Target has announced an ambitious new goal to pledge $1 billion to education over the next five years.
The Minneapolis-based Target Corporation will donate more than $500 million in support of education by 2015, doubling its contribution to educational activities and organizations to bring its total donation to a staggering $1 billion.
Education in America is in sore need of the money. Recent statistics show that as many as one in four U.S. children are not graduating from high school, and as many as 40 percent of Hispanic and African-American students never earned their diploma.
"When more than a million students a year fail to graduate with their class, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said General Colin L. Powell, founding chair of America's Promise Alliance, an organization which works to help more children graduate high school and go on to postsecondary education. "Our economic and national security are at risk when we fail to educate the leaders and the workforce of the future. No single organization or entity can solve this issue on its own. We have a responsibility to unite across sectors to address this crisis because we cannot afford to let our kids fail."
Target's pledge is designed to address this problem. The gift is part of Target Read With Me, a program that aims to help more children become proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Research shows that this is when children make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and kids who are proficient in reading at this stage will go on to achieve higher grades and stand a better chance of graduating.
In addition, Target has announced a reading pledge, a donation of as many as 2 million books for low-income children and plans for an innovative virtual and physical reading center, also as part of the initiative.