TMelendez's blog

I’m in Los Angeles to speak at the 2011 Western Regional Capacity-Building Conference for School Improvement Grant (SIG) recipients. This is the first of four conferences we are holding for grantees across the country, and I’m really excited to be here to kick off these learning sessions that will offer support to states, districts, and schools as they undertake the difficult but necessary work of school turnaround. Tomorrow, I’ll also be visiting two SIG schools to better see how turnaround work is progressing on the ground. I’ll provide a more detailed update on the conference and the visits when I return to DC, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you new SIG resources that grantees may find helpful.

Last week, the Center on Instruction posted a series of 5 webinars, produced in conjunction with Doing What Works, on topics related to adolescent literacy.  These are recorded professional development webinars designed for SIG grantees, with content from the Center on Instruction and handouts and activities from the DWW adolescent literacy website. This is a valuable resource for SIG schools and districts who may be looking for more resources on improving literacy, and I encourage you to take a look.

Here are the available webinars in the "Using Doing What Works (DWW) Resources to Support SIG Grantees in Adolescent Literacy" series:

• School Leadership
• Research Overview
• Explicit Vocabulary Instruction in Middle and High School
• Text Discussion
• Intensive Interventions for Struggling Readers

Using my recent Baltimore Head Start Center visit as inspiration, I wrote a blog post about the importance of interagency partnerships and investing in education reform for the White House. The post was published last Friday on www.whitehouse.gov/blog, and I'm excited to share it with all of you -- click here to read the full post!

In our new issue of the School Turnaround Newsletter, turnaround teams and directors from four states reflect on their first year implementing the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, and what they've learned from their experiences so far. We also share new resources for school turnaround in the newsletter, along with a reminder to register for our Spring 2011 Regional SIG Conferences, which are fast approaching!

You can read the new issue here. If you've missed previous issues, you can find them here.

I'm pleased to announce that our March issue of Superintendent Monthly is now posted online. We have more information on the upcoming Superintendent Call in April, as well as updates on the President's activities during March, which has been designated as "Education Month" by the White House. We also have some new grant opportunities open, so I encourage you to take some time to read over the newsletter.

 If you'd like to receive the newsletter via email, please sign up at http://eepurl.com/cnFkL. If you have any questions or feedback on the newsletter, please e-mail me at AskDrT@ed.gov. For back issues of the newsletter, you can visit http://www.ed.gov/oese-news/superintendent-monthly.

Last week, the Department released to governors a set of documents that share promising practices about how to spend education dollars productively and highlight flexibility available for spending federal funds. I know many state and district leaders are in the process of cutting budgets and making difficult decisions, and I hope that these documents are helpful in that process.

We’re planning a more comprehensive discussion around this topic during our next Superintendent call in April. More information will be shared soon, but in the meantime, I would love to hear from you if you have thoughts to share on how your district or state is using its education dollars more productively or creatively. Email me at AskDrT@ed.gov. 

This past Monday, I had the pleasure of visiting a National Head Start Center of Excellence in Baltimore – the Campfield Head Start Center – with the Director of Head Start, Administration of Children and Families, Yvette Sanchez Fuentes. Not only did we take a wonderful tour of the center, but I also had the opportunity to read to a classroom of children! It was a real treat for me to spend time with the pre-schoolers. At one point, I even sang along with them to the old favorite, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” and it was so inspiring to see the pure innocence and joy in the faces of the students.

It’s on behalf of our youngest learners that the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services are partnering and coordinating our work. It’s also why investments in early learning, such as the Early Learning Challenge Fund, proposed in the President’s FY2012 Budget, are so important. We in the Department are deeply committed to an early learning agenda that supports a continuum of learning beginning at birth and continuing through third grade, and we are honored to work with programs like the Campfield Head Start Center to provide the right start for our children’s education.

That’s the title of an article I wrote for the latest issue of Principal Magazine, a publication of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. In the piece, I highlight efforts of three extraordinary high school principals and the successes they’ve had in helping all of their students achieve at high levels. I’ve mentioned all of their work on this blog before, and I encourage you to learn more about them here.

The February issue of the Superintendent Monthly E-Newsletter is now available online! We sent out the e-newsletter yesterday to our Superintendent mailing list, and posted online on our Superintendent Monthly page. We have some great information and updates on what's happening in OESE and in the Department -- including updates on the President's FY 2012 budget and current grant competitions within OESE -- so please be sure to check it out.

If you'd like to receive the newsletter via email, please sign up at http://eepurl.com/cnFkL. If you have any questions or feedback on the newsletter, please e-mail me at AskDrT@ed.gov.

After our superintendent call and webinar last week on SIG implementation, some of you asked for more information on The Parent Academy (TPA), a parent and family engagement strategy used by Miami Dade County as part of their turnaround efforts. Nikolai Vitti was kind enough to share with me some additional information on this initiative, and I wanted to pass along these resources to you. In the documents attached here, you'll find more information on how Miami Dade runs their Parent Academy, as well as some supporting research from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group. If you have questions, I encourage you to contact the district directly to find out more!

I hope many of you received a Save the Date notice a few weeks back for our regional capacity building conferences on successfully implementing School Improvement Grants. OESE is partnering with its Comprehensive Centers to connect educators, administrators, and practitioners together to learn from one another and begin creating peer networks and communities of practice. We have four conferences planned for April and May, each in a different location and catering to different audiences. Some basic information on the conferences are below, but watch more detailed information on registration coming soon!