Sara Lee recently introduced a new line of whole-grain bread touting its innovative farming techniques that reduce the use of fertilizers. Natural food advocates and environmentalists can count another tick in the win column, right? Not so, according to The Cornucopia Institute.

Nonprofits fall on difficult financial times. Competition for funding is getting fierce. Foundation endowments decline by 25%. Donors want to understand their return on investment. Organizations are closing their doors.  While these are the current and most pervasive headlines about the nonprofit sector, there is another kind of conversation and groundswell of activity percolating: how to best measure or assess social impact. It is no longer enough for organizations to say that they do good work because their mission statement references the social change that they aim to generate. Today, more and more organizations are looking for, developing and finding meaningful ways to understand and communicate the results of their work. 

How do we know if we are preparing students for life after high school? Are our current measures of high school quality indicative of how well their graduates fare after high school? Are there existing practices that states and others can use to inform these questions?