Keeping Girls in School Act

Keeping Girls in School Act

This bill establishes an Adolescent Girls Education Challenge Fund from which funds may be made available for the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other federal agencies to work with external partners to implement innovative programs to ensure that adolescent girls enroll and succeed in school.

The State Department and USAID are authorized to initiate and advance programs that support educational opportunities for adolescent girls and that reduce specific barriers adolescent girls face in attaining inclusive and equitable educational opportunities. USAID's Senior Coordinators for International Basic Education Assistance and Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment and the State Department's Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues shall be responsible for the oversight and coordination of all U.S. resources and activities relating to promoting educational opportunities for adolescent girls.

The State Department and USAID shall seek to determine that programs carried out under this bill:

• employ rigorous monitoring and evaluation methodologies to ensure that programs and activities demonstrably close the gap in gender parity for secondary education and improve the quality of education offered to adolescent girls;
• disaggregate all data collected and reported by age, gender, marital and motherhood status, and urbanity; and
• adhere to the State Department's Policy Guidance on Promoting Gender Equality and USAID's Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy.

The Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues shall develop or review, update, submit to Congress, and make publicly available on the Internet a U.S. global strategy to empower adolescent girls. The U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, issued in March 2016, shall be deemed to fulfill such requirement.