The DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund last week awarded a $1.5 million grant to the Princeton Center for Leadership Training to support partnerships of educators, parents, and business leaders at the middle-school level.
The project will be launched in four pairs of New Jersey middle schools from neighboring urban and suburban communities. The center, a nonprofit corporation based in Lawrenceville, N.J., hopes to expand the project to Philadelphia in 1993 and to another major city in 1994.
In addition to providing financial support, businesses involved in the initiative will recruit employees to participate in a “corporate service corps.’' Corps members will act as tutors and mentors for students in participating schools and assist with community-service projects.
The Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation recently published a study of private-sector involvement in public education.
Entitled “Public-Private Partnerships: The Private Sector and Innovation in Education,’' the report notes that as of 1989 more than half of all school districts in the nation were involved in a partnership with business, a 125 percent increase since 1986.
The study is a general overview of some of the better known developments in the field--such as Education Alternatives Inc.'s management of public schools in Dade County, Fla., and Baltimore, and the Chicago Corporate/Community School of America--and of the methods used to finance such projects.
Copies of the study are available for $15 each from the Reason Foundation, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, Calif. 90034; (310) 391-2245.
The National Association of Partners in Education recently honored six education partnerships for their leadership in developing school-volunteer programs.
The winners will be recognized in an awards ceremony on Nov. 20 in Arlington, Va., held in conjunction with NAPE’s national symposium on education partnerships.
Six individuals who participate in partnerships will also be recognized during the awards program, which is sponsored by the McKee Foods Corporation of Collegedale, Tenn.
Honored this year were the Children of the Future program in North Chicago, Ill.; the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills Essay Readers program in Beaumont, Tex.; the I Know I Can program in Columbus, Ohio; the Harrison/âïãåó Co-op program in Sanborn, N.Y.; the Passport to the Future program in Frederick County, Md.; and the A+ Coalition in Austin, Tex.--íŸóŸ
