It’s been a busy and exciting month for us as we advance our efforts to move Maine to an education system that is centered around students.
Feedback has started to come in about our newly released strategic plan, “Education Evolving: Maine’s Plan for Putting Learners First.” We appreciate the constructive suggestions and comments from those who have taken time to read the document, and we actively encourage more feedback.
After 10 months of collecting and considering the public’s feedback and thinking seriously about our priorities, we’ve publicly released a strategic plan for education in Maine.
Sometimes, it’s OK if we’re not first.
In fact, it offers Maine an advantage when it comes to preparing an application for flexibility from provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
When author Tony Wagner visited Maine this summer to speak at the University of Maine, he lamented that there’s not much research and development to speak of in public education.
Below are the remarks I delivered to curriculum leaders, superintendents and school board members at separate conferences last week.
On Monday, I joined Gov. Paul LePage, Midcoast-area school administrators, and representatives from that region’s higher education and business communities to discuss education as an economic imperative for Maine’s Midcoast.
We’ve had a flurry of activity here at the Department of Education ever since the Obama administration last week released guidelines for states interested in securing waivers from certain provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Maine employers from all sectors of the economy came to the Blaine House in Augusta last week with a clear message, though not the one most might have expected.
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.
Sometimes it’s helpful to step away for a moment from the frenzy of daily operations to reflect on our work and where it’s headed. That’s what the staff of the Department of Education did earlier this week.
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 blog entry was published in the September edition of The Maine Apprise, the newsletter of the Maine Principals’ Association.
As I toured schools across the state this past spring, I heard a lot from principals and assistant principals whose jobs are becoming more demanding by the day. We’re expecting our schools to prepare all students for college and careers in a constantly changing world. The expectations haven’t dropped even as funding has become tighter.
