FCD is pleased to announce that an i3 grant will be awarded to Arthur J. Reynolds and his team at the University of Minnesota for Midwest Expansion of the Child-Parent Center Education Program, Preschool to Third Grade.
The 23 highest-ranked finalists in the second Investment in Innovation (i3) competition of the U.S. Department of Education must raise matching funds from the private sector by December 9, 2011.
On October 21, 2011, the FCD Board approved a partial match of $200,000 to the University of Minnesota, if its proposal was successfully ranked in the i3 competition.
The Child-Parent Centers (CPC) began in Chicago in the late 1960s and are the best evaluated PreK-3rd approach in the country. The Chicago Longitudinal Study, led by Reynolds, recently released the outcomes of participants at age 28 who entered the program in 1983, in an July 2011 issue of Science. The findings show that those who attended the CPC program are more likely to have graduated from high school and postsecondary education and have employment with health insurance benefits; are less likely to be incarcerated; and have strong mental health outcomes.
Expansion of the CPCs will occur in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and include small and large urban school districts, rural districts, and Head Start programs.