February 25, 2009
Austin, TX – The Blueprint for Educational Change (the Blueprint) Leader Summit brings together over 200 business, community, education and political leaders from Central Texas to prioritize the actions for the regional strategic plan to improve education from early childhood through college and workforce.  The Blueprint is Central Texas’ strategic plan to build the strongest education pipeline in the country.  It arose from over two years of ground-breaking research and a series of community dialogues involving hundreds of stakeholders, culminating in the 2008 Leadership Summit.
The four goals prioritized during last year’s Summit were:

1. Children Enter Kindergarten School Ready
2. Central Texas Eliminates Achievement Gaps While Improving Overall Student Performance
3. Students Graduate College and Career Ready and Prepared for Lifetime of Learning
4. Central Texas, as a Community, Prepares Children to Succeed

The theme of this year’s Summit is Why Not? – alluding to a consistent theme we heard during the community dialogues – why not challenge the way we’ve always done things to make the changes in education our students need and deserve?  The Summit’s goal is to build community accountability while identifying specific action steps to flesh out the action strategies already developed in the Blueprint.
“The Blueprint for Educational Change is the most promising effort we have seen to affect regional systemic change in education,” said Chris Busse of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. “This strategic plan is data-driven, community-based, and regionally-focused, and, as a result, the accomplishments are impressive and broad-reaching.”
Some notable Blueprint accomplishments demonstrate the “Why Not?” perspective:

1. Release of the Central Texas School Readiness Standard – the first standard for building and assessing readiness for Kindergarten in the history of the state.
2. First-in-the-state articulated academic credit for select Project Lead the Way engineering courses to Community College and Public University.
3. Award of a collaborative, regional National Science Foundation grant including 10 school districts and three institutions of higher education to strengthen the Engineering Pipeline.

Today’s Summit will result in stronger community commitment to the Blueprint’s four goals, more detail in the action strategies to focus and sustain efforts to align education change across education, industry, and the community.

E3 Alliance stands for Education Equals Economics.

Since its founding in 2006 as a regional collaborative by the Austin Area Research Organization, The University of Texas at Austin and Austin Community College District, the E3 Alliance has acted as a catalyst for change and is the P-16 Council for the Central Texas region. The E3 Alliance is dedicated to better aligning educational systems and practices to drive higher outcomes for students and ensure a more efficient allocation of resources to increase our competitiveness as a region.