REL Appalachia is one of 10 federal Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs). We partner with regionally-based research alliances made up of schools, districts, and state departments of education to conduct research on K-12 education. We share the results with educators and help them put this new knowledge to work for students.
REL Appalachia collaborates with the alliances to address high-priority education needs. We are currently focused on three priorities:
Read more about the mission of REL Appalachia on our website.
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Ask A REL is an education information service that connects the education community with the RELs. This service has allowed RELs to provide quick responses to regional needs for education information. For more information on Ask A REL, click here. By using this link, you will enter the Ask A REL page hosted by the Institute of Education Sciences.
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REL APPALACHIA QUICK LINKS
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May 5-8, 2013:
The 2013 Virginia Association of School Superintendents' Annual Conference
Roanoke, VA
Kentucky Association of School Superintendents' 2013 Summer Institute
Bowling Green, KY
June 19-22, 2013:The Council of Chief State School Officers' 2013 National Conference on Student Assessment
National Harbor, MD
June 26-28, 2013:
The 2013 American Association of School Administrators' Summer Leadership Institute
Savannah, GA
July 23, 2013:The Virginia School Boards Association's 28th Annual Governors Conference on Education
Richmond, VA
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 We've joined Twitter and we want to hear from you! Connect with us and strengthen REL Appalachia's voice in the conversations happening about educational improvement and policy in our region. Be sure to follow @REL_Appalachia today for the latest information on research, data, and technical assistance activities! |
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 As you'll see in this edition of the newsletter, we've been busy! In the past several months, we:
- hosted a workshop to help prepare more students for college and careers after high school,
- joined Twitter to share news and events with you, and
- held our first Governing Board meeting of the year, in Nashville, Tennessee.
At the March Governing Board meeting, we revisited our Needs Sensing Process to better reflect the steps we take to identify and define our stakeholders' priorities, which are the cornerstone for all of our work.
We look to a number of sources, including educators within our states, our research alliance members, our Governing Board members, and state officials to help us identify these priorities and needs. This information helps us define our service agenda and reach the communities we serve through a variety of avenues such as workshops, webinars, and research studies. To learn more, please visit our Regional Priorities page.
We hope you will read through this newsletter, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter to explore all the ways REL Appalachia is continuously working to support Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia! Let us hear from you about how we can help you improve the educational outcomes of the students you serve.
Best,
Justin D. Baer, Director, REL Appalachia |
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EVENT RECAP: Preparing Students for College and STEM Careers Beyond High School
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REL Appalachia, in collaboration with the Virginia School Boards Association, hosted a workshop on March 20 focused on better preparing students for college and STEM careers. Dr. Laura Holian, an expert in college and career readiness, shared data and led interactive activities with more than 85 local Virginia school board members and division leaders.
Participants were able to:
- dig deeper into the research on the association between high school course-taking in STEM fields and college enrollment,
- explore indicators in Virginia around STEM proficiency, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates, and
- build logic models that identified the steps necessary to increase students' STEM readiness.
Learn more about this workshop and access materials from the event.
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SPOTLIGHT ON KENTUCKY: Q&A
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 Kentucky is home to 1,542 public schools and approximately 680,000 students. REL Appalachia works with the Southeast/South-Central Educational Cooperative (SE/SC Coop), an alliance of 19 school districts, to better serve students in the state by addressing staffing needs in rural districts and schools, and helping the alliance use data related to college and career readiness.
Dr. Michael Flory, Alliance Researcher for the SE/SC Coop, answers some questions about the alliance below.
Q: Could you give us a brief history of the SE/SC Coop? How did the alliance come together and grow to what it is today?
A: Members of the SE/SC Coop were looking for a partnership to provide research support that would help prepare students for college and careers. At the same time, REL Appalachia was seeking to support a research alliance on college and career readiness in rural Appalachia. Thus, the partnership was born.
Q: What are some of the ways REL Appalachia is supporting the work of the alliance?
A: REL Appalachia assists the alliance through research and technical assistance. Currently, we are helping the SE/SC Coop to:
- examine student enrollment in and completion of Algebra I courses,
- track SE/SC Coop high school graduates' enrollment in Kentucky colleges,
- understand characteristics of students served by college preparatory transition courses and their performance in these courses, and
- study teacher turnover in rural communities.
Q: What do you see as the main educational focus in Kentucky in the upcoming 2013-2014 school year?
A: There is a lot going on in Kentucky! Probably the two biggest efforts over the next year or two will be (1) implementing a new Professional Growth and Effectiveness System for teachers and principals, and (2) developing new uses for the information in the state's Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System (CIITS). The new CIITS combines data and resources to help teachers develop more effective lessons for each of their students. Within the SE/SC Coop, we are looking forward to digging deeper into the transition from high school to college and understanding students' mathematics preparation.
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EVENT RECAP: Exploring How Technical Assistance (TA) Providers Use Data
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AROUND THE RELs: What Other Regions Are Doing
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This newsletter was prepared under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, Contract ED-IES-12-C-0005, by Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia, administered by CNA. The content of the publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IES or ED, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. Copyright © 2013
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