Vol, 6, No. 38: December 3, 2007		Get SEAchange by email

---

1. On the road

On Monday, November 26, State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster visited Middleton High School and the classroom of National Environmental Educator, Deb Weitzel. Weitzel, recently named the nation’s first recipient of the Bartlett Award honoring leadership in environmental education, has grown Middleton's program from just one environmental course to a rigorous series of classes described as inspiring by former students. Weitzel also works with extracurricular groups like an ecology club and an Envirothon team, and she takes students on eye-opening environmental journeys to destinations such as Costa Rica and the Rocky Mountains.

On Tuesday, November 27, Burmaster met with Wisconsin State Representative Annette Polly Williams and other community members in Milwaukee to discuss strategies for improving achievement in Milwaukee Public Schools.

On Thursday, November 29, the state superintendent convened the bi-annual meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee, which worked with DPI to review the technical quality of the Wisconsin Student Assessment System. The panel is chaired by Andy Porter of the University of Pennsylvania and includes two other national assessment experts, Brian Gong of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment and Robert Linn of the University of Colorado. The committee spent time revisiting the current Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam achievement standards.

On Friday, November 30, Burmaster addressed Forward with Our Children, a regional economic summit in Green Bay. The event brought business and community leaders together to share motivations and strategies for advancing Wisconsin's national leadership in early childhood education. "It is exciting to see the Green Bay and Fox Valley region explore and embrace the concept that early childhood is a good economic investment," Burmaster told the participants, noting that "we can truly make an impact on our state’s and communities’ futures by focusing on early childhood."

---

You can also receive SEAchange by email. For more information about SEAchange, contact: Benson Gardner at (608) 266-3374.

---

Last updated on 12/3/2007