More than 80 organizations have signed on to the President's Coalition for the America Reads Challenge, a group formed to support the goal of helping every child read well & independently by the end of 3rd grade. Member organizations will commit time & resources to building community coalitions for literacy by supporting existing literacy programs & developing new ones where needed, and by recruiting learning partners to work on reading with young children from birth through 3rd grade. For more information about the President's Coalition, please call (202) 401-8888. http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/
This week Secretary Riley announced a 5-year grant to the University of Michigan's National Research Center on Early Reading Achievement. The Center will examine successful reading practices that link homes & schools, provide community resources for family reading, and establish solid ties to effective preschool practices. Researchers will also study & disseminate examples of "best practices" in teaching reading in the early primary grades. For more information, please see: http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/08-1997/earlyrea.html
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With students across America going back to school, the President is encouraging families to think about how to take advantage of the new Hope Scholarship authorized in the Balanced Budget Act passed into law earlier this month. This Hope Scholarship aims to make the first 2 years of college universally available, providing students with a tax credit of up to $1,500 -- about the same as the average tuition at a local community college. College juniors & seniors, graduate & professional students, and adults who want to go back to school will be eligible for a "lifetime learning tax credit" worth 20% of the first $5,000 of tuition & fees through the year 2002 (and 20% of the first $10,000 beginning in 2003). The new law also allows parents & grandparents to make penalty-free withdrawals from their IRAs to pay for higher education expenses, and enables them to open new Education IRAs where they can invest $500 per child every year to build up money, tax free, for college. The balanced budget agreement also provides the largest Pell Grant increase in 2 decades, as sought by the President; Congress must fulfill this promise next month.
The President is also calling on students to begin preparing for college early by taking tough courses in middle school & high school. Students who take algebra & geometry by the end of 8th and 9th grades are much more likely to go to college than students who don't, as indicated in a national study showing that only 26% of low-income students who did not take geometry went on to college, compared with 71% of those who did. (Among the benefits of going to college: College graduates earn, on average, over $500,000 more, during their lives, than high school graduates.)
A new handbook, "Getting Ready for College Early," can help parents & students in middle school & junior high learn what courses to take, how much college costs, where to find out about financial aid & more. The full text is at: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/GettingReadyCollegeEarly/
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Back-to-school activities are being planned for the next few weeks in communities across the country as a way to strengthen year-long efforts to involve more family & community members in children's education. The Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Georgia) is traveling to 5 cities across that state, participating in parent workshops, parades, tours of community centers & other events involving thousands of parents & children. The superintendent of schools in Flint, Michigan, is hosting the 3rd annual back-to-school rally & parade that, last year, more than 10,000 people attended. The Chicago Goes Back to School steering committee, created by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, will hold events each month throughout the school year to strengthen family & community involvement in children's learning. America Goes Back to School, now in its 3rd year, is an initiative of the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education -- a coalition of more than 3000 business, community, religious & education organizations. For more information, including a "partners' activity kit," please see: http://www.ed.gov/Family/agbts/
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America's schools continue to bulge at the seams, enrolling 52.2 million students this fall, an all- time high that surpasses last fall's record of 51 million students. Enrollments will continue to increase over the next decade, peaking at 54.3 million in 2007.
"Portable classrooms & short-term solutions just don't cut it," Secretary Riley said when releasing "A Back-to-School Special Report on the Baby Boom Echo: Here Come the Teenagers," a report by the Department's National Center for Education Statistics (available on our web site soon). The largest increases will be among teenagers & in western states, according to the report. During the next 10 years (fall 1997-2007)...
- U.S. schools can expect a 13% increase in grades 9-12, a 5% increase in grades 6-8, and a 1% decrease in grades 1-5.
- In the west, California anticipates an increase of nearly 16%, while Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, in Georgia foresee increases of more than 10%.
For more information, please see: http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/08-1997/echo2.html
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"Nobody believes that technology is the quick fix for what ails education," Linda Roberts said in a recent interview dispelling the notion that there is a delusion about the capacity of technology to improve education. "What we [in the Administration] believe," said Roberts, Director of the Department's Office of Educational Technology, "is that putting computers in our classrooms & linking our classrooms to electronic resources, other classrooms & experts around the globe can be a very important component of improving the quality of education for our students." The full interview is available at: http://www.4teachers.org/keynotes/
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On Saturday, September 6, a NetDay satellite workshop aimed to help educators, parents & citizens make good education technology decisions will be broadcast from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (EDT). The workshop will offer advice on how to organize a NetDay event (the national NetDay is scheduled for October 25), and expert panels will talk about options for getting connected, developing & updating technology plans, and tapping resources that can help fund these efforts, including the E-Rate, the Commerce Department's "Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program" (TIIAP), and the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, as well corporate & foundation sources. Panelists include organizers of NetDay initiatives in the District of Columbia, New York City, Mississippi & Minnesota; representatives of NetDay corporate supporters Cisco, Sun Microsystems & BellSouth; and representatives from the U.S. Department of Education & the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Pre-produced training & promotion segments will be aired that local organizers may tape & re-use in their own community activities. The workshop, underwritten by the Kellogg Foundation & produced with Convergence Service, Inc., may be downlinked & will also be broadcast over the Internet by NASA's Learning Technology Channel (in both full-motion video & streamed audio formats).
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On September 18, a live teleconference -- "Mentoring for Youth in Schools & Communities" -- will air from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. (EDT). Designed as a follow- up to the "President's Summit for America's Future" in April, the teleconference will offer information on how community-based organizations & others can build successful mentoring programs. It's the latest in a series of live national satellite teleconferences sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention & the Juvenile Justice Telecommunications Assistance Project of Eastern Kentucky University. For satellite coordinates & other information, please contact Becky Ritchey (JJTAP) by email or phone: beckytrc@iclub.org or (606) 622-6671. For a copy of a 7-page bulletin, "Mentoring -- A Proven Delinquency Prevention Strategy," call 800-638-8736 or see: http://www.ncjrs.org/ojjhome.htm
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Secretary Riley announced this month that 12 states will receive awards to establish "parent information resource centers" that will expand opportunities for parents to be involved in children's learning. The 12 centers will: increase parents knowledge of (& confidence in) effective child rearing activities, strengthen partnerships between parents & school professionals, and improve the development of children who participate in the program. The centers will offer parents training, hot lines & workshops, and they will provide resources & guidance based on the Parents as Teachers (PAT) program & the Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY). The Department will continue to fund the 28 existing parent centers, now in their 3rd year of operation. For more information, please see:
http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/08-1997/parent.html
http://www.ed.gov/Family/ParentCtrs/index.html
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More than 45 speakers representing many well-known names in K-12 educational testing research will discuss their ideas on September 4-5 at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards & Student Testing's 1997 conference, "Student Achievement: Search for Validity & Balance." For registration, the agenda & other information on the conference, held at UCLA, please see: http://cresst96.cse.ucla.edu/Conference.html
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This week Secretary Riley named New York City school principal Paul Schwarz as the "Patrick Daly Principal in Residence" at the U.S. Department of Education. Schwarz will provide a practitioner's viewpoint within the Department & serve as a contact for principals around the country (paul.schwarz@ed.gov). He has been principal of the Jackie Robinson Complex & co-director of Central Park East Secondary School, a nationally renowned school in East Harlem that sends 90% of its students to college (more than half qualify for free or reduced lunch). Patrick Daly was the Brooklyn (NYC) school principal killed by gun fire during a drug dispute at a housing complex in 1992, as he searched for a student who had been missing from school.
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ED Initiatives...