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Education
Although it's been nine years since No Child Left Behind passed in 2001, many of our children along the Gulf Coast are still left behind. Equity and Inclusion Campaign participants are concerned that children in rural and urban communities throughout the South will continue to underachieve if our nation's educational reform is not far-reaching enough.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) creates important opportunities to drastically improve the performance of our nation's schools and students, and in particular the success of education in the South, which experiences the worst performance measures in our nation.
The Equity and Inclusion Campaign calls on elected and appointed officials to:
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Close the early achievement gap through Early Learning Challenge Funds and similar investments in a comprehensive early childhood system; Head Start and Early Head Start should be expanded to serve additional children and schools should work collaboratively with child care centers to increase access to high quality, full-day pre-kindergarten programs.
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Ensure that high school curriculums make all students proficient and prepared for college while holding high schools accountable for student success; further, the Department of Education should implement standards of measurement for success, and to include drop-out reduction benchmarks.
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Ensure that low-performing schools receive resources for best credentialed teachers and administrators, providing students with what the need to succeed; create a new federal secondary school improvement fund that would be used to turn around low-performing middle and high schools.
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Require states to compare and publicly report resources available to achieve a sound and basic education at every school; for states where inequities appear, develop five-year plans for equalizing resources and require a publicly reported biannual report that evaluates progress toward the five-year goal.
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Ensure computer literacy and self-esteem building courses are integrated into school curriculum and activities.
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