Five Minority School Districts In Running for Broad Prize

[tonysam]

All but one of them in the southern part of the country, unless of course you call Maryland a "southern" state, which I don't:

Five school districts—all in predominantly Southern states—were announced today by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation as being finalists for the 2010 Broad Prize for Urban Education, an annual $2 million award that honors low-income school districts of at least 100,000 students that are making the greatest progress toward raising student achievement.

The five finalists are Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina; Gwinnett County Public Schools outside Atlanta (which was a finalist last year); Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland; Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas (also a finalist last year); and Ysleta Independent School District, also in El Paso.

Since 2002, when the award was first established by the Broad Foundation, whose education work is focused on improving K-12 urban public education, three winners have been districts in Texas.

The winner of the prize, which will be announced on October 19 in New York, will receive $1 million in college scholarships for high school seniors who will graduate in 2011. The four finalist districts will each receive $250,000 in college scholarships.

"Basically, we've already won the prize—the $250,000," says Jerry Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, just outside of Washington. Currently, about 86 percent of the district's seniors graduate and go on to college, but Weast says the scholarships will give hope to price-weary students amid rising higher education costs.

US News & World Report