SEDL News
SEDL Hosts Regional Forum on School Improvement
On July 21–22, 2010, the Southeast Comprehensive Center and Texas Comprehensive Center at SEDL hosted a regional forum—Turning Around Low-Achieving Schools: A Blueprint for Reform—for state department of education staff from the six states the centers serve and other stakeholders. About 100 participants gathered to learn more about the ESEA blueprint from a presentation and discussion by Carl Harris, deputy assistant secretary for policy and strategic initiatives in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), and Kandace Jones, special assistant for school turnaround, OESE of the U.S. Department of Education. In addition, attendees participated in interactive events targeting the priority areas of the blueprint as well as research on and strategies for turning around chronically low-performing schools.
Carl Harris, EdD, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Strategic Initiatives, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), U.S. Department of Education, Kandace Jones, MBA, Special Assistant, OESE, Wes Hoover, PhD President and CEO, SEDL, and Elaine Allensworth, PhD Chief Research Officer, Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago
Former Board Member Leads Native American Initiative
Maggie George, former SEDL board member, was recently appointed as executive director of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities with the U.S. Department of Education. The initiative ensures that the nation’s 36 federally recognized Tribal Colleges and Universities are more fully recognized and have full access to federal programs benefiting other higher education institutions. George is a member of the Diné Nation and has nearly 3 decades of experience developing, managing, and researching programs in American Indian higher education. She served on the SEDL board of directors from 2009 to 2010.
Project Director D’Ette Cowan Published in New Book on Professional Learning Communities
SEDL project director D’Ette Cowan contributed “The Professional Teaching and Learning Cycle: A Strategy for Creating Professional Learning Communities,” to the recently published book Demystifying Professional Learning Communities: School Leadership at Its Best. The book outlines an approach to school improvement that uses professional learning community practices—embedding leadership in the entire school community rather than making it the responsibility of one person. Cowan’s chapter describes the Professional Teaching and Learning Cycle (PTLC), which helps educators implement professional learning communities as something more than a group of teachers meeting from time to time. The PTLC shows how to create and sustain professional learning communities that focus on the alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to state standards.
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