DeKalb County will have access to help at a new after-school academy thanks
to a $10,000 grant from the Vanderbilt Center for Child and Family Policy.
The DeKalb County Board of Education plans to use the funds to improve
after-school academic programs for high school and middle school students
with a focus on improving reading skills. Students will use software that
provides individualized programs for increasing reading ability.
Administrators hope that offering after-school academic programs will
improve their school’s graduation rates and test scores.
“We?re delighted to provide the DeKalb County board with funds to improve
their after-school programs,” Debbie Miller, director of the Center for
Child and Family Policy, said. “We believe projects like this can have a
direct impact on the achievement gap.”
The grant is one of the center’s “mini-grant” for 2006-2007 and was 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 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.
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