Since 2012, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has supported educational enrichment in rural areas by awarding over $3.3 million in grants to six outstanding organizations operating in Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. In this report, the authors combine the experiences of these organizations with findings from the…

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has provided over $3.3 million in grants to outstanding providers of educational enrichment in rural areas since 2012. In extensive interviews, rural education experts in our grantee organizations shared their practical knowledge of the best ways to identify academically talented students in rural areas, provide…

In some countries, the scale of the youth illiteracy problem calls for critical and targeted responses. It is important to help young people in developing countries gain basic literacy skills so that they can contribute to the development of productive, peaceful, and democratic societies. While national commitments and support are important, the…

Georgia's Certified Literate Community Program is a state-supported, community-based effort that provides all levels of instruction--from basic skills to technical writing--to adults at all educational levels. The goal is to enable every capable adult to attain reading, speaking, writing, problem solving, and comprehension skills. (SK)

The Library Rural Literacy Outreach Program targeted to ten rural communities in the Fresno County, California, Free Library district is reported. The sites were chosen based on inquiries from volunteers in those communities and support for the program by the branch library staff. Goals of the program were to provide literacy services to adult…

The agents most successful in reaching and teaching those most in need of basic skills instruction are the community-based organizations (CBOs). They come into being in response to social and economic problems faced by their constituents--disadvantaged minorities, the poor, the unemployed, and the alienated. Because of their close ties to the…

A project was conducted to disseminate career education philosophy, methods, program activities, and evaluation results to career education practitioners and the general public in rural Appalachia. Five major project dissemination tasks were accomplished and evaluated, including (1) visitations to the project and regional schools so that educators…

Focusing on programs that successfully expanded primary education in rural areas and among young girls, this report describes a mobilizing project that assisted six local programs in documenting and disseminating their methods. The report discusses the six successful projects: (1) the PROPEL project in Pune, India; (2) the 900 Schools Project in…

The Senior Citizens and Parents as Resources for the Classroom (SPARC) project is designed to maximize the learning potential of students. Through the SPARC project, parent and community volunteers, guided by professional educators, can help to meet student needs. This elementary school manual has been compiled by and for the teachers and…

Career development, life skills, and basic skills were important emphases in the experience-based career education program installed at two Virginia high schools. The program, call ExCEL (Exploring Careers through Experiential Learning), aimed to provide student experience in community learning sites and to integrate this with acquisition of…

In this booklet, the use of Academic Interest Centers (AIC) in Chicago public schools is described. An AIC is defined as an educational option program which: (1) concentrates a unique combination of resources for academic improvement in one location; (2) serves children of various racial/ethnic backgrounds in a way that advances their academic…

In 1985, in response to requests from rural poor people, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the largest nongovernmental organization in Bangladesh, initiated a primary education program with experimental schools in 22 villages. By late 1989, the program had expanded to 2,500 schools, and another 2,000 schools were expected to open…

Nine public schools in New Jersey, eight of which are in urban areas, are separately described as samples of schools with a high level of student achievement in the basic skills, and with demographic characteristics that are similar to those of schools with serious achievement problems. Eight elementary schools and one high school are included in…

This document contains an overview of the Far West Laboratory (FWL) model for Experience-Based Career Education (EBCE). (Descriptions of two other EBCE models are included in ERIC documents CE 018 446 and CE 018 449.) Divided into seven sections, this document highlights some of the important features of the model and includes excerpts of…

A project was designed to promote innovation in instructional procedures, curriculum development, collaborative community involvement, and staff development for incremental improvements in a comprehensive K-12 career education program. The fifteen project components focused on (1) applications of basic skills (reading, writing, and math) in…