Alliance For Choice In Education Awards Scholarships To At-Risk Colorado Children

Denver, CO - In its more than six years of granting scholarships to at-risk students, The Alliance for Choice in Education (ACE) announced recently, it will be awarding 761 scholarships, totaling $1,600,000, to at-risk students in K-12 throughout the state of Colorado. Thanks to this little known organization, children of low-income families are gifted scholarship money to pay for up to half of tuition at one of 158 private school partners in Colorado.

ACE was founded in 2000 to provide low-income, inner-city parents with the freedom of genuine educational options and the power of financial scholarships. Since that time, ACE is believed to have provided over $9,157,000 in financial support to over 1,760 students, 100% of which qualified for the Federal Free or Reduced Lunch program, and whose family's average annual income was $18, 416. The announcement of this banner year of scholarship grants follows a year in which 95% of the ACE 2005 senior class graduated from high school, and 86% of these students are now in college. This is a bright spot in a state that is ranked last in the country for low-income 18-24 year olds who go on to college.

ACE scholarships are 100% privately funded and overseen by a prestigious board of trustees that include some of Denver's most education-minded luminaries, including Ed McVaney, Charlie Gallagher, Alex Cranberg, Dick Robinson, Blair Richardson, Peter Dea, and Ralph Nagel.

Privately funded scholarship programs that send children to private schools have been proven to offer real benefits to low-income families. Research conducted by The Harvard Department of Research has corroborated that such programs: enhance academic performance, promote effective school spending and parental involvement, reduce delinquency among students who participate, provide a safer learning environment, require less money to operate, and may serve to indirectly improve public school systems.

SOURCE: Alliance for Choice in Education