Maine

Stakeholder Feedback

“Over the years, the REL has always been an indispensable resource for the Maine Department of Education. They supported us in crafting our original ‘HQT Action Plan’ and its revisions in 2007. The instant access, provided by the listservs and website, has proven invaluable in keeping up to date on teacher-quality issues over the years, and supported Maine’s Title II technical assistance to identified ‘high-need’ schools across the state. Attending the REL’s regional meetings and conferences has allowed us to maintain a network of colleagues in similar positions across the region and the country. This networking opportunity is critical to our learning what other states are doing and learning from their successes and challenges.”

— Daniel J. Conley, Education Consultant for Teacher Quality, Professional Development, Mentoring & Induction; Department of Education

“Maine’s rural schools either have difficulty recruiting teachers with the background necessary to teach algebra or have a limited number of students ready for algebra because of the size of the schools. The Pathways to Math Achievement Study will help guide our policy recommendations regarding Algebra I in the eighth grade.”

— Susan Gendron, Former Commissioner of Education and Former REL-NEI Governing Board chair

“This was our first experience with one of the webinars you offer and I most definitely was impressed with the quality of both the content and the delivery. All I can say is WOW! These are very thoughtful answers and I’ve only just begun to dig into some resources that you link to ... many I had not heard of before. I forwarded these to the other teachers at my site who attended and I’m sure they will be equally impressed with the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the answers and the new bank of good ‘go to’ websites for further information.”

— Mathematics Teacher, Middle School Math Leader, Falmouth

“Our experience with the REL has been that you are very responsive to how the research is connecting to practice, and I think that’s so important for us, because we need to ... make the research relevant to help us to use it in a way that’s going to benefit what we’re doing in our state. One of the most useful things that you do at the REL is to bring up other questions for us.”

— Barbara Moody, Title II Coordinator, Department of Education