The following is an excerpt from the which was released March 1st at the Annual Blueprint Leaders Summit. Click here to see the full report on our web site.
Thanks to a multitude of collaborating partners, systemic change in education is happening in Central Texas:

• Truly transforming teaching and learning in demonstration middle schools across the region
• Expanding the capacity and quality of the STEM student pipeline more than any other region nationwide
• Building on the first platform for Kindergarten Readiness in the state
• Using action research to identify replicable practices that drive success for our English Language Learners
• Tripling the number of students supported to access and succeed in college
• Student attendance gains that lead the entire nation.

Business and community leaders came together in 2006 not because our educational systems were failing.  In fact, for almost any student group, on almost any measure, our students were getting incrementally better and better. Our leaders came together because the improvements were not fast enough, not deep enough, not wide enough. We were rapidly losing ground to other industrialized nations in an increasingly global economy.  Far too many of our students were not prepared to succeed in the 21^st Century. And our economic future was at risk because of it. We had to use objective data and focused community collaboration to establish a platform for true systemic change.
It wasn’t that we weren’t doing great things in education.  In fact, there were thousands of wonderful programs and projects underway; disconnected from one another; competing for funding; often happening redundantly on the same campus; sometimes even conflicting with one another. The most important question for the region was “How can we get our hands around this strategically?”
In 2008, Central Texas community leaders collaboratively established the four priority goals that became The Blueprint for Educational Change ^TM, our strategic plan to build the strongest educational pipeline in the country.  In 2011, E3 Alliance was recognized as a pioneer in an emerging field called “collective impact” which works to address complex social issues by bringing community together to drive toward common goals and taking successful strategies to scale through collaborative action.
Each year our community has come back together to review accomplishments, measure progress toward common goals and targets, celebrate partners, and recommit to the future that we want to build for our students and our economic future. As you’ll see in this report, the progress in the five years since we launched the Blueprint has been truly amazing. The Blueprint foundation is laid and the structure is well underway. But there is more to do. That’s why our theme for the year is: Some Assembly Required. As we move forward in 2013, we need YOUR help to leverage the Blueprint to assemble our future together — for our students and our economic prosperity.
— Susan Dawson, E3 Alliance President and Executive Director