Achieve Escambia has quietly shut down its nonprofit and has asked United Way of West Florida to take over the initiative. And if you’re wondering what we learned from this expensive, well-intentioned effort—you’re not alone.
An Uncomfortable Conversation
That’s the uncomfortable question Pensacola needs to answer.
We’re excellent at launching initiatives. We gather community leaders, unveil glossy mission statements about “cradle to career” success, and celebrate partnerships with balloons and t-shirts. We love the theater of collaboration. What we don’t love—what we actively avoid—is honest evaluation.
Achieve Escambia operated for years with the promise of using data to drive positive change in education outcomes. The organization brought together business leaders, educators, and nonprofit partners under one collective impact umbrella. They hosted meetings. They published dashboards. They talked about kindergarten readiness and college access networks.
But what actually changed? Which metrics improved? What specific interventions worked, and which failed? These aren’t rhetorical questions—they’re the basic accountability measures any community should demand when investing resources in bold initiatives.
Honest Evaluation Needed
This isn’t about attacking well-meaning people or dismissing genuine efforts to help children. It’s about establishing a culture of honest evaluation. If we can’t assess our successes and failures, we’re condemned to repeat expensive mistakes while wondering why nothing fundamentally changes.
Other communities do this differently. They conduct rigorous program evaluations. They publish findings—including unflattering ones. They make course corrections based on evidence rather than optimism.
Pensacola has talented people, generous donors, and real commitment to improving outcomes for kids. What we lack is the courage to ask hard questions when initiatives don’t deliver promised results.
My latest piece for Inweekly examines why our community struggles with evaluation, what we might learn from Achieve Escambia’s end, and how we can do better moving forward.
Because launching initiatives is easy. Learning from them? That requires something we haven’t quite mastered yet: honest accountability.
