For Immediate Release
ASQ Awards Grant to Help Improve Quality of School Districts
Educators Invited to Apply for Future Community Good Works Grants
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 17, 2007 — The American Society for Quality (ASQ), the world’s leading authority on quality improvement, has awarded a $15,000 Community Good Works grant to the Partnership for Education in Ashtabula County (PEAC) located in Ashtabula County, Ohio.
The grant money will help to implement PEAC’s Community Partnership Initiative, which supports countywide engagement of communities in the success of their schools.
The ASQ Community Good Works program provides financial support and ASQ member expertise to help non-profit organizations nationwide improve operations and performance by using quality management principles.
PEAC’s program, now in its second year, is helping to forge meaningful relationships with parents and families in five separate Ohio school districts. The program uses tools such as public hearings, polls and surveys, media campaigns, roundtable discussions and key leader briefings to engage the community about crucial issues related to its schools. Goals include increasing public confidence in district schools, improving student achievement and creating a clearer vision for the districts.
“We are very excited to sustain support for our partnering school districts in their quality improvement endeavors, said Louise Casagrande, PEAC’s executive director. “It is an honor to receive this funding grant which will help us to continue our collaboration toward performance excellence.”
ASQ invites other education administrators across the country who have instituted or will be instituting a community-focused quality improvement initiative in their K-12 schools to apply for the Community Good Works grant. Grant applications are now being accepted for the ‘07-08’ year and the Community Good Works initiative seeks to fund up to eight projects. For more information about the Community Good Works grant criteria and application process, link to http://www.asq.org/communities/good-works/index.html.
“More school districts are finding that quality improvement methods are a very effective way to help teachers and administrators do their jobs even better,” said Paul Borawski, executive director and chief strategic officer for the American Society for Quality. “Our hope is that more educators will discover ASQ’s Community Good Works grant as a way to help support these worthwhile efforts.”
The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, is the world's leading authority on quality. With more than 93,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., the 61-year-old organization is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.
