ATLANTA --- Five school districts from California to Georgia have been named finalists for the nation's top prize for urban school systems.
The districts are competing for $1 million in scholarship money for students as part of the Broad (pronounced "Brode") Prize for Urban Education, which honors school systems that have showed the most improvement in student achievement, particularly for minorities and low-income students.
The finalists include Gwinnett County school district, the largest in Georgia with 158,000 students. The others are: Aldine Independent School District in Houston; Broward County Public Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Long Beach Unified School District in California; and Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas.
Gwinnett County has increased the number of Hispanic and black students taking college-entrance exams and Advanced Placement tests since 2005.
In elementary school reading, the gap between Hispanic students and their white peers has narrowed by 9 percentage points since 2006.
The suburban Atlanta district is more than 20 percent Hispanic and nearly 30 percent black. Gwinnett is the first Georgia school district to be named a finalist for the prize.
"We are so proud to have been selected as a finalist for this prestigious award, and see it as validation of the good work that is going on in Gwinnett classrooms every day," Gwinnett County schools Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks said.
A team of educators and researchers will visit each district to determine the winner, which will be announced Sept. 16 in Washington, D.C.
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