For nearly 10 years, that federal law has trapped Maine’s schools in a system that emphasizes test preparation at the expense of genuine learning, test results at the expense of more honest measures of students’ academic growth, and instruction in math and reading at the expense of the broader curriculum our students need to develop the skills colleges and employers will demand.
Announcing Mrs. Margeson as the next Maine Teacher of the Year is just one more reminder of the paramount importance of quality teachers to successful student outcomes. It sounds like a no-brainer, but we need to do more to set high expectations so that all Maine students have an Alana Margeson in their classroom every year in every class.
I encourage you to check out Gov. LePage’s weekly message on Saturday in which he will speak about the role of teachers and about our plans for supporting teachers and other educators in improving student achievement.
The economy is slow, but we have job openings, the employers told Gov. Paul LePage. More than 20,000 Maine people are receiving unemployment benefits, but we can’t find the workers we need, they said.
In other words, what we have in Maine isn’t only a jobs deficit. It’s a skills deficit, too. We have more available jobs in some sectors than we do workers with the skills needed to do them.
On Tuesday afternoon, the entire DOE was treated to a presentation by Bea McGarvey, former executive director of education for the Portland Public Schools and co-author of the book “Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning.”
Bea shared with us a compelling vision for the future of public education: one that harnesses the power of technology to customize learning for each student based on his or her interests, learning style and educational needs.
This week, we’ve made changes to streamline the Action Items section of the Commissioner’s Update. We’ll post notices of most reporting items only once – and we’ll post many of them earlier than we have been in order to give more lead time.
As in the past, we won’t provide notice of every form that’s due — monthly food service reporting, for example. Please be sure to check the online Reporting Calendar regularly to know which requirements have approaching deadlines.
Please encourage business managers, special ed directors, and others to sign up for the Commissioner’s Update: It’s now the primary way the Department communicates with the field.
Stay tuned for additional improvements to the online reporting calendar. We are actively seeking feedback, so let us know how we can continue to improve the reporting calendar and all of our communications.
The federal government this week released the final application that states will need to submit to enter the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge. Maine is eligible for up to $50 million in the competition, which asks states to do some thoughtful planning to determine how they can expand access to early childhood education and make existing early childhood education programs better.
We’ve already started this work in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Maine Children’s Growth Council and others.
In the coming weeks, we’ll launch a web page devoted to our Race to the Top efforts and ask you — the public — to submit your ideas for how we can improve early childhood education in Maine.
More and more, bath salts — a designer drug — are widely available to our students. As educators, we need to know about this drug, its dangers, and the signs of its use and abuse.
That’s why I’m asking you this week to learn all that you can about bath salts. To help you do that, we’re bringing you information about the drug in a Health Alert and on a special web page.
Hopefully, knowledge about the drug will offer you the tools you need to intervene when there’s cause to suspect the drug is endangering the students and adults in our schools.
In some of our districts, students will return to those buildings as soon as next week.
What does all of that mean? Quite simply, the end of summer is in sight.
As you gear up for a new academic year, the Commissioner’s Update this week returns to a weekly publication schedule; the next edition will come out Aug. 18.
Today, we bring you news from some of the many trainings our educators attended this summer, our latest thinking here at the Department of Education with regard to seeking a waiver from some of the provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, and — as always — need-to-know information for the personnel who keep our school districts running behind the scenes.
Earlier this week in Orono, more than 200 professionals who work with our students attended the Positive Youth Development Institute: three days of workshops focused on brain development, 21st-century survival skills and classroom practices designed to keep students engaged with their learning.
At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, participants in the Maine Learning Technology Initiative Summer Institute today are going through their third day of exercises aimed at integrating technology in all aspects of learning.
And at Sugarloaf Mountain, the professionals charged with safely transporting our students to and from school and elsewhere are meeting for four days of sharing best practices and sharpening skills. The State Transportation Safety Conference began Tuesday and wraps up Friday.
While this week is packed with professional development, it’s no anomaly.
Next week, arts educators will gather at the Maine College of Art in Portland for the four-day-long Arts Assessment Institute. And later in the month, our food service professionals will convene at Sunday River.
This week, Blake shares with us a video he produced for his senior English class that’s supposed to depict what he learned and what impacted him most during his time in high school. The result is a production that gets us thinking about how our schools need to change to prepare students for 21st-century careers.
Blake, who’s headed to the University of Maine’s college of engineering in the fall, wants to live and work in Maine when he’s older. Our education system is a crucial link in creating the economy that will allow that to happen. Let’s work toward an education system that trains a workforce that’s second to none.
Maine DOE Newsroom 