The ACHIEVE initiative is led by CSL in collaboration with five rural public school districts across the Mississippi Delta—Blytheville, Hope, and Osceola Public Schools, Friendship Aspire Academy Public Charter Schools of Arkansas, and the Pulaski County Special School District. To date, ACHIEVE has addressed the cumulative needs of almost 12,000 students in these five districts, recruiting and uplifting more than 400 high-performing teachers and leaders.

The project’s goals include increasing student learning and graduation rates by improving educator effectiveness. To accomplish this, CSL is partnering with these districts to build state-of-the-art human capital management systems designed to strengthen teacher and leader recruiting, talent management, and professional learning, in tandem with new performance-based compensation strategies.

Additional partners in this project include Harvard University’s Strategic Data Project, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Funding for ACHIEVE combines Federal dollars under the US Department of Education’s Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant program and in-kind non-Federal district funds. The Federal government has made an initial three-year commitment to the ACHIEVE project, with the potential for extensions to five years and ten years, cumulatively.