Parents Step Ahead, Educational Testing Service Join Forces in a Parent Outreach Initiative

DALLAS, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- For the 2nd year, Parents Step Ahead and Educational Testing Service (ETS) are joining forces in the "Ambassador" initiative with participating schools in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area.

With support from ETS, Parents Step Ahead developed an outreach program in 2009 through which teachers and administrators serve as "Ambassadors" who engage parents who have not participated fully in their children's education. They assist in making calls to parents, marketing the program and providing guidance for Parents Step Ahead activities.

"Parents Step Ahead is clearly an innovative initiative that addresses educational attainment in concrete, tangible and effective ways," says Yvette Donado, Senior Vice President of ETS. "We are honored to be associated with a program that is a worthy model for parental engagement anywhere. Their results speak for themselves."

"We are grateful to ETS for helping us continue our work with parents and schools," says Lupita Colmenero, Board Chair and Founder of Parents Step Ahead. "With the assistance of ETS, teachers are becoming more directly involved in the efforts to increase parental involvement."

ETS has supported the organization through generous contributions to the school-based programs, establishment of the "Ambassador" initiative, and assistance in analyzing data collected from program participants. Thanks to their support, more than 200 teachers are part of the initiative in the Dallas area and Parents Step Ahead has been able to award many of them with laptops and other incentives.

Parents Step Ahead

Parents Step Ahead is a 501 c(3) nonprofit organization with a mission "to recognize, educate, enable and empower parents to take a proactive role in the educational and personal development of their children. The organization works in partnership with school districts, corporations and community organizations to offer a series of school-based programs for parents throughout the calendar year. Educators, motivational speakers, and community volunteers present seminars on topics such as gang awareness, drug and alcohol awareness, computer literacy, Internet safety, and raising kids with love and logic. For more information, visit www.parentsstepahead.org

ETS®

At nonprofit ETS®, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS® serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded in 1947, ETS® develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® test and The Praxis Series™ assessments — in more than 180 countries. http://www.ets.org/

SOURCE Parents Step Ahead