Accountability. It means taking responsibility for your actions, and it’s how many of us not only measure progress, but define success.

As our local students and families settle into a new school year, we at Achieve Escambia feel it’s important to provide you and the greater Pensacola community with an update on our progress. What did we set out to do? What difference have we made?

First, a little history. Achieve Escambia was launched three years ago as a collective impact partnership with a goal of aligning efforts across the community so our young people could experience better results in the classroom and more importantly in the job market.

Collective impact takes place when organizations and entities from different sectors agree to solve a specific social problem by writing a common agenda, aligning efforts, and agreeing to a set of shared measures of success. In other words, we each continue with our respective missions, but we do so with greater collaboration, cooperation and effectiveness.

Recently, we held our third annual community report card launch event at Pensacola State College. And I’m proud of the results we were able to share:

• Improving kindergarten readiness by 10 percent points at C.A. Weis Community Partnership School, achieved in part through multi-year investments in the school’s innovative full day, 3-year-old preschool program

• Winning two first-place awards for improving access to financial aid for seniors attending our seven public high schools

• Recruiting education teams to improve student outcomes through Achieve University, a yearlong continuous improvement training series for those involved in education

• Growing our partnership to include 210 volunteers

Those milestones, while significant, are just the tip of the iceberg.

Escambia County is on the rise. Our 2019 report, available on AchieveEscambia.org/Data, highlights dozens more bright spots, including improvements in Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) enrollment, third-grade reading scores, seventh-grade math scores, high school graduation and career readiness.

Part of being accountable is being honest. One area where we saw a small dip in results was in kindergarten readiness. For the 2018 school year, our kindergarten readiness rate was 45.2 percent … down about a half of one percent compared to 2017. Statistically, that may be treading water, but the reality is we have a long way to go to get to our goal of 75 percent kindergarten readiness by 2025.

Another area of concern is one of equity. While the achievement gap is shrinking between white students and students of color in some academic measures, it’s not shrinking fast enough. One of the most glaring disparities in our report card is the 42%-point gap between black and white students in seventh grade math scores of Level 3 or higher on the Florida Standards Assessment.

Math matters – it’s a lever to college and career. Students who struggle with it in middle school tend to drop out of college. That means they will also face dimmer job prospects in a world where every career has mathematics applications.

Clearly, this work is important and big. None of us can do it alone. So what can you do to help? First, I strongly encourage you to review the report online. Looking at data helps clarify where our issues live, and what we need to do to achieve improved, accelerated and lasting results.

Second, while Achieve Escambia does not provide direct services, we partner with many great organizations across the community. Be part of the solution by volunteering at a school, helping your local church give back to its neighborhood school, or becoming a mentor at proven, evidence-based programs like Every Child a Reader Escambia (ECARE), our county’s signature early literacy initiative.

Ask your child care provider, after-school program, or civic club how they’re working collectively with other groups in the community to improve outcomes on our education roadmap. Then share the data with them.

It doesn’t take a lot from any single individual. However, it does take a little from each of us to reach a future where every generation achieves its full potential.

To the dozens of volunteers, teachers, faith leaders, parents, business leaders and students who’ve been part of this collective impact effort: Thank you. When Achieve Escambia was launched three years ago, we said this would be a long-term effort, not a quick-fix special.

In the coming year, we will be working smarter to engage families, community leaders and educators in going “all-in,” so that no child, youth or adult is left behind or left out of our Escambia County economy.

Kimberly Krupa is executive director of Achieve Escambia. She can be reached at director@achieveescambia.org.