America Achieves

Since its inception, America Achieve’s goals have closely paralleled the Program’s. This grant would support work to expand the OECD’s PISA-Based Test for Schools, whose pilot the Program funded; define and support desired student outcomes in deeper learning; and communicate the successes of deeper learning achieved through classroom and school practices.

This grant would support the planning and technology development phase of a national campaign to ignite a sense of urgency, optimism, and responsibility for raising the bar for U.S. education. The project’s major goals are to drive parental demand for rigor, secure support for the Common Core standards, and mitigate the risk of backlash when test results emerge in 2015. The plan will be piloted in two or three states in 2013, with national rollout in fall of 2014.

The U.S. government is facing a growing deficit and significant budget constraints, and resultant efforts to cut spending threaten many social programs. As New York Times columnist David Brooks suggests, "We’re going to be doing a lot of deficit cutting over the next several years. The country’s future greatness will be shaped by whether we cut wisely or stupidly." Today less than 1 percent of federal spending explicitly considers evidence of impact as a criterion for funding. Launched in 2012, Results for America seeks to improve the impact of public resources, shifting the funding debate toward a discussion of impact as a basis for resource allocation.