Welcome to what feels like the shortest month of the year. Don’t you feel like one minute you start the month and think you have all the time in the world, and the next thing it’s December?
The big news this month is the latest result from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Obviously, the news of the lowered test scores concerns all of us. As a result, the Department is hosting the Raising the Bar: Literacy & Math Series. The five sessions in the series will focus on strategies and programs to boost student literacy and math outcomes by highlighting resources available at the Department. The series kicked off with the first session on Oct. 26, and you can view the recording. The Department will host Session 2 on Nov. 10, and we hope to see you there. In the meantime, learn more about the series.
This month’s newsletter focuses on Elevating the Teaching Profession. We have highlighted several recent press releases from the Department and the Biden-Harris administration around elevating the teaching profession. In particular, Secretary Cardona shared his vision to support and evaluate the teaching profession. In August, the Biden-Harris administration announced public and private sector actions to strengthen the teaching profession and help schools fill vacancies. In addition, there is information from our Office of Effective Educator Development and Office of Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants — Title II, Part A. Finally, our technical assistance network here at the Department has highlighted a myriad of resources around supporting teacher retention.
On a final note, I want to bring to your attention that November is National Native American Heritage Month. For more information, see the Office of Indian Education section of the newsletter, and take a moment to consider the contributions of indigenous peoples, past and present. November is also Homeless Youth Awareness Month. Watch for a “Lessons From the Field” webinar on homeless and runaway youth. More information about "Lessons From the Field” webinars is available at Lessons from the Field Webinar Series | National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments.
Ruth Ryder
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Biden-Harris Administration Resources to Elevate the Teaching Profession
- In April of 2022, the Department held a live-streamed roundtable: “Strengthening Partnerships Between States, School Districts, and Higher Education to Increase the Number of Teacher Candidates Prepared to Enter the Classroom and Provide Immediate Support to Schools” to share information about existing partnerships and federal resources that can support these kinds of partnerships to address teacher shortages.
- In June of 2022, the Department released “Fact Sheet: Sustaining Investments in Teachers Beyond the American Rescue Plan” highlighting additional federal resources available to sustain American Rescue Plan investments in key strategies that attract, prepare, support, and retain a diverse teacher workforce and address teacher shortages for the long term.
- In June of 2022, Secretary Cardona laid out his vision to support and elevate the teaching profession.
- In August of 2022, Secretary Cardona and Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, released a Dear Colleague Letter encouraging states to strengthen pathways into the teaching profession by establishing high-quality paid Registered Apprenticeship programs for teaching, increasing collaboration across workforce and education systems, and ensuring teachers are paid a livable and competitive wage.
- In August of 2022, the Biden-Harris administration announced new efforts to strengthen the teaching profession and support schools in their effort to address teacher shortages as the new school year begins. This announcement includes new commitments from leading job platforms to make it easier for Americans to find opportunities in the education field, and new initiatives from teachers’ unions and national and state organizations to expand high-quality pathways into the profession for future teachers.
- In September of 2022, the Department held a webinar, “Helping Teachers Afford Comprehensive Pathways into the Profession and Achieve Loan Forgiveness.” The webinar focused on opportunities to learn about significant improvements to the TEACH Grant program and the limited-time Public Service Loan Forgiveness waiver to support program affordability and decrease student loan debt for educators.
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On Sept. 21, the Department's OESE’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), and Institute for Education Sciences (IES) held the latest U.S. Department of Education All TA Center Call: Teacher and School Personnel Support and Retention. These regular calls bring together all of the ED-funded technical assistance (TA) centers to discuss topics identified as current needs in the field.
Please find a list of resources shared by TA Centers during the call below.
[1] “Office” refers to the office within the U.S. Department of Education that provides funding and oversight for each Technical Assistance (TA) Center. IES = Institute for Education Sciences, OELA = Office of English Language Acquisition, OESE = Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, OSEP = Office of Special Education Programs
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Department Special Event: Reimagining Our Investments for Strengthening Educator Effectiveness
The Department’s Effective Educator Development Division held a special Powered by Teach to Lead event Oct. 7–8 in Orlando, Florida. This event convened 20 teams from P–12 school districts focused on strengthening educator effectiveness through projects aligned with
- increasing teacher collaboration through innovative scheduling,
- supporting educator wellness using targeted practices, and
- investing in a talented and diverse teacher pipeline.
The gathering included a service activity at a school impacted by Hurricane Ian. Read more about the Powered by Teach to Lead event.
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New Awards to Strengthen the Teacher Pipeline, Increase Educator Leadership, and Support Quality Teaching and Learning
In September, the Department announced new awards to further address the teacher shortage and to help ensure long-term investments in teacher pipeline and development programs. New investments under the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) program include 22 new three-year grants totaling more than $60 million, bringing the Biden-Harris administration's additional support for teachers through FY 22 grant competitions to more than $285 million. Read the press release to learn about the new grantees.
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Knowledge Alliance Issue Brief Series: Educator Workforce Shortage
This issue brief provides concrete examples of how leading education research and technical assistance organizations have been addressing the educator shortage. Activities include those carried out by federally funded Knowledge Alliance member organizations, including the RELs and the CCs.
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Meet Department Staff Member Elizabeth Witt
Learn more about Elizabeth Witt, program officer for Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants — Title II, Part A. Types of projects under this program include reforming teacher and principal certification programs, recruiting and retaining teachers and principals, reducing class size, and providing professional development for teachers and principals, including tailored support to new teachers.
How long have you been at the Department? Since 2000 (in OESE since 2004)
What do you most enjoy about working at the Department? I have smart, excellent colleagues, both at the Department and at the SEAs with which I work —it’s a pleasure to work with such dedicated people.
What is one thing you’d like to see happen for this program in the next year? Staff for the Title II, Part A program is small — we would very much like to explore possibilities for increasing staff capacity to provide more and better technical assistance to states.
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Centers for Disease Control Updated COVID-19 Vaccines to Include Children Ages 5–11
On Oct. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky signed a decision memo expanding the use of updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines to children ages 5 through 11 years. This follows the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of updated COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech for children ages 5 through 11, and from Moderna for children and adolescents ages 6 through 17.
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Celebrating Veterans Day
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and her Joining Forces Initiative are preparing to release a Veterans Day Toolkit. The toolkit will assist educators as they prepare lesson plans for Veterans Day. It will have suggested activities that can assist with explaining why and how Veterans Day is celebrated. Students will learn that Veterans live in every community of our nation. Please be on the lookout for a release this month. More information about Joining Forces can be found at https://www.whitehouse.gov/joiningforces/.
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Regional Education Laboratory Highlight: Resources to support retaining quality teachers
In light of a growing teacher shortage, the REL Program has produced several research and training resources focused on teacher retention. The resources on the early outcomes of Grow Your Own programs in Texas are evidence-informed and geared towards state and local administrators. Visit the teacher persistence page on the REL Program website to learn more.
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Message From the Office of Indian Education Director
November marks a continued opportunity for us to reflect and celebrate the rich and resilient identities of Native communities throughout the United States. Since 1994, Native American Heritage Month has been dedicated to honoring and recognizing the remarkable cultural, social, and economic contributions of Native peoples. The Office of Indian Education (OIE) awards hundreds of grants to support thousands of Native students across the country. The work we do is rooted in ensuring Native children have access to equitable, meaningful, and above all cultural resources to enrich their academic journey.
On behalf of OIE, please take time this month to recognize indigenous cultures of the past and present.
We encourage you to stay connected to our work via the OIE webpage and to follow us on Twitter @OIEIndianEd for more updates!
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OIE Formula Grant Updates
FY 2022 OIE Formula Awards
All FY 22 OIE formula grantees have received their grant award notifications and funding.
Reminders
- Presentations on OIE formula awards from the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) 2022 gathering, and from the National Indian Education Study can be found on our communities of practice (COP) website.
- Consolidated FY 22 EASIE application PDFs will be uploaded to a grantee’s G5 files by the end of fall 2022.
FY23 EASIE Registration
Registration opens on Nov. 7. All potential FY 23 applicants are encouraged to update their contact information during this voluntary registration process.
Please visit the OIE formula COP website for continuous updates. The Department's OESE-OIE formula website was also recently updated with FY 22 award information.
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Discretionary Grants Update
OIE Staff in the Field
The photo to the left was taken at the top of Mount Scott in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, near Lawton, Oklahoma. OIE staff were there as part of a team-building exercise while visiting Oklahoma City for the NIEA annual conference in October. Left to right are Donna Bussell, Angela Hernandez, Donna Sabis-Burns, Bianca Williams, and Julian Guerrero.
Congratulations to the FY 2022 Native Youth Community Project and Native American Language cohorts
Our new Native Youth and Community Projects (NYCP) have been announced. NYCP has 43 new grantees, and you can learn more about them on OIE’s webpage.
We finished our Native American Language competition and the grantees have been announced! NAL has five new grantees that can be viewed on the NAL@ED webpage.
Talking Circles
Talking Circles are wonderful opportunities for our grantees to come together, network, and learn from each other and from our program officers. Each program has its own sessions. Find upcoming sessions by visiting our main webpage, select the page for your specific grant program, and view the Upcoming Events sidebar. Past sessions are recorded and published on our webpage.
Discretionary Grants in Action
This year’s Discretionary Team NIEA presentation in Oklahoma City highlighted all of the discretionary programs with grantee content, data, and videos of our grantees in action.
We encourage you to stay connected to our work via our OIE webpage for more updates. Are you subscribed to our technical assistance listserv? You can self-subscribe and begin to receive bulletins regarding tribal consultation and funding opportunities as they publish in the Federal Register.
Stay tuned for some exciting news regarding a new Native language resource center coming soon!
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Language Summit
OIE attended the National Native Language Summit 2022 in Oklahoma City. It featured informative speakers, stories, and conversations. To the right are the notes that were recorded in graphic depictions to honor visual learners.
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Title II Uses of Funds Report
The Department recently released a State and District Use of Title II, Part A Funds report detailing how the 50 states, Washington, D.C, Puerto Rico and over 5000 school districts spent Title II, Part A funds in the 2020–21 school year. The Title II, Part A program provides funds to states and districts to improve the quality and effectiveness of their teachers, principals, and other school leaders, and surveys state educational agencies and school districts on an annual basis to determine how program funds are spent. Key findings include that over 80 percent of school districts reported funding professional development, representing nearly 60 percent of total funds. The second most common use of funds was for activities to recruit and retain effective educators (34 percent of districts, and 17 percent of total funds).
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Webinar Series
Since 2021, the Office of Safe and Supportive Schools’ technical assistance center, National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, has hosted a webinar series to address hot topics that are on the top of educators’ minds. Initially these webinars focused on safely returning to school and are now focused on recovery from the impact of the pandemic. Along with sharing federal updates, the series features lessons learned, best practices, and resources from faculty, staff, schools, districts, institutions of higher education, early childhood education providers, and other places of education instruction.
Below are links to events from the series that focused on supporting the education workforce.
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Allowable Uses of REAP Grant Funds
The Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) team oversees two formula grant programs: the Small, Rural School Achievement (SRSA) grant and the Rural and Low-Income School (RLIS) grant. LEAs may use REAP funds to pay for activities that are allowable under Title I, Part A; Title II, Part A; Title III; and Title IV, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Additionally, SRSA funds may be used for allowable activities under Title IV, Part B, and RLIS funds may support parental involvement activities. Both SRSA and RLIS funds must be used to supplement, and not supplant, any other federal, state, or local education funds.
In the spirit of this month’s newsletter theme, the REAP team is highlighting some of the ways rural LEAs can use their SRSA and RLIS grant funds to elevate the teaching profession. Under Title II, Part A of the ESEA, LEAs may develop career opportunities and advancement initiatives that promote professional growth and emphasize multiple career paths in education such as mentoring, coaching, school leadership, and school improvement. Rural LEAs may also use their REAP funds to provide differential pay to recruit and retain teachers in high-need academic subjects as well as implement initiatives to assist in recruiting and hiring effective teachers. For more information about allowable uses of funds, please review the REAP Uses of Funds Guide or reach out to REAP@ed.gov.
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This newsletter may reference and contain links to external sources. The opinions expressed in these sources do not reflect the views, positions, or policies of the U.S. Department of Education, nor should their inclusion be considered an endorsement of any organization.
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