Quality Education for Minorities

About the QEM Network

The Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network

The Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network was established in July 1990, as a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, dedicated to improving education for minorities throughout the nation. It is the successor organization to the MIT-based QEM Project which was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. With initial support from Carnegie and MIT, QEM began its operation as a focal point for the implementation of strategies to help realize the vision and goals set forth in the QEM Project's January 1990 report: Education That Works: An Action Plan for the Education of Minorities.

The QEM Network serves as a national resource and catalyst to help unite and strengthen educational restructuring efforts to the benefit of minority children, youth, and adults, while advancing minority participation and leadership in the national debate on how best to ensure access to a quality education for all citizens. It seeks to put into practice the recommendations in the QEM Action Plan by working with minority and non-minority individuals, organizations, and government around the country, to help coordinate and energize efforts to improve the education of minorities.

Based on the goals set forth in the report Education That Works, the QEM Network aims to:

Serve as a national information and communications network that will collect and widely disseminate information in a variety of forms and forums on issues, policies, programs, and resources related to the education of minorities;
Assist communities across the country in building local and state support to meet the educational needs of minority students;
Monitor and evaluate legislation, policies, and practices as they affect the education of minority students;
Promote and disseminate information on promising research results on the education of minorities, and serve as a resource in evaluating educational programs and projects;
Stimulate and assist in the development of programs to increase the number of minorities in science and engineering fields; and
Implement a series of projects in areas of special interest to develop model approaches for improving education for minorities.

The QEM Network employs an extensive networking and coalition building approach. One level of effort is focused on the national education scene. The other is directed towards helping local groups, organizations, and institutions to develop the capacity to mobilize their communities around needed educational improvements.