America Achieves

Accelerateaccelerate, the national tutoring initiative: this past fiscal year, America Achieves spun off a new nonprofit organization, accelerate, which it had conceived of, incubated, and launched over the prior two fiscal years. Accelerate is a national initiative that aims to ensure equitable access to individualized instruction for historically excluded students nationwide to advance their academic success and well-being at scale. To accomplish this mission, accelerate is pursuing a three-pronged strategy. First, it is driving direct impact for students in school systems that leverage the existing evidence base on high-impact tutoring while investing in innovative solutions that break down barriers to access. Accelerate and its grantees have served over 200,000 students across the country. Second, it is further building the evidence base on what makes individualized instruction effective, how to implement it at scale, and how to make it more cost-effective through a strategic research agenda. Third, it is shaping actions of the range of partners including state and federal policymakers needed to sustainably embed effective practices into the fabric of public education systems, equitably serving students at large scale and in the long term.america Achieves conceived the idea for accelerate; raised $70 million for this national initiative and new nonprofit organization; and executed its initial pilot programs, research partnerships, and national grant competition. America Achieves announced the launch of accelerate with support from a bipartisan group of six current and former us secretaries of education after recruiting janice jackson (former ceo of chicago public schools) to serve as the founding executive chair of accelerate's board and kevin huffman (former commissioner of the tn department of education) to lead this new organization as its founding ceo.

Place-based implementation supportplace-based implementation support supports implementation efforts in localities that we had helped apply for the federal build back better regional challenge (bbbrc) and good jobs challenge (gjc) competitive grant programs driving skills, workforce development, and economic development.america Achieves has more than a decade-long track record deploying its results-oriented team and collaborative approach to strategically drive outcomes and forge strong partnerships with major foundations and other organizations. We have successfully championed significant policy initiatives and built and scaled high-quality non-profit organizations and programs in communities to drive career readiness and economic mobility across the country. This prior experience helps position America Achieves to pursue evidence-based strategies and deliver measurable outcomes through its work to help communities build local good jobs economies with equitable access to good jobs.investing in America's communities project - building back better and good jobs challenge: with generous donations from our funders, America Achieves supported 17 regions in submitting their bbbrc round 1 planning grant applications and provided customized, in-depth application support as well as workshops, office hours, and light-touch application review and feedback to a broader group of interested regions. Notably, 9 of the 17 regions to which we provided support were awarded one of the 60 planning grants out of more than 500 total applicants. For round 2 of the bbbrc implementation grant applications, we designed and led an eda-funded technical assistance coalition that supported all 60 finalists by assessing the needs of each region and providing individual and shared supports through 1:1 consultation, topical webinars, and responsive resources along with iterative feedback on their proposals to help sharpen their strategies and their focus on equity. In september 2022, 21 bbbrc implementation grant winners received a total of nearly $1 billion in grants, and in early august, 32 gjc grant winners received a total of $500 million in gjc grant awards.given the transformative nature of these federal bbbrc and gjc investments, America Achieves initiated and led the development of a complementary initiative to advance the momentum and continuation of bbbrc planning grant winnersthose finalists who did not receive a large implementation grantas well as giving bbbrc implementation grant winners immediate talent tools and support to help successfully launch this transformative $1 billion investment. This effort is also benefiting a subset of strong gjc applicants and others who didn't win federal grants and other place-based initiatives advancing workforce development aligned to infrastructure needs and includes both near-term deliverables and a longer-term strategy. America Achieves, in close collaboration with philanthropic partners and best-in-class technical assistance experts, designed and coordinated a menu of supports and services, including strategic coherence and advising, development of and connections to funding through our catalyze registry, talent matching, targeted technical assistance and technical assistance match.

Good jobs economybuilding on our work in supporting almost 75 communities in advancing inclusive economic growth, America Achieves focuses on helping communities align and integrate economic growth with economic mobility and equity in order to grow a fair economy, create and fairly fill good jobs at scale, and build the hope and shared economic progress needed to strengthen our democracy.our goal is that by 2030, local , trusted "backbone organizations and coalitions will work with America Achieves to become proof points of success - bringing together regional coalitions that represent local businesses and industries, community-led nonprofits, state and local government, and educational institutions from k-12, higher education, community colleges, and vocational training centers. These collaborative, multi-sector regional coalitions will work together to create more good jobs, ensure more equitable access to good jobs, and build public support. These communities will serve as local proof-points of what's possible nationwide, demonstrating that efforts to drive economic growth can not, and should not, operate separately from efforts to drive economic opportunity. They will also serve as examples of how to deploy large-scale resources to fuel the growth of emerging regional industries, and a catalyst to enable equitable access to good jobs nationwide.to achieve this goal, our current intent is that we will over the next several years: (a) support local proof points by selecting, funding, and developing up to 25 outstanding backbone organizations with the savvy, clout, capabilities, commitment, and credibility to develop and implement a strong, equitable economic growth agenda and an aligned, effective cross-sector coalition and ecosystem; (b) drive change at scale by building a pipeline helping 100+ communities get to work on inclusive economic growth, access tools, and prepare for the possibility of our "deeper dive" support and effective use of large-scale public funding; and (c) advance aligned public policy and messaging informed by what works, for whom, and under what conditions and where we must continue to learn to achieve our collective goals of economic advancement to help communities across the country succeed.in fy23, we continued to build the foundation for our good jobs economy strategy. Specifically, we led a successful effort in congress to secure bipartisan support for $500m in appropriations for the regional tech hubs competition. We then actively supported local communities as they developed plans to qualify for this funding and leverage these economic development resources with a focus on equity. Of the 11 tech hubs applications we supported, seven were awarded hub designations, and one was awarded a strategy development grant, a success rate of 64% (7.8x the national average). We then supported nine designated tech hubs participating in phase 2 of the competition, which will award 5-10 of the 31 designated tech hubs an additional $40-75 million in implementation grants (winners to be announced fy24 summer)