ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 22, 2003 — The National School Boards Foundation and Microsoft Corp. today announced a joint initiative to provide the nation’s 95,000 school board members with tools and resources to help them better understand the issues surrounding the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
The announcement came at the National School Boards Association’s T+L2 Conference in Anaheim, Calif.
Project LeadersLearn is a series of online training videos designed to provide school leaders with the background and information necessary to interpret the rules of NCLB and enable them to serve their districts better and more efficiently. No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2001, places significant requirements on school systems in the areas of data collection and reporting, student assessment, professional development and parental notification. To help schools meet these requirements, Project LeadersLearn also will provide state school board associations with resources to conduct NCLB training seminars.
“School board members work hard every day to provide the resources our schools need to succeed, and this new federal law affects virtually everything we do,” said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. “Board members are responsible for seeing that their districts comply with the new federal law. With the help and commitment of Microsoft, Project LeadersLearn will give our state school board associations and board members online, ongoing professional development and accessible tools focused on the No Child Left Behind requirements to help them better meet their responsibilities.”
“We understand that schools and their school board members have limited resources to understand and implement the changes needed to meet NCLB requirements,” said Sherri Bealkowski, general manager of the Education Solutions group at Microsoft. “In supporting the National School Boards Association and helping create a much-needed informational resource, we hope to ease the burden of process and empower school board members with the knowledge they need.”
Sponsored by Microsoft, Project LeadersLearn is part of the National School Boards Association’s overall Online Learning Center, which offers professional development opportunities to school board members across the country. Project LeadersLearn can be accessed on the Web at http://www.nsba.org/leaderslearn/ and is available free. The project eventually will include 10 online training modules addressing the NCLB challenges.
About the National School Boards Foundation
The National School Boards Foundation encourages and prepares local school board members to become catalysts for education change and agents for systematic reform in public schools so that all students will be prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Its innovative projects are designed to help school boards meet today’s challenges while strengthening the uniquely American tradition of local representative governance of the public schools. The NSBF is a 501(c) (3) tax-exempt organization affiliated with the National School Boards Association.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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