CPB announced at the NETA conference that within the next two weeks, it will issue a request for proposals for its $12 million Public Media Project 12: Operation Graduation. Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis and WNET/Thirteen in New York City are partners in the project, which aims to raise awareness nationwide of the high-school dropout crisis and develop innovative local solutions.
Twelve stations will be selected as community hubs, based on the severity of the dropout rate in its market, existing educational partner relationships, and station capacity to sustain the initiative for at least 18 months.
Also, the National Center for Community Engagement will provide grants to any CPB-funded licensee to participate in the work. NCME expects to award 30 to 40, with an average of $10,000.
CPB President Pat Harrison discussed the dropout problem onstage by Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia; and Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, at today's (Jan. 12) luncheon session at the conference in Nashville, which continues through Thursday.
2 comments:
This latest CPB venture doesn't make sense and appears to be a last minute and ill attempt to separate themselves from the NPR scandal to save their wasteful appropriation. The Nation needs a fundamental overhaul of it's education system, CPB's plans to use significant Federal money to create yet another band aid fix for our schools. Why is the White House working with CPB in this venture and not the Department of Education? Was Dept. of Ed skipped over in this decision? Why was this project chosen at 12 million dollars versus other more substantial ways to better spend this money? Who made this decision? Where is the input from State educators in this matter? Wake up, do we really think this investment will make a dent in our problematic education system. These funds could be better spent on more important educational issues and by people who know what they're doing. Do dropouts even listen to NPR or watch PBS? This project is more evidence to support the defunding of CPB. Wake up!
To get a change of the system that you desire it helps to see what the barriers are - after all most of us have wanted this for decades. The issue has not been money - expenditure on K12 have risen for decades with NO change in results.
The Department of Ed is another huge bureaucracy - these are very hard to change.
Our only chance is to engage with each other locally and nationally around a better conversation about what is going on - what we need and how best to get it. With a strong local and national voice - you now have power to make the change.
So how do you facilitate such a conversation? Who is safe enough? Who does not have an axe to grind such as teachers, bureaucrats etc? They have had all the say for decades and look what has happened.
For those in the system can only suggest trying the old ways harder - the challenge is to reframe the issues. This is always the critical point with true reform.
Public TV can help here - their job is not to make a series of programs but to create a space in which the public can find the truth and give their voices the power.
We have experimented this role before with the Mortgage Crisis - with great results.
12 million seems like a lot but when you look at the size of the Ed budget it is a drop in the ocean. But it is a fortune for Pub TV and a lot can be done with such a sum.
I hope that millions of Americans can take part in such a debate - from that conversation will come the power and energy to make real change
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