NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Four Tennessee schools and one community outreach program have each won a $10,000 grant from the Vanderbilt Center for Child and Family Policy to help close the achievement gap between white and black and Latino students.
“We‘re delighted to award these grants to schools and groups dedicated to strengthening their own communities and doing their part to close the achievement gap,” Debbie Miller, director of Center for Child and Family Policy, said.
The grants are part of the center‘s “mini-grants” for 2006-2007 and were born out of Family Re-Union, an annual conference started by former Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore that focuses on bringing together families, and those who work with them, to discuss and design better ways to strengthen family life in America. The 2006 event, Family Re-Union 12, focused on the achievement gap between children of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Family Re-Union 12 participants were invited to submit grant proposals detailing the programs they wanted to start or improve in their community to close the academic achievement gap. Five recipients, listed below, were chosen and invited to a strategic planning session at Vanderbilt to help them plan how to carry out their grant proposals, collect data and measure success.
The winners are:
* Chuckey Elementary School in Chuckey, Tenn., to create an after-school homework help program;
* Cowan Elementary School in Franklin, Tenn., to improve its library and focus on reading skills;
* DeKalb County Board Of Education in Smithville, Tenn., to institute an after-school academy for low-achieving middle and high school students;
* Maury City Elementary School in Maury City, Tenn., to increase parental involvement in the school; and
* Tennessee State University‘s Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement to increase student access to technology in the Watkins Park neighborhood in Nashville.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu