Thank you for joining the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on our most recent Superintendent Call on May 8. I want to recognize and thank the two district teams who shared with us some of their work: Estella Garza at the the San Antonio Independent School District who discussed the successes and challenges of serving homeless students through the McKinney Vento Act, and the team at Davenport Community Schools in Iowa who shared  information on the school climate work being done at Davenport Central High School. If you missed the Superintendent Call and would like a copy of their presentations, please email Tina Chong at tina.chong@ed.gov. 

We also shared during the call the exciting news that we are welcoming a new Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education on board at the end of this month. Deb Delisle joins the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) most recently from her role as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Ohio Department of Education. We are looking forward to working with Deb as she leads OESE's efforts to make sure all kids are on track to graduate college- and career-ready, and we’ll make sure to schedule some time for her to spend with the Superintendent community when she comes on board.

Finally, the Secretary joined us for the latter portion of the call to give a brief update on the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition for districts. While the details of the RTTT district competition were not public at the time of our call, the Department recently released proposed criteria for the competition, and more information is included in this update.

Thanks so much for all that you do as committed education leaders and reformers. If you have suggestions for topics we should cover in future Superintendent Calls, please let me know by emailing me at OESE@ed.gov with the subject line "Superintendent Update." We look forward to speaking with you soon.

Reports released earlier this month by ED outline Year 1 activity by the two consortia -- the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) -- designing new assessments aligned with college- and career-ready standards.  The state-led effort moves into Year 2 with an ambitious agenda, including releasing sample questions and piloting the new assessments in spring 2013.  Once the new assessment systems are completed, participating states will use them in place of existing statewide tests.  The tests will also be available for non-participating states to use.  Forty-five states and the District of Columbia are members of PARCC or Smarter Balanced.  The two consortia have received $350 million in federal Race to the Top funds.  Learn more: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/performance.html.