EthnicMajority

(Examiner.com) Pop singing star Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, a Grammy Award winner who is best-known for her 2 million selling CD ‘She Wolf’, has been enlisted by President Barack Obama's White House.  She has been asked to be a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Education Excellence for Hispanics.  The Commission is a four-member group designed to advise the President and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. 

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(Examiner.com) On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the award of $24,601,758 to 62 colleges to enhance their capacity to serve low and middle-income African American students.  Two Md. institutions of higher learning are among the grant recipients.

"These grants will help build the capacity of colleges that educate large numbers of African American students," Duncan said, "Strengthening these schools is critically important to increasing student completion and meeting President Obama's goal of being first in the world in college graduates by 2020."

Colleges are receiving funds under two programs that both support predominantly black institutions with an undergraduate enrollment that is at least 40 percent African American and at least 50 percent low-income or first-generation college students.

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(Kansas City Star) Calling education “the civil rights issue of our generation,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday issued a national challenge for whole communities to get involved in improving public education.

“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.

“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Everyone can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”

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