People of America Foundation and Americans All
The nonpartisan People of America Foundation aims to keep students in school and to teach them how to become responsible citizens and productive employees in a democratic society. It will accomplish these goals by offering curriculum resources in a variety of perspectives and mediums in order to make academic instruction relevant to students’ lives and the interdependent world around them.
Achievements
Using a sophisticated business-education partnership model, the Foundation will provide staff development resources and inclusive, state-specific data that can be used to broaden the base from which history and civics are taught at the elementary, middle, and secondary school levels. All of this data exists, but much of it is neither universally assembled nor universally available. The program’s instructional approach will enhance students’ appreciation of America’s common heritage of democracy and of the social, economic and cultural value created by the nation’s diversity.
The Foundation owns the Americans All® National Education Program, supplemental printed curriculum materials on the history of the peopling of the United States—resource texts, teacher’s guides and manuals, music, posters and photographs—already in use in more than 2,000 schools and libraries nationwide. Much of this content can be used to support the reading and mathematics testing elements of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation.
The Foundation has developed strategic partnerships with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Council of State Social Studies Specialists, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of State Boards of Education, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, the National League of Cities, National Middle School Association, NRTA: AARP's Educator Community, and The National Conference for Community and Justice. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as many key national civic and education organizations, support the Foundation’s initiative.
The Foundation will provide funding and technical support so state and local educators can create state-specific materials to incorporate the political and cultural contributions of all their citizens into their respective history and civics curricula. The content of the state-specific printed curriculum materials will fully support the state standards and curriculum frameworks that local school districts use. In addition, the newly created content will support the reading and mathematics testing elements of NCLB.
Also under the direction of state and local educators, the Foundation will collect, organize, distribute and maintain, at no cost to the public, information for child-safe electronic databases on the political and cultural history of each state and the District of Columbia. The content of the state-specific databases will fully support the state standards and curriculum frameworks that local school districts use. The newly created content will also support the reading and mathematics testing elements of NCLB. To avoid duplication and provide consistency in generic content areas of U.S. history and civics, the Foundation will create a universal database to support the state-specific databases.
Through comprehensive Web sites, the Foundation will make available, at no cost, the curriculum materials from the Americans All® National Education Program and the newly created universal and state-specific databases to each of the nation’s more than 100,000 K–12 public and private schools. The Web sites will also include authorized links to additional reading and research resources. The Foundation’s infrastructure will ensure the Web sites are updated and expanded for 10 years.
In addition to providing data for such core competency subjects as history, civics, geography and economics, the Foundation-supported program resources can meet many of the content and curriculum needs of the more than 6.5 million students receiving special education services and of students in schools on military bases in the United States and abroad. Moreover, the database infrastructure can expand to include other related subject areas, such as world history, art, music and literature, at a later date.
To ensure continued effectiveness, for 10 years the Foundation will support state-directed staff development programs and maintain a communications network that will include a biweekly newspaper, cable television programming and regional and national conferences.
Contact Information
Allan S. Kullen, President
People of America Foundation
5760 Sunnyside Avenue
Beltsville, MD 20705
Phone: (301) 982-5622, Ext. 159
Fax: (301) 220-3730
Cell: (301) 520-8242
E-mail: allan@americansall.com
www:americansall.com