Proud to have led Office of Public Instruction

Serving as your state superintendent has been an honor. When I was elected I promised to put our precious students first through my Montana Hope, Teach, Learn and Ready initiatives. I am Montana proud that the innovative and dedicated staff at the Office of Public Instruction have supported these initiatives that focus on our parents, families, and growing student success. 

Montana Hope

My Montana Hope initiative is the whole child approach to education focusing on family and community engagement, student safety, and well-being. This initiative was successful through: 

Creating a family engagement specialist position to ensure that Montana parents and families are engaged in their children’s education. 

Traveling our state hosting listening sessions recognize challenges and seek solutions while honoring local control in education. 

Elevating student voices to highlight how schools can create supportive learning environments so that our children can flourish. 

Initiating a parental review committee for the Youth Risk Behavior Survey to ensure that questions are relevant and appropriate for our children. 

Partnering with the Resilience in Something Else (RISE) Youth Leadership group to strengthen our tribal student’s voices, relations, and resiliency while building connections with their culture and heritage.  

Establishing the Montana Military Interstate Children’s Compact Commission to remove barriers to educational success imposed on children of military families. 

Adding a new family and community engagement section to our school quality administrative rules to recognize that families and communities share responsibility in the education of our children. 

Montana Teach

My Montana Teach initiative promotes quality teacher leaders to increase retention and recruitment. I focused on our teachers through: 

Revising our teacher licensing rules to include innovative flexibilities that maintain teacher quality and expand Montana’s recruitment efforts for teachers. 

Updating our teacher licensing system, TeachMontana, from a pencil and paper system to an online system that cuts the licensing time from six months to a more efficient process with enhanced tools to support professional development. 

Offering professional development training for our substitute teachers to better prepare them to guide a classroom and work toward becoming licensed educators. 

Creating the Montana Teacher Residency Program, which is a year-long student teaching program where residents are paired with a teacher-leader and participate in learning labs and targeted support.  

Focusing on professional development for our teachers by updating the Teacher Learning Hub to be more user-friendly and seamlessly linked to TMT. I also launched MontanA+, which helps educators assess and prioritize professional development opportunities in Math and Reading that will have the greatest impact on both their students’ success and their professional growth. 

Honoring Montana’s teacher of the year to recognize and honor the work of all Montana teachers.  

Montana Learn

My Montana Learn initiative focuses on our students’ academic achievement. Student success has been strengthened through: 

Reimagining student assessments by implementing our innovative Montana Aligned to Standards Through-Year program. MAST benefits students, teachers, parents, and administrators by providing actionable data at the beginning of the school year and by providing a meaningful model of student growth over the academic school year. Montana is leading the nation in replacing the antiquated student testing model of the past. 

Revising our state content standards. Content standards guide teaching and learning in our state. When I took office, only three of the 12 content standards were current, many were 10 to 30 years old. One of the most important of these is our social studies standards. I embedded civics instruction and study of our state and national constitutions and the Declaration of Independence in every grade level, from kindergarten through graduation. 

Updating our school accreditation standards that define school quality measures how schools achieve educational excellence. Our new accreditation standards honor local accountability, parental and community engagement, Indian Education for All, and added civics and financial literacy requirements for high school graduation. 

Montana Ready

My Montana Ready initiative strengthens career and college pathways for our students. I better prepared our students for the future through: 

Creating a Montana Ready coordinator position and nine career coaches to oversee career exploration and work-based learning by collaborating with schools, parents, counselors, businesses, and industries. 

Partnering with the Montana Contractors Association to host Montana Ready Trade Days. Trade Days offers career and technical education workshops for 7th to 12th grade students, parents, and teachers. 

Working with Great Falls College Dental Hygiene program, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Great Falls, and Rocky Vista University in Billings to partner with our public schools to encourage students to pursue medical careers. 

Established a proficiency-based diploma for Montana residents who require an alternative path to completing their education. 

Blessings to all who serve in education to make Montana proud and thank you for allowing me to put our Montana students, parents and families first.

Elsie Arntzen is the outgoing superintendent of public instruction.