CyberLearning Sets Up Math/IT Academies in U.S. Schools

ALEXANDRIA, VA - August 1, 2007 -

CyberLearning, the national and global non-profit leader in bridging the digital and academic divides, has announced a national program to set up CyberLearning Math/IT Academies in the Nation's disadvantaged schools. This program is a direct response to requests from school officials in many states for help to improve their students' math and IT skills, a necessity to secure good jobs in a competitive knowledge-based global economy.

Any K-12 school or school district, which has 35% of its students on free or reduced cost lunch (Federal standard for a disadvantaged school), is eligible to participate in the program. Selected schools will receive 95% matching grants from CyberLearning. CyberLearning will train a program administrator and will provide high quality online courses and online mentoring in IT and math, and parent guide (activity) books for K-5 math. The school or a business or a foundation or a bank in the community will provide the other 5% needed.

Five school districts have signed up for the program for 2007-08 school year. They are Collier County in Florida, Port Chester in New York, St. Landry in Louisiana, Pearsall in Texas and Westbury in New York. Most of the disadvantaged school districts in Louisiana and Mississippi also will initiate the program in 2007-2008.

" While China and India are producing 500,000 and 350,000 engineers respectively annually, U.S. is only producing 70,000 engineers. For U.S. to maintain its technology leadership, we need to ramp up our math, science and technology education significantly," so states Dr. Appu Kuttan, CyberLearning Chairman and Founder, who is passionate about helping children learn better. This initiative is critical to improving math and IT skills of our children, so that they can compete effectively with their counterparts in other countries for good jobs."

According to Dr. Russell Clukey, the program director at Collier County Public Schools in Florida and a strong supporter of this initiative, "Through the CyberLearning Math/IT Academy program, our students and teachers have had access to hundreds of high quality math and IT online courses along with 24X7 live online mentoring help. Students and staff have been able to take certifications in areas such as Microsoft Office (MOS), Cisco, Novell and many more. Students who have traditionally struggled in math will now have opportunities to work online, at their own pace, in order to "catch up" or "get ahead" and be successful. We are very excited about CyberLearning program which has produced 25-29% improvement in student scores and significant reduction in dropout rates, especially among the at-risk students."

The goal of the program is to set up CyberLearning Math/IT academies in most disadvantaged school districts in the U.S. by 2020.

To set up a CyberLearning Academy in your school or school district call, 703-823-9999