Government and business leaders have formed Blueprint Mississippi which is an initiative to create goals and strategies to grow our economy for decades to come. The Mississippi Economic Council officials said, what they know so far is that improving education is near the top of the list.

Experts said early education programs lay the foundation for what Mississippi’s work force will look like 20 years from now.

View entire article here.

Read the complete Opinion here.

Click here to view a clip from the Medgar Evers, Ella Baker Civil Rights lecture series with the Jackson State Fannie Lou Hamer Institute.

Read more about this issue in the August 2011 article from CLASP, Keeping Youth Connected: Focus on Jackson.

http://www.wlbt.com/story/15270907/2011/08/15/miss-going-after-50-million-for-pre-k-funding

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Copyright 2011 WLBT

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011108150309

Susan Ochshorn, founder of ECE PolicyWorks, applauds the number of recent editorials and blogs championing the benefits of early childhood education and the dangers of putting it on the chopping block. “Yet, in statehouses across the country, from Texas to Pennsylvania to Florida, early childhood education is hanging by a thread. The assault on this foundation of our student’s academic success, not to mention our civic society, is relentless.”

Early childhood education is a key ingredient for success of businesses - The Olympian (Olympia, WA)

Michael Cade, executive director of the Thurston Economic Development Council, writes that policymakers recently strengthened Washington state businesses and economic future when they found funding for the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program. This is a move that should be applauded as having this quality early learning program in our state is a critical component for reversing a widening skills gap that threatens our sustained economic growth.

Recommendations to HHS and ED on the Early Learning Challenge – Early Ed Watch

The New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey writes about the importance of building bridges between “birth-to-age-5″ early childhood programs and the early elementary school years. “Could the new $500-million federal grant competition — the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RttT-ELC) — help to build those bridges and, better yet, foster a more continuous system of early learning from the day a child is born through his last day of third grade? Absolutely. In fact, we see the RttT-ELC as an exciting opportunity for both the augmentation and development of better birth-to-five systems and the creation of new connections to the early grades of school. Principals and teachers in the early grades could learn a lot, for example, from the research-based tools that are currently used in a growing number of early childhood programs to promote better interactions between adults and children.

Amid a growing trend of state legislation providing tax credit scholarships to private school students, a new report from the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) finds that Georgia’s program providing tax credit scholarships to private school students has been a failure during its first three years of operations.

Georgia is currently one of seven states with tax credit scholarship legislation, yet it stands out as an exception among these states as the least accountable and the least effective in serving any public purpose.  Georgia’s program was created in 2008 by the Georgia General Assembly for the purpose of helping low income children transfer from poorly performing public schools to private schools. The program allows individuals and corporations to divert state taxes (up to an annual total of $50 million) to private student scholarship organizations (SSOs) that, in turn, distribute funding for students to attend private schools.

SEF finds that the state program has failed to achieve this primary aim, has cost Georgia taxpayers over $70 million in diverted state revenues, and, with a near-complete lack of accountability, has enabled widespread abuses.

According to findings in the SEF report, Georgia’s SSO program fails in several significant ways:

• Scholarships are awarded to students who did not transfer from a public school as intended by the law;
• More than one in ten of all SSO-affiliated private schools appear to be ineligible to receive funding;
• SSOs have failed to distribute and spend as much money annually on scholarships as the law requires and have failed to meet other requirements of the law;
• The program has failed to save taxpayer’s funds, as promised by its sponsors, and already has cost the state millions at a time when public K-12 and college education in Georgia have had deep cuts;
• There is no accountability for the program’s tax-funded educational performance;
• The program appears to fail to serve a significant number of low income students;
• The program appears to support racial isolation and segregation in private schooling;
• With religious schools comprising more than 70 percent of the SSO-affiliated schools in the program, it violates the state constitution’s ban on government aid to religious groups.

Amendments to the law passed last month make Georgia the only state to criminalize public disclosure of information about the program.  They also establish an automatic annual increase in the $50 million cap on the program, but do nothing to increase accountability. 

SEF is calling on the Georgia legislature to end, or vastly mend, the failed program.  SEF also cautions other states considering such legislation that Georgia’s costly experiment should serve as a warning – and should not be used as a model.

Download the report

In a word, love.

Alisha Coleman-Kiner is the principal of Booker T. Washington High School. Under her leadership, the graduation rate rose from a paltry 55% in 2007 to a respectable 81.6% in 2010.  When asked about how she was able to achieve such massive gains she replied:

I loved my children. I hired people who would love my children. And then I did my job.

Love,  it seems, lies at the cornerstone of her success.

Learn more about this remarkable educator and her recipe for success at the link posted below.

• http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/26/33kiner.h30.html

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit:

• http://usa.dotrust.org/techsummit