What measurable effects did My Brother’s Keeper have on education and employment outcomes for young men of color?
Executive summary
My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) mobilized federal, state and local partners around six life‑stage milestones to improve education and employment outcomes for boys and young men of color, and spawned local programs, a White House task force and an Obama Foundation–led MBK Alliance [1] [2] [3]. Measurable results are heterogeneous: there are documented local and program‑level gains and well‑publicized investments (for example, New York’s $20 million appropriation), but there is no clear, comprehensive, published causal evidence showing nationwide improvement in education or employment attributable to MBK as a single, unified intervention [4] [5] [6].
1. What MBK set out to measure and why it matters
The initiative explicitly targeted disparities in school readiness, grade‑level reading, high school completion, college access and workforce entry for boys and young men of color and directed federal partners to create ongoing indicators of life outcomes and a “What Works” portal to disseminate evidence‑based programs [1] [2] [7]. That measurement orientation matters because MBK intentionally framed success around concrete milestones — making the question of measurable effects a central, stated goal of the effort [2] [7].
2. Evidence on education outcomes: program wins, but limited causal proof
At the program level, MBK catalyzed the scale‑up of mentor and attendance‑focused models — the MBK Success Mentors effort is described as the nation’s first attempt to scale an evidence‑based, data‑driven mentor model to reach high‑risk students, supported by a public–private network including Johns Hopkins and national nonprofit partners [5]. Local MBK networks in states and cities adopted cradle‑to‑career strategies and education supports (New York State, Phoenix, Los Angeles County examples), and many jurisdictions report targeted initiatives to close graduation and discipline gaps [4] [8] [9] [10]. However, independent academic reviews caution that evaluations tying MBK broadly to improved student achievement are sparse; scholarship reviews emphasize the need for rigorous, contextually aware research and note controversies about framing Black boys as a “problem” rather than centering empowerment approaches [6] [11].
3. Evidence on employment outcomes: local hiring reforms and supports, ambiguous systemwide effects
MBK communities promoted jobs access strategies — for example, Los Angeles County’s MBK materials propose streamlining county hiring and creating youth career exposure programs, and New York’s budget commitment signaled workforce investment priorities [10] [4]. The Obama administration and the MBK Alliance encouraged private‑sector and philanthropic commitments to training and employment pipelines [2] [12]. Yet the sources do not provide a national, peer‑reviewed estimate that MBK produced measurable, sustained increases in employment or earnings across target populations; the initiative functioned largely as a convening and scaling vehicle for local programs whose employment impacts vary by place and program design [12] [7].
4. Notable local impacts and model communities
Some MBK model communities report strong, measurable local outcomes: the MBK Alliance highlights MBK Omaha’s demonstration of a 30 percent decrease in homicides from 2011 to 2022 as an impact on safety milestone outcomes, and the Alliance selected 19 organizations in a Model Communities cohort to expand evidence‑based practices in mentoring and violence reduction [12]. These wins show MBK’s potential to mobilize multi‑sector partnerships and to catalog promising local metrics, but they do not equate to proof that the federal rollout alone produced improved education or employment outcomes nationwide [12] [3].
5. Limitations, critiques and hidden agendas in evaluation
Analyses stress that MBK’s strength as a convening and normative initiative can obscure the need for randomized or quasi‑experimental impact evaluations; critics argue MBK sometimes framed young Black males as problems rather than centering empowerment and structural remedies, and movement activists urged more redistributive policy responses beyond charitable and public‑private programs [6] [13]. Additionally, MBK’s decentralized model — federal challenge, local adoption, philanthropic funding — means attribution of population‑level changes to MBK is confounded by concurrent reforms, economic cycles and other local interventions [7] [11].
6. Bottom line: measurable but patchy, promising but not conclusively proven
The measurable effects of MBK on education and employment are best read as a patchwork: documented investments, scaled mentor and local cradle‑to‑career programs, and a limited set of strong local outcomes exist [4] [5] [12], yet there remains no comprehensive, causal evidence attributing broad improvements in educational attainment or employment for young men of color to MBK as a single national intervention; rigorous, place‑based evaluations and comparisons remain the missing piece to move MBK from promising coalition to proven national program [6] [11] [7].