ADE Briefs

The Arkansas Department of Education’s Office of Teacher Quality is making a special effort to reach out to individuals who have either been laid off or face the possiblity of being laid off from their jobs to encourage them to look at teaching as a new career. There is still time this year to complete [...]

Dr. Ken James will join other state school chiefs in Washington, DC, this afternoon for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to discuss stimulus monies targeted toward education and how they may be spent. After the conference, Dr. James, Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, and [...]

Middle school and high school teachers will have the opportunity to hear Ken Bain, a leading educator and change agent, when he speaks at UALR‘s Dickinson Hall Auditorium at 1:15 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27. Bain, who received a Ph.D. in history at the University of Texas at Austin, has been the founding director of four [...]

The Arkansas Department of Information Systems (DIS) announced in a news release today that a vendor providing secure off-site storage for electronic records and computer files was unable to locate a DIS computer tape in its inventory. The tape contained information from criminal-background checks run on approximately 807,000 people over at least 12 years. The [...]

The U.S. Department of Education issued a press release today about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that can be found on an ARRA web page created by USDOE. In addition to the press release, you’ll find a more detailed fact sheet, links to budget information — including state-by-state allocations for formula-based programs — [...]

SayGoCollege week begins Monday, and we hope all Arkansas high school students have the opportunity to experience it. All Arkansas high schools should have received the SayGoCollege toolkits that were delivered to them earlier this month from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education. While we know every school may not want to follow these ideas [...]

The College Board hosted an event at the Governor’s Mansion for Arkansas legislators Thursday night to share with them how well the state is doing in regard to Advanced Placement classes. Governor Mike Beebe, Education Commissioner Ken James and Higher Education Director Jim Purcell all spoke breifly to the crowd, which included several superintendents and [...]

Arkansas high school students across the state will be focusing on all things college next week: how to apply, how to sign up for financial aid and how to prepare academically. It’s all part of SayGoCollege week, made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education. [...]

The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) learned yesterday that the U.S. Department of Education has awarded the state a $5 million grant for technology and data systems. The money will be given to the state over the next three years. Jim Boardman, ADE assistant commissioner for research and technology, said plans for the grant include [...]

To keep you as up to date as possible with news in education and happenings at the Arkansas Department of Education, we are creating a new electronic publication, ADE Briefs. This blog-type feature will replace Arkansas Education Matters, our monthly electronic newsletter, and it will be updated as needed (so often, but not necessarily daily!) [...]