The old adage is true: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Businesses, the military, families — none can survive on good intentions alone. Families cannot budget with good intentions. Schools, charities, public agencies, and civic organizations should not be exempt from the same standard. 

Yet across public life, we too often measure our public agencies, civic organizations, and nonprofit groups by their intentions instead of their outcomes. We count dollars spent, programs launched, people served, and press releases issued while failing to ask the harder question: Are America’s working families actually becoming more stable, self-reliant, and hopeful?