Top U.S. Education Officials to Visit Salt Lake Thursday as Part of 2012 Cross-Country Back-to-School Bus Tour Promoting Education

U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter and Education Department Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss will spotlight turnaround efforts at Glendale Middle School in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Sept. 13 as part of a three-day visit to Utah with the Education Department’s 2012 cross-country, back-to-school bus tour, “Education Drives America.”

More than a half-dozen senior officials will hold events, highlighting classroom success, college affordability and the link between education and jobs.

At Glendale Middle School, Kanter and Weiss will be joined by Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association (NEA), where they will tour classrooms and hold a roundtable discussion on school improvement.

Glendale is one of 14 schools in Utah that have benefited from the $23.1 million in School Improvement Grants (SIG) awarded to the state by the Education Department to turn around schools and improve student achievement. In its final year of a three-year intervention through SIG, Glendale’s turnaround efforts also have been supported by the NEA through its Priority Schools initiative.

In addition to the roundtable at Glendale, other Education Department senior officials will hold events across Salt Lake, outlined below. The bus tour began this week in Silicon Valley and continues across America, winding up in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 21.

For live, up-to-the-minute updates from the road, follow the Education Drives America tour on Twitter using the hashtag #edtour12, or see the department’s bus tour blog. To receive media advisories, press releases, notifications about postings to the blog, and other special updates during the tour, subscribe to the department’s Education Drives America e-mail updates by clicking here.