Washington, DC, June 18, 2012—AMIDEAST is pleased to announce that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has selected it to implement a $16.3 million project to improve teaching and learning practices in Palestinian schools. The four-year Leadership and Teacher Development (LTD) Program, which supports the teacher education strategy of the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, is designed to improve approaches to teacher education and qualification, raise the overall quality of the teaching profession, and build the ministry’s capacity to manage the teacher education system in the West Bank and Gaza.

The LTD Program also aims to strengthen the capacity of local university teacher education programs and enhance the skills of individual university faculty as teacher educators. AMIDEAST will implement activities in capacity building, policy development and monitoring, evaluation, and teacher training, with 3,300 teachers, supervisors, principals, and other educational professionals from all 16 districts in the West Bank and Jerusalem expected to receive specialized training. In Gaza, AMIDEAST will assist in efforts to strengthen the capacity of local universities to offer teacher training, as well as provide undergraduate education students with local tuition scholarships.

"We are gratified that USAID has selected AMIDEAST to manage this project, which will contribute significantly to strengthening the capacity of Palestinian schools. The Palestinian people value education above almost all else. We welcome the opportunity to continue our work in support of their efforts to provide a globally competitive education to their children," said AMIDEAST President and CEO Theodore H. Kattouf.

AMIDEAST will draw on its long experience in educational reform and institutional capacity-building, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, where it has had a presence as far back as 1957. That experience includes the USAID-funded Model Schools Network (MSN) program, underway since 2007, which has introduced a model of educational leadership in a 69-school network of “model” schools on which the LTD Program will build. It also includes the Palestinian Faculty Development Program (PFDP), funded by USAID and the Open Society Institute (OSI), through which AMIDEAST has been addressing long-term issues of reform in teaching and learning practices in Palestinian higher education since 2005. As part of its final year, the PFDP is currently sponsoring a series of national roundtables to engage Palestinian educators in a discussion of issues critical to the system’s future.

Founded in 1951, AMIDEAST (www.amideast.org) is an American nonprofit organization engaged in international education, training, and development assistance. With over 20 field and project offices in the Middle East and North Africa and more than 650 dedicated professional staff, AMIDEAST provides programs and services to improve educational opportunity and quality, strengthen local institutions, and develop language and professional skills for success in the global economy. AMIDEAST is deeply committed to strengthening mutual understanding and cooperation between Americans and the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa.