Students who may be too glued to their televisions to continue the work that we will find channels like MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the insistence to enter and graduate.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with Viacom Inc. ’s television stations, educational leaders and celebrities to launch an awareness campaign to reduce the number of dropouts. The foundation, started by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, has invested more than $ 2 billion in education since 2000.
"People must understand how the system is up to today and how it actually contradicts our commitment to equality of opportunity," Gates told The Associated Press. "Unless we change now, it will hurt the future of the country as a whole."
Only a third of the U.S. graduate from secondary school students with the skills necessary to succeed in college and workplaces of the nation, he said.
"Too often, the value and benefit of education are not real enough for kids," said Tony Miller, Deputy U.S. Department of Education. Charities and industry will not do it alone, about 100 billion U.S. dollars of federal stimulus package dedicated to improving education, said Miller.
The "Educated" initiative focuses on low graduation rates in college and high school and accountability of teachers. Gates criticized the practice of rewarding seniority wages tested, calling it an expense of quality education.
A student withdraws from a U.S. high school every 26 seconds, according to the Seattle-based Gates Foundation.
At that rate, not just American children graduate from high school and college to maintain its competitiveness in the global market, said Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman.
"We know little about the substance, we are in the fluff of Viacom, Dauman said with a smile. The head of Viacom, whose networks will also include VH1 CMT, Spike TV, TV Land and Logo, said Gates, said last year," We know that children know how to reach them, if provided the substance that may be the megaphone.
To launch the campaign in five years, the documentary "Get Educated" was released in all Viacom networks simultaneously at 8 pm EDT Tuesday night.
The documentary features pop singer Kelly Clarkson, basketball star LeBron James and President Barack Obama, but the real interest of the program is on the people behind the scenes, as presidential speechwriter, and how education brought them success.
Dauman said the "Educate" the initiative to find their way into the arguments and documentary programs like BET’s "Bring Your’s Play", including major black men who have achieved success.
However, "we will not go to all PBS-type programming," said Dauman. "In order to reach children, you have to entertain them."
Activism is not new to Viacom and its networks. MTV has increased AIDS awareness, promote participation in elections and education initiatives.
In the case of Los Angeles to launch the "Learn the Link" campaign, New York schools, Joel Klein, the chief said he hoped that the approach will succeed because "trying to get traction with the millions and millions of children in school is something that has been a challenge. "
"When you bring the resources and vision of the family and the Gates Foundation, along with the distribution assets that Viacom has – the models, the brightness can produce – it feels like a good mix of things that capture children "Klein said.
Klein and others praised the achievements of charter schools, which have provoked the ire of union representatives and school officials. Union leaders in Los Angeles say that these schools would reduce the size of the districts and the Charter School instructors are not covered by unions.
An e-mail to the nation’s largest Union, the National Education Association, was not immediately returned Tuesday.
The privately run schools, undertook new approaches to education, teachers were happier and inspired by the achievements of healthy competition between schools in New York, Klein said.
In Los Angeles, the Board of Education approved a resolution that invites foreigners to make proposals to develop new charter schools, while increasing the level of accountability.
The operators of private charter schools, communities and the office of mayor shall submit proposals to operate 50 new schools that will open in the next four years and 200 existing schools that are chronically underperforming.
Tuesday’s event coincided with a speech Obama made in Arlington, Virginia, which was broadcast to schools across the country. In the speech, Obama urged students to hit the books, saying that success is difficult to win and that each student has something in which they excel.
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