Office of Innovation and Improvement

The Department is currently seeking peer reviewers for the FY 2013 Arts in Education – Model Development and Dissemination Grants Program (AEMDD) competition. Persons interested in serving as peer reviewers need to submit their resumes and a completed copy of the "AEMDD Peer Reviewer Checklist" to Clifton.Jones@ed.gov by Friday, April 12, 2013.

Today, Edutopia.org released a new video featuring one of OII’s i3 grantees — Bellevue School District’s Sammamish High School in Washington state. The video documents the transformation from the school’s use of traditional curriculum to problem-based learning. The district was awarded an i3 Development grant in 2010 for the development and implementation of a scalable, sustainable, 21st-century, skills-based program. This type of learning allows teachers to facilitate conversations and provide more effective classroom instruction; it also allows students to take more ownership in the learning process — how they connect to and learn the material, and how they put new knowledge into practice.

"We have reached another 'Sputnik Moment,'" in terms of the opportunity for the United States to transform education, according to Assistant Deputy Secretary Jim Shelton, in his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. His remarks were part of the subcommittee's Feb. 14 hearing, "Raising the Bar: How Education Innovation Can Improve Student Achievement." The assistant deputy secretary focused on three core ways that learning technology is poised to transform education: increasing access and equity; transforming teaching and learning; and accelerating and enhancing educational research and development. Other hearing witnesses were John White of Digital Learning Now, Preston Smith of Rocketship Education, and Holly Sagues of Florida Virtual School. Click here to view the full hearing to hear what Jim and his fellow witnesses shared about innovation and technology in education.

In celebration of Black History Month, the Department of Education’s Student Art Exhibit Program and Blacks in Government collaborated to provide employees and guests an opportunity to enjoy a jazz informance—an informational performance created by students of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and rising star jazz saxophonist Tim Green. Dr. JB Dyas, vice president for education and curriculum development at the Institute, affirming that jazz is America’s indigenous music, said it was “invented only 100 years ago [and] … evolved from the African American experience here in the U.S.”

Student artists cut the official ribbon to open the PTA Reflections exhibit to the public and ED employees in the headquarters lobby. Official Department of Education photo by Paul Wood.The U.S. Department of Education’s Student Art Exhibit Program partnered with the National PTA Reflections program for the sixth time to host the opening of a new exhibit at the Department’s headquarters titled "Diversity Means." For the past 44 years, the Reflections program has allowed millions of students across the country and at American schools overseas to unite around a common theme and compete in one of six mediums: dance choreography, film production, music composition, literature, photography, and visual arts.

Guests attending the exhibit opening included student Reflections winners, families of the students, local and national PTA members and staff, teachers, Department of Education staff, and arts enthusiasts. Student winners traveled from Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and North Carolina, as well as nearby Maryland and Virginia to be honored in Washington D.C. For many of the students in attendance, this was their first time visiting the nation’s capital and an experience of a lifetime.