WASHINGTON, July 5 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Tuesday will launch a new effort to recruit 250,000 mentors and tutors to help students who have fallen back in their learning during the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.
The program, which will be led by AmeriCorps and the Department of Education along with other service organizations, will seek to get adults to fill the roles over the next three years.
Students on average are two to four months behind in reading and math as a result of the pandemic, a White House official said. The program is intended to help address that deficit.
"Research shows that high quality tutors and mentors positively impact student achievement, well-being, and overall success," the White House said in a statement.
U.S. President Joe Biden will also call on schools to use $122 billion in funds provided by the American Rescue Plan COVID-relief package to "provide high-quality tutoring, summer learning and enrichment, and afterschool programs," the White House said.
Reporting by Jeff Mason
Editing by Paul Simao
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jeff MasonThomson Reuters
Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA's work was recognized with Deutsche Welle's "Freedom of Speech Award." Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA's “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure" award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists' "Breaking News" award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.
