This newsletter focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country, and is presented in an accessible format for everyone from elected officials and policymakers to parents and community leaders. First, this issue discusses the stimulating debate on the reduction of the overall cost of the economic recovery…

This hearing reviewed the Title I Grants to LEAs [local education agencies] (Title I) Program of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title I is the largest federal education program for elementary and secondary schools. Since 1965, it has made nearly $133 billion available to states and school districts to improve the opportunity for a…

The achiever is published monthly during the school year for parents and community leaders. Each issue contains news and information about school improvement in the United States. The following articles are contained in this issue: (1) Spellings Focuses on English Language Learners; (2) Around the Country--Maryland and Oregon; (3) Calendar; (4)…

This study examines how one Mississippi elementary school countered the growing trend toward minority isolation with the Community and Home Access for Mississippi Parents and Students project, which was designed to combat white flight, improve academic performance on standardized reading tests, and increase access to technology. Project components…

This study investigated whether Mississippi's Parents as Teachers (PAT) program was advancing parent involvement in children's learning at home and when children entered formal schooling. It focused on whether there were differences in frequency of school participation and in levels of engagement in home learning activities between parents who had…

Describes the Algebra Project, an organizing effort rooted in the southern civil rights movement that cultivates mathematics (particularly algebra) literacy among African American, Hispanic, and other poor middle school students. It prepares them to enter high school ready for college preparatory work and to enter college ready for college level…

This paper describes state, institutional, and other community-based programs deemed exemplary (on the basis of design imperatives) for successful interventions to promote meaningful access of minority group youth to postsecondary education. The imperatives include early intervention, comprehensive and integrated intervention, intervention…

This report provides data on the academic achievement gap that separates low-income and minority students from other students, examining how well different groups of students perform in Mississippi and noting inequities in teacher quality, course offerings, and funding. Included are tables and data that provide: a frontier gap analysis (a…

As described by some observers, white flight rapidly and irreversibly leads to black or nearly all black schools, once the ratio of blacks to whites in a school reaches a tipping point. Research in Mississippi, however, has uncovered school districts where tipping has not only stopped, in some cases it has even reversed. Events there call into…

This report compares Mississippi's reading and mathematics performance on the most recent administrations of the state assessment with performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). To indicate how Mississippi is doing in narrowing the academic achievement gap between African American, Latino, or low-income students and…