[1] He is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Stand for Children, a national American education advocacy organization based in Portland, Oregon, with affiliates in nine states.
[2][permanent dead link] Edelman cites tutoring a six-year-old bilingual child named Daniel Zayas in reading while volunteering at Dwight Elementary School during his first year at Yale as a turning point.
Stand for Children's mission is to ensure all students receive a high quality, relevant education, especially those whose boundless potential is overlooked or under-tapped because of their skin color, zip code, first language, or disability.
[8] Stand's top priority areas concern increasing high school graduation rates, college and career preparation, literacy proficiency levels of economically disadvantaged students, and achieving equitable and adequate funding.
Stand helped secure the passage and full funding of Measure 98 in Oregon, which provides $303 million to enable the state's school districts to expand evidence-based dropout prevention strategies, career technical education pathways, college credit courses, and post-secondary counseling.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 28, 2011, Edelman was the center of a controversy due to remarks he made regarding recent concessions by teachers' unions leading to landmark education reform legislation in Illinois.