect with young people who have stopped out of education.

Access to better information about students’ aspirations and where their journeys changed can help partners design workforce and education pathways around the people who actually need them.

“They don’t live in the shadows anymore,” Miguel said.

The same principle applies to career credentials. Texas has increasingly created incentives for schools and colleges to connect students with credentials and career pathways. But Miguel emphasized that the next iteration of that work must ensure those credentials actually connect students to living-wage opportunities.

The goal isn’t simply another credential.

It’s economic mobility.

Data. Ideas. Trust.

Toward the end of the conversation, Michele asked each panelist what they would tell a community just beginning this work.

Miguel’s answer returned to the framework that has helped guide Commit: Data. Ideas. Trust.

Get the data and use it to understand what’s happening.

Develop ideas for addressing the root causes those data reveal — recognizing that the best idea doesn’t have to come from your own organization.

Then build the relationships required to turn those ideas into action.

The work takes time.

Commit has been at it for 15 years, and none of the panelists suggested the work was finished.

But Dallas is seeing evidence that persistent, coordinated work can change outcomes.

Miguel’s advice to other communities was simple: “Don’t repeat what we do. But know that, over time, results will show up.”

That may be the bigger lesson from Dallas.

Opportunity 2040 isn’t a promise that one program, organization, policy, or funding stream will solve child poverty.

It’s a commitment to keep building the civic infrastructure required to solve problems together and to keep measuring whether those efforts are actually creating more opportunity for the people they are intended to serve.

That work continues long after TribFest.

And so does our conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Opportunity 2040?

Opportunity 2040 is a shared Dallas County effort led by the Commit Partnership and Child Poverty Action Lab focused on increasing economic mobility. The initiative seeks to put 150,000 more young people on a path to economic mobility, with the broader goals of ensuring at least half of Dallas County’s 25- to 34-year-olds earn a living wage and cutting child poverty in half by 2040.

What is collective impact?

Collective impact is an approach in which organizations from different sectors align around shared goals, use common data to understand progress, and coordinate their work toward improving community outcomes. Commit was founded around this approach in Dallas County.

What does “civic infrastructure” mean?

In the context of the TribFest conversation, civic infrastructure refers to the relationships, data systems, organizations, processes, and shared goals that allow communities to work collectively on complex challenges over time.

Why are data important to Opportunity 2040?

Data allow partners to identify where outcomes are improving or falling short, understand disparities, focus on potential root causes, evaluate strategies, and determine whether investments are producing better outcomes for children and families.

What does trust have to do with economic mobility?

Many of the systems affecting economic mobility are operated by different organizations and institutions. Because no single organization controls all of them, sustained progress requires partners to share information, coordinate strategies, make decisions together, and maintain relationships over time. As Miguel Solis said during the panel, “We operate at the speed of trust.”

How are education and housing connected to economic mobility?

The panel emphasized that families experience education, housing, transportation, workforce, health, and other systems simultaneously. Housing instability, for example, can affect where students attend school, attendance, family finances, and educational continuity. The Opportunity 2040 approach therefore considers multiple systems that influence whether children and families can thrive.

How has Dallas’ work influenced education policy in Texas?

During the panel, Miguel described how strategies developed and tested locally, including approaches to identifying, compensating, and strategically placing highly effective educators, helped inform broader policy conversations. Texas created the Teacher Incentive Allotment through House Bill 3 in 2019, and House Bill 2 later expanded TIA while adding other teacher-compensation investments.

Can the Dallas approach work in other communities?

The panelists emphasized that communities should not simply copy Dallas. Instead, they can adapt practices such as establishing shared outcomes, using data, building cross-sector partnerships, learning from evidence, and developing long-term civic infrastructure to their own local circumstances.

Who participated in the Opportunity 2040 TribFest panel?

The conversation featured Miguel Solis, President of Dallas County Impact at the Commit Partnership; Jennifer Blatz, CEO of StriveTogether; and Liz Cedillo-Pereira, Assistant City Manager for the City of Dallas. Michele Jolin, CEO and Co-Founder of Results for America, moderated the discussion.