READING PROGRAM PRAISED; EDUCATION SECRETARY, SCHOOL OFFICIALS MEET.Byline: Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff WriterU.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley Richard Wilson Riley (born January 2, 1933), American politician, was the United States Secretary of Education under President Bill Clinton as well as the Governor of South Carolina, as a member of the Democratic Party. lent his support Thursday to a summer reading program and called for national tests in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math during a brief meeting with Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. officials. The district's reading program, which urges parents to read to their children for at least 30 minutes a day, is part of President Clinton's national literacy campaign literacy campaign literacy n → Kampagne f gegen das Analphabetentum literacy campaign n → lotta contro l'analfabetismo which aims to mobilize a million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read independently by the end of the third grade. Reading during the summer helps students retain their academic skills and prepares them for the coming school year, Riley said. ``Disadvantaged students fall behind during this three-month-long summer break,'' he said. ``You have to be constantly improving your reading skills.'' Riley is visiting Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, to promote President Clinton's educational goals for the 21st century. On Thursday he met with Orange County business leaders and plans to visit Utah Street Elementary School elementary school: see school. in Los Angeles today to launch L.A. Unified's summer reading program. School board President Jeff Horton praised Riley's visit as evidence of the importance of the Los Angeles school The Los Angeles School of Urbanism is an academic movement emerged during the mid-1980s, loosely based at the University of Southern California and UCLA, that poses a challenge to the dominant Chicago School of Urbanism. district. ``We're the second-largest school district in the country and we contain all the elements of education,'' Horton said. ``His visit here is a way of touching all the aspects of education in one place.'' In addition to supporting the summer reading program, Riley also called for national standards with tests in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. Under such guidelines, every fourth-grader would be able to read and every eighth-grader would know basic math and algebra. ``Students need to have their basics down before moving on'' to advanced subjects, Riley said. On Tuesday, Riley is scheduled to hold an electronic town hall meeting with officials from the school district and the Los Angeles Public Library
The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) system serves the residents of Los Angeles, California. , which also is participating in the national literacy program. |
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