Mission. The U.S. Department of Education seeks to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.

President Obama's vision is that by 2020, America will again have the best-educated, most competitive workforce in the world with the highest proportion of college graduates of any country. To do this, the United States must also close the achievement gap, so that all youth— regardless of their backgrounds—graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers.

High Priority Performance Goals

As part of developing the 2011 Budget and performance plan, the Department of Education has identified a limited number of high-priority performance goals that will be a particular focus over the next two years. These goals, which will help measure the success of the Department's cradle-to-career education strategy, reflect the importance of teaching and learning at all levels of the education system. These goals are consistent with the Department's 5-year strategic plan that is under development and will be used to regularly monitor and report progress. To view the full set of performance information, please visit http://www.ed.gov.

Educational Outcomes

• Early Learning. All states collecting school readiness data and improving their overall and disaggregated school readiness outcomes.

• K–12. All states improving overall and disaggregated high-school graduation rates.

• College. Nation improving overall and disaggregated college completion rate.

Key Initiatives

Evidence Based Policy. Implementation of a comprehensive approach to using evidence to inform the Department's policies and major initiatives, including:

• Increase by 2/3 the number of Department discretionary programs that use evaluation, performance measures and other program data for continuous improvement.

• Implement rigorous evaluations for all of the Department's highest priority programs and initiatives.

• Ensure all newly authorized Department discretionary programs include a rigorous evaluation component.

Struggling Schools Reform. Identify as nationwide models 500 of the persistently lowest achieving schools initiating high-quality intensive reform efforts (e.g., turnarounds, restarts, transformations, or closures).

Effective Teaching. Improve the quality of teaching and learning by:

• increasing by 200,000 the number of teachers for low income and minority students who are being recruited or retained to teach in hard-to-staff subjects and schools in systems with rigorous processes for determining teacher effectiveness;

• ensuring that all states have in place comprehensive teacher evaluation systems, based on multiple measures of effectiveness including student achievement, that are used for professional development, retention, tenure, and compensation decisions.

Data Driven Decisions. All states implementing comprehensive statewide longitudinal data systems that link student achievement and teacher data and link K–12 with higher education data and, to the extent possible, with pre-K and workforce data.

College and Career Ready Standards. All states collaborating to develop and adopt internationally benchmarked college- and career-ready standards.

Simplified Student Aid. All participating higher education institutions and loan servicers operationally ready to originate and service Federal Direct Student Loans through an efficient and effective student aid delivery system with simplified applications and minimal disruption to students.

Link to the "Performance and Management" chapter of Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/management.pdf [PDF, 756K].