Commissioner's Update
June 30, 2010

Dear Superintendents, and Leaders of Charter Schools and Collaboratives:

In this Update I have one announcement and one item for your review.

Students Invited to Develop Experiments for Space Shuttle Endeavour

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), launched June 2010, is a national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative that provides middle and high school classes with an opportunity to propose experiments to fly in low Earth orbit, and to celebrate that accomplishment with their local community and with national and global audiences. The SSEP supports a local experiment design competition in each participating school district, together with extensive local programming that embraces a community-wide engagement model for STEM education.

During Phase 1 of the program students are invited to propose an experiment to fly aboard STS-134, the final scheduled flight of the Space Shuttle. Selected student experiments would fly for 10 days aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. Launch is tentatively scheduled for sometime between November 2010 and January 2011.

For more information go to: http://ssep.ncesse.org/

Item Posted at www.doe.mass.edu:

1. Change in Composite Performance Index (CPI) Calculations for Certain MCAS Alternate Assessment (MCAS-Alt) Results

Sincerely,

Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D.
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education