| The Haan Foundation
for Children 2001 Union Street San Francisco, CA 94123 Contact: Rubenstein
Associates, Inc.
CINTHIA HAAN, Founder and President of Power4Kids On U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION’S ANNOUNCEMENT THAT STUDENTS IN 8,652 SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE WILL HAVE OPTION TO ATTEND HIGHER-PERFORMING SCHOOLS IF THEIR CURRENT SCHOOL FAILS TO MEET STATE ACADEMIC STANDARDS “I applaud Secretary of Education Rod Paige for opening the doors to quality education for our children. In announcing that Title I-funded students will have the option to choose and attend a higher-performing school in their district if their current school fails to meet state academic standards for two consecutive years, Secretary Paige and President Bush are putting our educational system on notice. We have sacrificed our children’s education and future for far too long. Now is the time to change the educational trajectory of American students through proven usable models. The cost of failure is simply too high for our nation. But until such time as every school’s standards are raised, parents must have the choice to put their children into the best possible schools.” “Alarming statistics are facing our country—25% of the young adult population lack the basic literacy skills required in a typical job; 28% of our Hispanic students dropout of high school; functional illiteracy exist in more than 60% of our young prison population. The societal cost of poor education is huge. Studies show that youths without an education are consigned to a life of poverty, unemployment, incarceration, drug and alcohol abuse, and teen pregnancies. I laud Secretary Paige and encourage all schools to end this educational malpractice. When we are better able to provide a higher success rate in teaching our children to read and learn, and providing them with a higher quality of education, the demand for school vouchers is likely to lessen.” Cinthia Haan is the founder and president of The Haan Foundation for Children/Power4Kids Reading Initiative. Power4Kids will provide indisputable evidence of how reading skills for all but a small fraction of our students can be brought to grade-level proficiency through scientifically proven intervention practices and programs. These will be affordable for school budgets, replicable in reading achievement, and scalable to classrooms nationwide. To arrange an interview with Cinthia Haan, please contact Cheri Fein at (212) 843-8019. |