Mission: The mission of the Alliance for Excellent Education is to promote high school transformation to make it possible for every child to graduate prepared for postsecondary learning and success in life.
Vision: The Alliance for Excellent Education envisions a nation where all children graduate from high school with the knowledge and intellectual and social skills necessary for postsecondary learning and success in life.
About the Alliance: The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington, DC-based national policy and advocacy organization that works to improve national and federal policy so that all students can achieve at high academic levels and graduate from high school ready for success in college, work, and citizenship in the twenty-first century. The Alliance focuses on America’s six million most at-risk secondary school students—those in the lowest achievement quartile—who are most likely to leave school without a diploma or to graduate unprepared for a productive future.
The Alliance works to encourage the development and implementation of federal and national policies that support effective high school reform and increased student achievement and attainment. It works to synthesize and distribute research and information about promising practices that enlightens the national debate about education policies and options. The Alliance provides sound, objective, nonpartisan advice that informs decisions about policy creation and implementation. Working with educators, researchers, business leaders, citizen groups, and decisionmakers at the local, state, and national levels, the Alliance develops federal policy recommendations and advocates to policymakers in the federal government.
To encourage public awareness and action that support effective secondary school reform, the Alliance publishes many briefs, reports, and fact sheets; hosts numerous events and makes presentations—in DC, on Capitol Hill, and around the country; issues regular releases providing national and state-level data and information about the impact of improving educational achievement and attainment levels for secondary school students; and collaborates with policymakers, researchers, and educators to advance the Alliance’s goals. The Alliance also publishes a biweekly newsletter, Straight A’s, which provides information on public education policy and progress in an accessible format.
The Alliance’s audience includes policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels; education organizations; the corporate, labor, and funding communities; the media; parents; administrators; teachers; students; and a concerned public.
Philanthropists Gerard and Lilo Leeds founded the Alliance in 2001. Alliance President Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and a former member in Congress, provides leadership to a staff of over twenty dedicated and talented individuals. Funding for the organization comes from the Leeds family, other generous individuals, and foundations and corporations.
This timeline documents the Alliance’s history and key moments. To review complete lists of Alliance for Excellent Education publications and events, please click the relevant links on the home page.
Alliance Leadership Team
Meet Dan Leeds, chairman of the Alliance’s governing board.
Learn more about the entire governing board.
Alliance Staff
Learn more about members of the Alliance staff.
Advisory Groups
Meet the individuals who serve on the Alliance's advisory groups:
- The President's Policy Council is a group of advisors to the Alliance that includes some of the most respected thinkers in the nation on issues related to improving the achievement and attainment levels of students in the secondary grades–students who are too often overlooked in the national debate about improving schools and the country's educational system.
- The Career and Postsecondary Readiness advisory group works to determine how different educational pathways, including those traditionally focused on career and technical education, can prepare all students for success in the full array of career and postsecondary options.
- The Intermediate and Adolescent Literacy advisory group provides guidance to the Alliance's work to promote effective interventions that raise the achievement of struggling readers and on integrating literacy instruction into content area classes to help all students achieve at higher levels.
- The Secondary School Improvement advisory group has much experience and expertise in high school improvement and turnaround. This group helps guide the organization’s work around secondary school improvement.
- The Teacher and Leadership Effectiveness advisory group shares its expertise about issues related to school leadership, professional development, recruitment and retention, and other topics.