U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Kick Off “Education Drives America” 2012 Cross-Country Back-to-School Bus Tour in Silicon Valley

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will kick off the U.S. Department of Education’s third annual back-to-school bus tour on Wednesday, Sept. 12 in Redwood City, Calif., with a visit to Sequoia High School. This school visit is the official first event in a series of engagements to be held coast-to-coast where Secretary Duncan and other senior leaders from the Department will highlight the theme that Education Drives America.

Secretary Duncan and Assistant Secretary Deb Delisle will join students, parents, teachers, and education stakeholders at Sequoia High School for an event focusing on equity and expanding opportunities to learn with emerging digital technologies. Audience members will use new media to ask questions through Twitter and Facebook. The event will be streamed live here and there will be a Twitter question stream for online participants.

Following the event at the high school, Secretary Duncan and Delisle will hold a town hall in Sacramento at 1:10 p.m. PT with state superintendents and mayors to discuss local-level school reform. The event will be followed by a press availability.

In addition to these events with Secretary Duncan, Department of Education senior officials will travel across Silicon Valley on Wednesday for other events, outlined below:

• Deputy Secretary Tony Miller and Director of Education Technology Karen Cator will hold an education leadership roundtable directly following the kickoff event at 11 a.m. PT, at Sequoia High School.

• Cator, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton and Deputy Director of Educational Technology Richard Culatta also will meet with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, at 2 p.m. PT, at Stanford University.

The bus tour will begin in California’s Silicon Valley and conclude on the evening of Friday, Sept. 21 at the Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Additional stops include: Las Vegas, Reno, and Elko, Nevada; Salt Lake City; Rawlins, Rock Springs, and Cheyenne, Wyo.; Denver, Colorado Springs, and Limon, Colo.; Topeka and Emporia, Kan.; Columbia, St. Louis, and Kansas City, Mo.; Mt. Vernon, Ill.; Evansville, Ind.; Lexington, Ky.; Charleston and McDowell County, W.Va.; and Roanoke and Richmond, Va.

For live, up-to-the-minute updates from the road, follow the Education Drives America tour on Twitter using the hashtag #edtour12, or visit 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.

The 2012 bus tour marks the third consecutive year Secretary Duncan and his leadership team have promoted education on a back-to-school bus tour. In 2010, the tour included the Delta region in the South and the Northeast. In 2011, the tour covered the Midwest from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin.