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CER to Lead New Multi-State Partnership for Parents
CER Press Release
Washington, DC
November 18,2003
The Center for Education Reform announced today its award of a federal grant focused on informing and assisting parents to understand their rights under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The Parent Information Resource Center grant of $1.8 million over two years will support outreach to more than 200,000 parents within four states: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina.
The Parent Consortia-SE (Southeast) is a unique program that unites coalitions of well-respected community institutions, aggressive outreach and parents in an effort to ensure that parents better understand and activate their right to public school choice and tutoring services as required of states under NCLB. In the four project states, there are more than 200,000 families whose young children are in low-performing school districts. This represents approximately 5 percent of all eligible children nationwide.
The program will engage the charter leaders in reaching out to those parents who have been placed on charter school waiting lists and others in economically distressed communities, and will focus its resources heavily on local providers of early childhood care.
“Parents in these states face an enormous array of possibilities for educating their children but are often discouraged and disillusioned by systems that are hard to navigate and information that is either lacking or not parent friendly,” said CER president Jeanne Allen. “This initiative will ensure that parents get timely, useful and personal information about how they can help their own child access the services that will best meet their needs and we look forward to sharing our tools with others in the business of educating parents.”
This the first time CER has sought and received federal support for any of its programs. The federal PIRC guidelines were a natural fit for CER’s outreach and grassroots expertise and extending that to parents in additional regions of great need was viewed by CER leaders as an important partnership for the future. CER’s regional partners in this program are: The South Carolina Association of Public Charter Schools, The Florida Consortium of Charter Schools, Georgia Charter Schools Association, Inc. and North Carolina School Choice.
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The Center for Education Reform is the leading authority for information on innovative reforms in education and works in states and communities across the country to advance the cause of educational excellence. October 2003 marked CER's 10th Anniversary in working to make schools better for all children. For more information, contact CER at (202) 822-9000 or send us email.
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