Financial Literacy National Strategy: Request for Comments

On behalf of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission, the Department of Treasury announced it is seeking comment on the draft "National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2010."

The September 3, 2010 FEDERAL REGISTER provides full background, and instructions for obtaining a copy of the draft as well as for the submission of comments. Please note that the comment period is limited; comments must be received by September 19, 2010.

Also see:

Treasury Department Publishes Proposed Set of Financial Education "Core Competencies"; Seeks Comments by September 12

Broadening participation in engineering

To address the need to enhance diversity in its programs, the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) at the National Science Foundation is offering research initiation grants under the program name Broadening Participation Research Initiation Grants in Engineering, BRIGE. ENG offers this BRIGE funding opportunity to all beginning engineers with the intent of increasing the diversity of researchers in the engineering disciplines. The goal of the BRIGE solicitation is to increase the number of proposals to the Directorate for Engineering from individuals who can serve as role models and mentors for an increasingly diverse engineering student population who will become the workforce of the future. BRIGE aims to support innovative research and diversity plans that contribute to recruiting and retaining a broad representation of engineering researchers especially those subgroups that are underrepresented in the engineering population in programs supported by these grants. Throughout this solicitation, the term underrepresented groups will refer to and include the following: women, persons with disabilities, and ethnic groups which are in the minority in engineering such as African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Pacific Islanders.

Link to Full Announcement

NSF Publication 10-609

National Math and Science Initiative

[From Philanthropy News Digest] The National Math and Science Initiative has announced that its Advanced Placement Training and Incentive Program helped boost the number of students who passed the AP tests in math, English, and science by 98 percent between 2008 and 2010.

The NMSI program is designed to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement. During the 2009-10 school year there was an 84.6 percent increase in the number of students who passed AP exams at the seventy-five first-year APTIP schools — more than eleven times the national increase of 7.5 percent, and an improvement from the 52 percent increase recorded by the first cohort of sixty-five schools in 2008-09. The results from schools that participated both years were significantly better than the national two-year increase of 13.6 percent.

In addition, there was a 107.3 percent increase in math, science and English AP exams passed by African-American and Hispanic students during 2009-10 and a 91.5 percent increase in exams passed by female students. The first cohort of schools reported a 154.6 percent increase in passing math, science, and English scores in two years among African-Americans and Hispanics, which is almost six times the national two-year increase of 27.7 percent. Among female students attending the first cohort of schools, a 116.4 percent increase in passing math and science scores in two years was reported, which is almost thirteen times the national two-year increase of 9.2 percent.

This year, APTIP will be implemented in more than two hundred and twenty public high schools across six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia — and is expected to reach three hundred and fifty schools by the fall of 2012.

$58.7 M for Philly schools

Fifty-seven struggling Pennsylvania schools - most of them in Philadelphia - will share $101 million in federal grants over three years to boost student achievement.

In the region, 33 schools will split $58.7 million.

But the money comes with strings attached.

The schools must adopt one of four reform models that trigger changes such as replacing principals or at least half of their teaching forces, bringing in outside management, or closing schools and transferring students to higher-performing ones.

Schools in the Philadelphia, William Penn, and Southeast Delco districts, plus the Philadelphia Montessori Charter School and the West Philadelphia Achievement Charter School learned Thursday that they would receive between $679,200 (Park Lane Elementary in Darby) and $4.2 million (Lincoln High in Philadelphia).

The Chester Upland School District, which applied for $6 million in grants for two schools, was not awarded any money.

Districts will still be able to apply for an additional $40 million to be awarded this year, Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Steven Weitzman said Thursday.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100827_33_schools_in_the_Philadelphia_region_will_share__58_7_million_in_federal_grants.html#ixzz0yTF2JQIy
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else

Calif. wins $1.2 billion for Education Fund

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that California will receive $1.2 billion to support education jobs.

"There is a huge sense of urgency to get these funds out the door. I commend California for being the first state to submit their application and thank our team at the Department for making funds available within a matter of days," said Duncan. "These education dollars will help California keep thousands of teachers in the classroom working with our students this school year."

The $10 billion education fund will support education jobs in the 2010-11 school year and be distributed to states by a formula based on population figures. States can distribute their funding to school districts based on their own primary funding formula or districts' relative share of federal Title I funds.

Over the last two years, the Department has been able to support 300,000 education jobs through stimulus funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. At this time, 7 states have drawn down 100% of previously allocated jobs funding, while 18 states total have drawn down 80% or more. A July report from the independent Center on Education Policy found that 75% of school districts that received stimulus funds expect to cut teaching positions in the upcoming school year.

$3 Million career readiness initiative

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University has announced a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help school districts improve their high school graduation rates and college and career readiness efforts.

The grant will be used to develop College Readiness Indicator Systems that schools can use to identify students in danger of dropping out of high school or graduating unprepared for postsecondary education or a job. According to leading researchers, attendance patterns, course failures, suspensions, and other factors can be used to predict which students are on track to graduate and which are not.

The Annenberg Institute will select up to six school districts or networks nationwide to take part in the project. The sites will work with the institute and the John W. Gardner Center at Stanford University to expand and implement their early warning systems to focus on college and career readiness. The grant also will support semi-annual meetings among participants to encourage the frequent sharing of information and best practices.

Transforming STEM learning

TSL combines interests and resources of separate programs in the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) to explore the opportunities and challenges implied by innovative visions of the future for STEM learning.?? The TSL program invites interdisciplinary teams of STEM content specialists, experts in relevant technologies, STEM formal and informal education specialists, researchers with expertise in the learning sciences, and specialists in education research and evaluation methods to submit proposals for research projects that (1) Study efficacy of existing prototypes for innovations like virtual schools, special STEM schools, and educational programs that combine opportunities of formal and informal learning resources in their communities; or (2) Design and conduct exploratory development of new potentially transformative models for STEM learning environments.?? The cross-cutting proposals will draw from work in the four primary DRL programs: Discovery Research K-12 (DR K-12), Informal Science Education (ISE), Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE), and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST).?? However, proposals submitted in response to this solicitation must have a scope that extends well beyond any of those programs individually.

Link to Full Announcement: NSF Publication 10-602