Commissioner Bowen asks questions of Jessica Burnell, left, and Abbey Chandler, two of the student panelists who helped describe their experiences with proficiency-based education at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School.
GRAY – No matter where Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen went during his school tour last Friday, he encountered a similar scenario: students taking control of their learning, reflecting the vision found in the Maine Department of Education’s strategic plan. Students, teachers and administrators at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School in Gray proved they are ahead of the game with their well-received proficiency-based, learner-centered instructional system.
Kindergarten students Sara Richard, left, and Lauren Fletcher use iPads in their classroom at Fairview Elementary School to learn letters and to spell words.
AUBURN – Imagine walking into a classroom in which every single student is working on an iPad. Now, imagine that these students are kindergartners, and that’s exactly the scene Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen was greeted with when he visited Kelly McCarthy’s classroom at Fairview Elementary School in Auburn.
Financial data for FY 2012-2013 budgets, as well as FY 2011-2012 actual year-end expenditure, revenue and balance sheet data should be uploaded to the MEDMS Financial System by Friday, August 24, 2012.
Note: Please share with assistant superintendents, technology directors/data managers, principals and special education directors.
The Maine Education Data Management System (MEDMS) and Infinite Campus State Edition will be available for 2011-2012 updates until June 30, 2012. School Administrative Units and schools must complete all end-of-year reporting in these systems before this date.
The Real World Design Challenge is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real-world engineering challenges in a team environment.
Governor LePage and Messalonskee High School students play with basketballs ejected by the school’s robotics team, “Infinite Loop,” which participated in the FIRST Robotics World Championship in St. Louis in April.
The following is a news release from the Office of Gov. Paul LePage.
AUGUSTA – Science, robots and the students who designed them took center stage Tuesday at the State House as Governor Paul LePage awarded the first ever Governor’s Promising STEM Youth Awards.
The recipients included three robotics teams that participated in a national competition, a student who will be representing Maine at the National Youth Science Camp and students from Falmouth who represented the state in a national science competition.
CORRECTION: The item below has been corrected to show that appointments to both the Part C group and the Part B group will be made by the Governor.
The Maine Department of Education is seeking eligible, interested parents of students with disabilities, providers, programs administrators, private and public charter school representatives, and individuals with disabilities to serve on two advisory boards established under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Kayleigh Bowen (no relation) shows Commissioner Bowen how she used a matrix to track her own progress in meeting learning standards at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School, one stop on a tour of schools and programs doing the work envisioned in the Department’s strategic plan.
GRAY – Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen is on the road again. But this time, instead of gathering information to develop a strategic plan as he did last spring, he’s sharing the results of that work.
Bowen visited schools and programs Friday as a way to showcase the Maine Department of Education’s strategic plan, developed with the input of hundreds of teachers, administrators, parents, students, taxpayers and others he met with on a “listening tour” last year. Bowen unveiled the plan in January, but said he hadn’t been able to share it yet due to the work of the legislative session, which officially ended this week.
“What we’re talking about here is how do we get the best return on our investment in education,” Bowen said. “We spend more money on K-12 education in Maine than any other program – we’ve got a vision and a strategic plan built on the best thinking of many, many people, and we think it’s going to help our kids graduate better prepared for success in college and in the work place. That’s good for them and it’s good for Maine’s economy.”
Click the image to view the fully formatted Commissioner’s Update.This week, in addition to the usual updates about our work, I will ask for something from you.
The September 2012 deadline to request flexibility from the federal government in Maine’s implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (or Elementary and Secondary Education Act) is growing nearer, and we at the Department need your feedback to develop our proposal.
The Maine Department of Education expects to finally adopt a comprehensive revision of rules governing restraint and seclusion of students (Rule Chapter 33) by the end of this week. The effective date of the rule will be set by the Office of the Secretary of State and is expected to be June 7.
Maine DOE Newsroom 