Pryor School District, Montana, Arrow Creek Elementary and Plenty Coups High School

Deputy Secretary Zais participated in a traditional round dance with students. He observed kindergarten students working on designing a playground and singing in their native Crow language. The student council also displayed blankets and handmade items to Dr. Zais and State Superintendent Elsie Arntzen and Dr. Zais discussed improvements needed for the school building with Pryor Superintendent Coul Hill.

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology

Dr. Zais toured the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology with South Dakota Board of Regents Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Paul B. Beran. The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology has highly ranked natural science, mathematics, and engineering programs and is preparing students for in-demand, high-skilled jobs.

The Center of Excellence for Advanced Multidisciplinary Projects, often abbreviated as CAMP, provides a unique opportunity to participate in a hands-on engineering program.

T.F. Riggs High School, Pierre, South Dakota

Deputy Secretary Zais visited T.F. Riggs High School with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Secretary of Education Ben Jones, and Deputy Secretary of Education Mary Stadick Smith. They visited career and technical education classrooms focused on vehicle maintenance and culinary arts. Gov. Noem discussed the Week of Work pilot program aimed at introducing 10th grade students to career opportunities in their communities and Dr. Zais discussed how Secretary DeVos’ Education Freedom Scholarship proposal could expand CTE programs like this one to meet students' needs. At T.F. Riggs students with an interest in hands-on classes have a variety of courses to choose from in the area of CTE, including welding, automotive, youth internship, computers, cabinetry, culinary arts, and drafting as well as agriculture and wildlife and fisheries.

Oglala Lakota College, Kyle, South Dakota

Dr. Zais also visited Oglala Lakota College, the largest tribal college in the state, where he held a roundtable discussion with students, faculty, staff, and department chairs at their administrative headquarters and learned about the history of the Lakota People with College President Thomas Shortbull.

Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Frank Brogan received a “hero’s welcome” when he arrived at Hill City Elementary School nestled in the mountains of picturesque Jasper, Georgia. He was greeted by parents, students, teachers and staff, and dozens of local, state and regional education officials, community leaders and elected officials. Hill City Elementary was the second stop on Brogan’s back-to-school tour, which is part of the Secretary’s 2019 Back-to-School Tour. He met with students, toured their agriculture building and gardens, and held a roundtable with school officials, and community and elected leaders to discuss the benefits of the Secretary’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal.

Brogan visited Hill City to see firsthand how the elementary school is helping young students understand the connection between agriculture and their everyday lives. The new agriculture curriculum is part of a three-year pilot being taught at Hill City and 19 other elementary schools in Georgia. While there were no funds delegated to the program, the community backed it 100 percent.

Brogan toured Hill City’s AgriCenter building, which houses chickens and their baby chicks, and rabbits. Inside the AgriCenter building is an incubator that allows students to watch the chickens’ eggs hatch, in real time. Outside in the building’s enclosed yard is Ace, the goat. There is a vegetable garden for which students are totally responsible. They plant, water, weed, and harvest their crops. And the students love it!

Sonia Chapman, a 20-year Hill City kindergarten teacher who teaches the agriculture program, says students love learning about agriculture, and many have told her that they like coming to her class better than going to physical education. “When they tell me that,” she says, “I feel like I am accomplishing something.”

When Kyshawn came to the Next Generation Youth Development Clubhouse (NxTG) in Dawsonville, Georgia, he was shy, timid, and stressed. Today, he beams talking about joining the school’s chorus and making new friends. He’s a youth leader at the clubhouse, which opened in 2013 and offers an innovative drug-prevention curriculum to students ages 12 to 17. Nuriyah enjoys coming to a place where people are genuinely interested in her and what she enjoys doing. Kyshawn and Nuriyah were among the students who met with Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Frank Brogan when he visited the clubhouse on his back-to-school tour. Brogan, who serves on the federal Interagency Council on Opioid Addiction and leads the Department’s Opioid Work Group, was joined at NxTG by Saibatu Mansaray, Assistant Director - Public Health, Education and Treatment at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. They held a group chat with students and Brogan asked them, by a show of hands, if the clubhouse was making a difference in their lives. Every student’s hand went up—immediately and enthusiastically!

Eighty-eight percent of students at the clubhouse live in poverty, and 44 percent have a family history of substance abuse. Yet, these students are beating the odds, and Brogan told them they make him proud.  

Brogan and Mansaray, joined by staff, education leaders, and community officials, were given a tour of NxTG. Students shared with them the various creative projects they work on at the clubhouse and they also told students about the Administration’s efforts and commitment to fighting the opioid epidemic.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos joined education reformers at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), including Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, to discuss how students, parents, and educators would benefit from the administration’s Education Freedom Scholarships (EFS) proposal. This proposal would provide a $5 billion annual federal tax credit for voluntary donations to state-based scholarship programs that empower families to choose the learning environment and style that best meets their students’ unique needs.

“Our Education Freedom Scholarships proposal,” the Secretary explained in prepared remarks, “doesn’t grow the government bureaucracy one tiny bit…It doesn’t impose any new requirements on states or on families. It doesn’t take a single dollar from public school students, and it doesn’t spend a single dollar of government money. And it doesn’t entangle schools with federal strings or stifling red tape. In fact, it can’t. And that’s by design.”

Counselor Conway stated that the President was ready to sign EFS legislation and encouraged Congress to act.

Secretary DeVos recently announced 41 new grant awards totaling $123 million to school districts, nonprofit organizations and state educational agencies across the United States who are rethinking education as part of the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program. The EIR program provides funding to create, implement, or take to scale an evidence-based innovation to improve academic achievement for high-need students, and for a rigorous evaluation so that others may learn from its results. More than $30 million was awarded to eight grantees serving rural areas. The Secretary stated, “I’m excited to see states, school districts and nonprofits proposing more creativity, innovation and personalization on behalf of students.”

The Secretary recently announced the 362 schools comprising the 2019 National Blue Ribbon Schools. 90 National Blue Ribbon Schools, which are recognized based on a school’s overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps, are located in rural/small city or town locales. More than 9,000 schools have been recognized by the National Blue Ribbon Schools program in its 37-year history. The Secretary and the Department of Education will celebrate the 312 public and 50 non-public school honorees at an awards ceremony Nov. 14-15 in Washington, DC.

At least five rural schools and districts were among the 53 schools, districts, and postsecondary institutions recognized in the 2019 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools, District Sustainability Awardees, and Postsecondary Sustainability Awardees. The honorees were named from a pool of candidates nominated by 28 states. Among the selectees are 25 public schools, including three magnet schools and two charter schools, as well as 10 nonpublic schools. Approximately 36 percent of the 2019 honorees serve a disadvantaged student body. Those selected were honored in a ceremony at the U.S. Commerce Department in Washington, DC.

The Department recently released an interactive data story that illustrates career and technical education (CTE) in U.S. high schools and outcomes for students who participate in these programs. The data shows that CTE participation -- especially focusing one’s studies by taking two or more CTE classes within the same career cluster -- is positively correlated with both future employment and future earnings. Yet, while 77% of students take at least one CTE class while in high school, only 37% of participants focus their studies on a single career cluster.

The 2020-21 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) launched on October 1. New and returning students who plan to attend college between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, should complete the FAFSA as soon as possible. To assist students and parents in the process, the Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) has been sharing tips @FAFSA, while new Homeroom blog posts note “7 Things You Need Before You Fill Out the 2020-21 FAFSA Form” and “11 Common FAFSA Mistakes.”

In its continued efforts to modernize and improve the federal student aid process, the Department announced that it has added new features to the online FAFSA form and myStudentAid mobile application. By the end of the year, the agency will launch a limited pilot of the myFSApay account, a free option for students at participating schools to receive their credit balance refunds.

The Appalachian Regional Commission announced 40 Fellows as members of the inaugural class of the Appalachian Leadership Institute. These Fellows include public policy, community development, education, investment, and other professionals who live and/or work in every one of the Region’s 13 states.

What makes Ash Fork Elementary in Ash Fork, Arizona, a National Blue Ribbon School? The answer lies within our collective vision of building students to become college and career ready. This vision is shared by administration, teachers, students, and community. We have created a culture based on a growth mindset that has no constraints to our goals and our path to achieving them. Our teachers and administration are constantly exploring research based best practices and programs that both drive our instruction and win the hearts of our students. We take great pride in the fact that our Title I School, with eighty percent free and reduced lunch and a forty percent mobility rate, consistently ranks among the top schools in the state of Arizona. Our "whatever it takes" attitude has not only enriched the lives of our students, but has changed educators' lives as well.