Topsham elementary named National Blue Ribbon School

TOPSHAM – An elementary school in Topsham that has seen double-digit increases over the last five years in the percentage of its students deemed proficient is Maine’s National Blue Ribbon School.

The Williams-Cone School in RSU 75 was one of 236 public schools across the country named this morning by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan into the prestigious program that recognizes schools where students perform at very high levels or show significant improvements in closing achievement gaps.

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Maine DOE Monthly – September 24, 2013

Welcome to the September issue of Maine DOE Monthly.

Just as it is for you, the school year is off to a busy start for us here at the Department. Already this month, we celebrated Karen MacDonald as Maine’s 2014 Teacher of the Year, announced our new partnership with high school equivalency assessment provider ETS and bid a fond farewell to Commissioner Bowen, who has joined the Council of Chief State School Officers as their Director of Innovation. We’ve also continued moving forward our focus on supporting school improvement, resuming our free webinar series and affirming our commitment to high standards, implemented locally.

Meanwhile, as five charter schools – including three new ones – welcomed students through their doors, the Maine Charter Commission received seven letters of intent from organizations interested in opening their own public charter schools in Maine next fall.

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Commissioner’s Update – September 19, 2013

From the Maine DOE

With schools now settled into the new academic year, Maine DOE resumed our School Improvement Webinar Series this week. Perhaps not surprisingly for a session on increasing attendance, we had our best turnout yet, with more than 60 educators from the across the state participating.

Daily attendance is a key factor for determining school success. Emerging research shows that chronic absence can start as early as preschool and affect performance in later grades. When students aren’t in class, they have to work twice as hard to catch up with the material that they missed, and teachers lose valuable class time helping them do so.

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Notices and Reporting

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School improvement webinars offer tangible tips

With schools now settled into the new academic year, Maine DOE resumed our School Improvement Webinar Series this week. Perhaps not surprisingly for a session on increasing attendance, we had our best turnout yet, with more than 60 educators from the across the state participating.

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Educator Quality and Effectiveness Survey past due

The June 15 original deadline and June 30 extended deadline for the completion of the annual Educator Quality Effectiveness Survey have both passed. If your school district has not yet completed the survey, please do so without delay to ensure timely collection of this annual American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-required education reform assurance compliance reporting.

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Cross Disciplinary Literacy Network registration now open

K-12 educators are invited to register for the 2013-14 Cross Discipline Literacy Network (CDLN), which provides professional learning related to literacy instruction across content areas through both webinar technology and face-to-face networking sessions. This professional development initiative grew out of a recommendation in the State Literacy Plan. You can obtain all of the details about CDLN at www.maine.gov/doe/literacy-for-me.

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Science teachers needed for graph literacy pilot project

The Concord Consortium is recruiting 10 seventh- and eighth-grade science teachers for the Piloting Graph Literacy Activities in Maine project, funded by the National Science Foundation. During the past year, four pilot Maine teachers used more than 50 class sessions trying and commenting on new instructional materials designed to help students understand graphs, which are an important component of the Next Generation Science Standards and are used often in science (and math) textbooks, as well as newspapers and magazines.

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