Official with U.S. Dept. of Education Visits Cumming

An official from the U.S. Department of Education paid a rare visit to Forsyth County Schools Friday, to get a close-up look at how the system is using its $4.7 million Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant.

Forsyth County Schools was one of only 12 school systems in Georgia and 49 across the nation to receive the five-year grant which is being used to fund the EngageMe P.L.E.A.S.E. project.

The acronym P.L.E.A.S.E. stands for Personalized Learning Experiences Accelerate Standards-based Education. The goal of the project is to increase student achievement and growth, and overall graduation rates, especially for high-needs students.

Jim Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation, along with school officials, members of corporate partner Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's executive team and the media toured Tamera Holzer's eighth grade class at .

Shelton said he was impressed that the students not only understood what they were doing, but why they were doing it.

The project runs in partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (the world's largest provider of pre-K-12 solutions), and the University of Georgia.

Shelton said three things stood out about the Forsyth County Schools system:

"First, it was their unique approach of focusing on personalization and how you enable it," he said. "There was already a peer focus on using data and this seemed to be a natural extension of that. That gave reviewers confidence there was a capacity here to actually get it done. And, they had a really rich partnership with Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt that made it stand out as well."

According to Jennifer Caracciolo of FCS, and North Forsyth Middle School, are serving as trailblazer schools and have been working with the i3 team since the beginning of 2011-12, with implementation of the project this year.