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I was using an old website for Congresswoman Tsongas and couldn’t figure out why it didn’t seem up to date. Here’s the proper link
A friend forwarded to me Congresswoman Niki Tsongas’ email update, called “Congress in your In-box.” I learned what Niki had been up to lately, especially that she had been in Lowell visiting the schools with our new Super. She heard from teachers about the demands of No Child Left Behind and summarized her findings:

The law was also supposed to provided additional funding over subsequent years as standards and expectations increased; however, the federal government has not provided the resources that the law promised for the succeeding years. These funding increases called for under the Act were intended to keep in step with the increase in targets for student performance. As a result of the lack of funding, schools are often unable to meet student learning standards required by the law further compounding the problem it was intended to address.

In other news, Niki recognized the efforts of ONE Lowell to help decrease truancy among ethnically diverse high school and middle school students, achieving improvement in 76% of their cases so far this year. From Niki:

Earlier this week, I was pleased to announce that the Department of Health and Human Services had awarded a federal grant in the amount of $93,397 to ONE Lowell in support of their efforts.

It is great to hear that this organization is getting the funding and recognition that it deserves. This is truly how we stop leaving children behind, rather than through unrealistic, unfunded mandates.

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