10/3/2008
Tillapaugh's Speech Included in New National Publication

Preserving a Critical National Asset: America's Disadvantaged Students
and the Crisis in Faith-Based Urban Schools.

On October 3rd, 2008 the White House released the report, "Preserving
a Critical National Asset: American's Disadvantaged Students and the
Crisis in Faith-Based Urban Schools. Included in the publication is
StreetSchool Network" President Tom Tillapaugh's speech from the April
24, 2008, White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith Based
Schools convened by President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. A
broad array of education and community stakeholders, including
Tillapaugh, were invited to address a deeply troubling but vastly
under-reported phenomenon limiting the education options available to
low-income urban families: the rapid disappearance of faith-based
schools in America's cities.

Excerpt:
The Summit was called due to alarming statistics recently released by
the National Center for Education Statistics: between the 1999-2000
and 2005-2006 school years, the K-12 faith-based education sector lost
nearly 1,200 schools and nearly 425,000 students. According to the
report, this is a cause for national concern for a number of important
reasons. First, for generations, these schools have played an
invaluable role in America's cities. They are part of our Nation's
proud story of religious freedom and tolerance, community development,
immigration and assimilation, academic achievement, upward mobility,
and more. To lose these schools is to lose a positive, central
character in the narrative of urban America.

You can read Tillapaugh's speech and link to the full publication:
Click here: http://cts.vresp.com/c/?StreetSchoolNetwork/d4435c04a8/TEST/38cc8116ce