Schools Hoping for Positive Change with Federal Program

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Schools Hoping for Positive Change with Federal Program

Two St. Paul Schools Hoping for Positive Change with Federal Program.
Excerpt from MN Public Radio (by Jessica Mador)

(St. Paul, MN -- June 20, 2011) Standing next to a line of yellow school buses outside Jackson Preparatory Magnet Elementary earlier this week, Principal Yeu Vang waved goodbye to her students in Hmong and English. Vang's school is one of two elementary schools near the state Capitol that will look different when students go back in the fall. The schools sit in the footprint of the federal Promise Neighborhoods initiative, a program that aims to help children in high-poverty areas make it to college. Jackson is mostly Asian-American and offers the first Hmong Dual-Language Program in the district, and about 80 percent of the school's 575 students qualify for free and reduced lunch

... A few blocks from Jackson, near I-94, is Maxfield Magnet Elementary — the other Promise Neighborhood school. Maxfield is one of 34 low-achieving schools identified by the state for turnaround over the next three years. Less than a quarter of the kids at Maxfield are on track to graduate from high school. Maxfield's principal, Nancy Stachel, was brought in to improve the school's academic performance. She is the eighth principal the school has had in ten years.

To read the entire article, or listen to the audio version, visit MPR News.

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