Category: News & Views

Report cards can provide learning opportunities

In a few hours, the 2014 school report cards will be made available to the public via the Department’s Education Data Warehouse.

Meanwhile, I am spending the day visiting elementary schools in South Hiram and Gorham that have each seen a two-letter grade gain since last year’s report card was released. The grading system certainly can’t be credited for those increases, but it has helped to surface success stories that can inform the improvement work happening at so many of our schools.

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Annual behavior reports due June 30

As the end of the school year approaches, the Maine DOE is reminding school administrative unit (SAU) staff that discipline reporting is due on June 30. The Department’s focus on bullying prevention has enabled us to expand the reporting capabilities available to SAUs and a detailed explanation of these improvements can be seen here.

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Maine DOE announces summit on arts education

K-12 educators, teaching artists and interdisciplinary teams are invited to the New England Summit on Arts Education hosted by the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative (MAAI). The summit will be held July 29-August 1 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.

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Maine DOE offers summer academy for teachers of English language learners

The Maine DOE is accepting registrations for the 4th Annual ESL Summer Academy to be held June 24-26 at the University of Maine in Orono. Administrators and school teams are encouraged to attend the academy, which will feature interactive sessions on working with the academic language demands in content standards.

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Maine DOE announces 2014-15 Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program recipients

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently awarded 170 Maine schools $2,022,150 for distribution during the 2014-15 school year to provide fresh fruits and vegetables at no cost to students. The USDA’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program provides funds to school districts where 50 percent or more of their student population in grades pre-k through eight are eligible for free and reduced price meals.

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Report cards, improvement resources released to Maine schools

The following Priority Notice was distributed by the Department today to school and district administrators to let them know their 2014 school report cards were available for review, as was a series of school improvement resources provided by the Maine DOE:

Dear Superintendents and Principals,

On Thursday, our Department will release the 2014 school report cards to the public.

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Commissioner celebrates Washington County school improvements on first day of report card rollout tour

Maine Education Commissioner Jim Rier presents Rose M. Gaffney School Principal Mitchell Look with a certificate of achievement for earning an A on their 2014 school report card. The school received a C last year.
Maine Education Commissioner Jim Rier presents Rose M. Gaffney School Principal Mitchell Look with a certificate of achievement for earning an A on their 2014 school report card while visiting Washington County on Monday. The school received a C last year.

Maine Department of Education Commissioner Jim Rier returned to his native county to present Rose M. Gaffney Elementary School their A grade and Narraguagus High School their C. Both schools have higher rates of low-income students than the state average and spend less on classroom instruction, yet both improved by two letter grades.

MACHIAS – Maine’s Commissioner of Education spent Monday in Washington County, recognizing two schools there for raising their grades on the 2014 school report cards that will be released to the public on Thursday.

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Commissioner to visit Maine schools, release report cards

Commissioner Jim Rier will travel to personally congratulate six of the 93 schools that improved by at least one letter grade since the first school report cards were released by his Department one year ago

MACHIAS – Maine’s Education Commissioner will kick-off a multi-day tour culminating with the release of the 2014 statewide school report cards with a visit on Monday to the Washington County elementary school where his own schooling started.

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Appreciation for our teachers, this week and always

This Teacher Appreciation Week, I had the honor on behalf of the Department and the LePage Administration of recognizing the first-ever Maine County Teachers of the Year.

Maine students are being inspired each day by the effective, engaging educators we are fortunate to have in so many of our classrooms and the 16 teachers named this week are among the best of the best.

I look forward to recognizing one of them as Maine’s 2015 Teacher of the Year this fall, though I believe all of them are certainly more than deserving of that distinction. I also want to thank Hannaford, Geiger, Bangor Savings Bank, Unum, the Maine Board of Education, Educate Maine and the Maine Teacher of the Year Association for their tireless support of the Maine State Teacher of the Year Program.

As I often say, there is no greater calling than preparing our children with the skills they’ll need to be successful after they leave our schools. Yet as teachers know, theirs is a calling that is increasingly becoming more challenging, given the changing needs of students and our commitment to centering our entire education system around each individual’s learning styles and speeds.

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