The Nashville Area of Commerce’s Education Committee met recently with the new president of Tennessee State University, Dr. Glenda Glover, now in her fifth month leading Nashville’s public four-year university. In particular, the committee wanted to hear President Glover’s vision for TSU’s College of Education. In 2012, Metro Schools hired 52 teachers graduating from TSU’s teacher preparation program, nearly 10 percent of the district’s new hires and the most new teachers from any single college or university. TSU is currently searching for a new dean for their College of Education, and while the school announced several hirings on May 10, including a new leader for the College of Business, the search for an education dean has not yet been completed.

President Glover called the ongoing search “a critical hire—one I have to get right.” The search process began in March, with a committee narrowing 40 applicants down to five. Three finalists will then visit the campus for a round of interviews, but Glover told the committee she had no problem scrapping the search and starting over if the candidates didn’t meet her expectations. In particular, she wants a dean who is innovative, not afraid to make changes, and can lead a teaching focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) in the early grades.

Committee discussion centered on academia’s perceived difficulty in adapting to the changing needs of K-12 public education, increasing selectivity of teacher candidates, and how a new dean will show results to the community a year after being hired. President Glover shared with the committee her belief that students should have classroom teaching experience earlier in the preparation program, and that graduates need professional mentors connected to the university early in their teaching career.

TSU’s search comes at a time in which there is near-universal recognition of teacher quality being the most important factor impacting student achievement. It also takes place as teacher preparation programs face increasing public scrutiny of their candidates’ effectiveness in the classroom. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission and State Board of Education produce an annual report that looks at the performance of beginning teachers from the state’s 44 teacher preparation programs, including the academic growth of these new teachers’ students.


Education Committee Chair Charles Sueing listens as President Glover describes the Dean of Education search.



TSU President Glenda Glover.



Committee member Jeff Wilson asks about the change process in higher education.

This week I was given the opportunity to teach a class of freshmen at Stratford High School as part of Teach For America’s Teaching As Leadership Week. TFA invited several community leaders to visit one of their corps member’s classes and teach a full lesson about leadership. Because of the Chamber’s extensive support of Metro’s high school redesign, the Academies of Nashville, I was excited about being placed in Mr. Ammen’s freshman English class. Thinking back both to my own experience as a teenager and as a father of teenagers, I was expecting a challenge. But the challenge wasn’t the students—it was with me, their teacher. It was my job to keep them engaged for a full hour. Most of the time they all were, but there were moments when I knew I was losing them and I needed to change tack. It gave me renewed appreciation for teachers that engage students successfully all day long!

I talked a bit about my own school experience graduating from Antioch High School and why I chose to attend Vanderbilt University. We talked about the importance of earning college credit in high school through Advanced Placement (AP) or dual enrollment. I told them those six "free" hours I had earned in high school through AP came in handy when I failed an early-morning statistics course in college and had to re-take the class. I also shared why history was my favorite subject, and I had discovered that because of a great teacher. They were especially impressed with the size of my bound master’s thesis, and we talked about how long it took me to finish it and how life sometimes presents obstacles you must overcome.

I tied my schooling interest to the topic of the lesson—leadership—by reading several passages from President Jimmy Carter’s memoir, Keeping Faith. Carter begins the book by describing his last day in office after having lost his re-election campaign, in which he worked through the night trying to free the 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran for 444 days before President-elect Reagan was sworn in at noon on January 20, 1981. I used the example to illustrate that leadership is not just about enjoying power or making all the decisions. It’s also about responsibility, personal sacrifice and sometimes doing things you may not want to do. I also read a passage from Carter’s very first day in office, when he and his family chose to leave the armored car in the presidential motorcade and walk the mile between his swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol and his office in the White House, as an example of how leaders use symbolism to communicate to their followers.

I then shared a personal leadership story from when I served as co-chair of Metro School’s High School Transformational Leadership Group (2009-2010). The school board had adopted the mission statement that the district “will provide every student with the foundation of knowledge, skills and character necessary to excel in higher education, work and life.” The task given to the group was to identify measurements that would indicate whether Metro Schools had delivered on that promise to every graduate. I shared the extensive work that involved a year of committee consensus building and numerous visits to high schools where we talked to both groups of teachers and students, gathering feedback and advice. The Teach for America instructor, Mr. Ammen, finished the lesson by having the students critique the district’s mission statement and explain why it was important for Stratford graduates to achieve the five measurements my committee had ultimately developed:

• a plan for postsecondary education and career
• at least a 21 composite score on the ACT
• a work-based or service learning experience, or a capstone research project
• at least one course completed online
• college credit, a nationally recognized professional certification, or both

Monday night, more than 300 academy business partners and Metro Schools educators packed Rocketown for the third annual Academies of Nashville Awards. McGavock High School’s Academy of Aviation and Transportation, currently undergoing its review for accreditation from the National Career Academy Coalition, won the coveted “Academy of the Year” award. The awards were made possible by event sponsors Altria and Deloitte. For a complete list of all the winners, click here.

CEO Champions co-chair Steve Turner and Shoney’s Chairman and CEO David Davoudpour received special awards for their extensive contributions to the Academies of Nashville. Chief Academic Officer Jay Steele surprised the crowd at the beginning of the program by donning sunglasses and singing his own lyrics about the academies to the tune of Queen's “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” while members of his leadership & learning team danced behind him. Elected officials spotted in the crowd included Mayor Karl Dean, State Representative Harold Love Jr., Councilman Steve Glover, and School Board members Cheryl Mayes, Anna Shepherd, Jo Ann Brannon, Elissa Kim and Jill Speering.

To view and download photos from the event, click here. To view and download photos from the red carpet, click here.


CEO Champions Co-Chair Steve Turner and Shoney’s Chairman and CEO David Davoudpour.


Educators from the Academy of Aviation and Transportation at McGavock High School celebrate their win.



Jay Steele and the MNPS Leadership and Learning "Solid Gold Dancers."

At the Nashville Area Chamber, we understand the connection between quality education, a skilled workforce and regional economic prosperity. That’s why we’ve made public education improvement our No. 1 priority. The business community’s support is a key component in reaching the level of educational excellence our children deserve.

For this reason, we joined the Expect More, Achieve More coalition last year. The coalition is a statewide alliance of more than 200 business, community and education organizations working to build local awareness around Tennessee’s new Common Core State Standards – a set of higher expectations in math and English/language arts that were developed by a bipartisan group of state leaders to ensure that every student graduates high school prepared for the future. The new standards, designed to better align with NAEP and ACT exams, include an increased focus on skills necessary for college and career, including critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork.

Along with 46 other states, Tennessee is taking the important step to implement Common Core in every school. As was the case when Tennessee raised its academic standards in 2008, the move to more rigorous standards requires widespread community outreach to grow understanding that high academic standards are critical to the future prosperity of our city, region and state. At the same time, we understand that raising the bar and expecting more is hard work, particularly for students and teachers.

To make the transition as smooth as possible, the state is implementing Common Core in a phased approach by grade levels, with full implementation of the new standards in place by 2013-2014. As the new standards are phased in, teachers are learning how to use differentiated instruction, which focuses on assessing individual needs and re-teaching skills until every student masters every standard. As part of the move to Common Core, Tennessee will replace reading/language arts and math TCAP tests with Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers, or PARCC assessments, beginning in 2014-2015.

As the region’s largest business association, we are working to raise awareness and support for these rigorous new standards among Middle Tennessee employers. By implementing Common Core, Tennessee students will be better prepared for the future, requiring fewer postsecondary remediation courses and having a clearer understanding of what will be expected of them in the workplace. We hope you will explore the information below and join us in our effort to raise academic standards in Tennessee.

Resources:

• Visit www.ExpectMoreTN.org for more information about higher standards in Tennessee and what parents and community members can do to support students.
• Click here for The Common Core State Standards: Fact and Fiction.
• Visit www.TNCore.org for more information from the Tennessee Department of Education.
• Click here for a comprehensive history and fact sheet on the Common Core State Standards.
• Click here to join the Expect More, Achieve More coalition, or to receive updates about Tennessee’s work to better prepare students for the future.

This short video, narrated by a student, teacher, business leader and parent in Tennessee, explains why higher student expectations are important for our state.

Last weekend, I was in San Diego with a team from Metro Schools at the National School Boards Association's annual conference. The four-day gathering draws more than 5,000 school board members and administrators from across the country. MNPS Chief Academic Officer Jay Steele, Board members Cheryl Mayes and Anna Shepherd and I led a presentation of the Academies of Nashville model of high school transformation. We got some great questions, such as how students attend the academy of their choice (they can attend a school outside their attendance zone if there is capacity, but no transportation is provided), and how the academies interact with the International Baccalaureate program (there is a stand-alone IB academy at Hillsboro and the district is expanding opportunities for students from other academies to take IB courses at both Hillsboro and Hunters Lane). I got a chance to visit afterwards with board members from Baton Rouge, La., and Springfield, Mo.

I also attended an excellent session on implementing Common Core state standards in rural school districts. The panel featured Tennessee educators from Polk and Monroe Counties and Lee University. The discussion was moderated by Laura Moore from Tennessee SCORE. Jared Bigham, principal of Copper Basin High School, noted that career and technical education teachers have generally been the first educators to embrace Common Core, because they are used to problem solving, applied learning, and project-based learning. He also opined that Finland is at the top of international rankings in education not because of their school model, but because they draw their teachers from their top university graduates. Several participants in the audience stressed the need for teacher preparation programs to become more selective and train their graduates in how to provide effective instruction within the Common Core curriculum.

President Obama unveiled his proposed fiscal year 2014 budget today, and while it is sure to face significant alteration by Congress (assuming Congress is able to make progress in adopting a budget), there are some noteworthy ideas in the area of education. Backing up the president’s focus on pre-K education in his State of the Union speech, his proposed budget funds a state-federal partnership to provide high-quality early education to all 4-year-olds in low- and moderate-income families, with additional grant funds to entice states to expand pre-K to middle-class families. Tennessee’s pre-K program for low-income families began in 1996 as a pilot serving 600 children under Gov. Don Sundquist. The program continued to grow every few years, but has not been expanded since Gov. Phil Bredesen broadened the program in 2005 to its current level serving 18,600 children.

The proposed budget also contains a $1 billion Race To The Top grant competition for higher education, in which states would develop comprehensive plans to make postsecondary education more affordable, efficient and effective. Tennessee made considerable progress with the Complete College Act in 2010, which eliminated many redundant offerings and altered the higher education funding formula to reward degree completion. In his speech to Chamber members on April 2, Gov. Bill Haslam promised initiatives next year designed to address the rising cost of college tuition, as well as strategies to help Tennessee move from 32 percent of adults with postsecondary degrees to 55 percent by the year 2025.

Of particular interest to Nashvillians engaged in improving K-12 education in our city is the following item on page 82 of the budget summary document:

The budget provides $300 million for a new program to strengthen college- and career-readiness by redesigning high school to focus on providing students with challenging, relevant learning experiences, and rewarding schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers to support instruction and to help develop the skills students need to be prepared for jobs now and in the future. In addition, the budget proposes to strengthen and reform career and technical education to better align programs with the needs of employers and higher education.

Sounds exactly like the Academies of Nashville, the transformation of Metro’s 12 zoned high schools that deserves much of the credit for increased graduation rates, attendance, improved discipline and rising math proficiency over the past three years. Perhaps the similarity is not entirely coincidental, since high-level staff from the U.S. Department of Education have made visits to our high schools on several occasions during the past year. Most high schools around the country have looked and operated pretty much the same for the past four decades, if not longer. Nashville has been aggressive about completely shaking up the outdated model of secondary education, changing the way teachers teach and interact with each other and bringing relevance to the common core curriculum through meaningful engagement with our business community. It’s nice to get this virtual “shout-out” from the president and his reform-minded Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

This week, Metro School Board member Will Pinkston authored a thoughtful opinion piece in the City Paper, in which he asked Nashvillians to agree on three points: charter schools are a valuable part of Nashville’s public school offerings; Metro Schools are, in fact, now improving on year-over-year test results; and that the ongoing feud between the Metro School Board and state policymakers over charter school policy is taking a toll on our community. The goal is to “rightsize,” or reset, the education conversation in our city, so that we are working productively toward the goal of delivering an outstanding education to every child in our city.

At the Nashville Area Chamber, we generally agree with Mr. Pinkston’s assessment. Like many Nashvillians, we have become increasingly frustrated by the total inability of all parties to move beyond a dispute around a single charter school application. There is much more important work to be done to improve the education of the tens of thousands of students currently attending taxpayer-funded schools across our city. But if we can agree that Pinkston’s three points are valid, let’s also agree on a “to-do list”-- tangible steps that need to be taken in each of these areas if we are going to create a productive education conversation in our city for the long term.

1) There appears to be consensus that high-quality charter schools are positive additions to the range of school choices available to Nashville families. But how many charter schools does Nashville need and where should they be located? What types of programmatic features should they offer? What kind of student needs should they serve? A comprehensive, district strategy for charter schools, as recommended in the Chamber’s 2012 Education Report Card, would answer those questions, but none exists. The school board is the natural owner of such a plan, and engaging a wide range of stakeholders would help ensure its success. Not taking the lead will result in increasing chaos or leaving the development of such a plan to somebody else.

2) As a whole, Metro Schools has made across-the-board progress over the past three years on the more rigorous Diploma Project state standards. There also seems to be agreement that progress needs to accelerate greatly if we are to give every Nashville child a high-quality public education during our lifetimes. The leadership of our school district needs to turn its full attention to developing school improvement strategies that produce results: outstanding teachers in every classroom, school leaders that can turn a great faculty into a great school community, and a curriculum that engages students in their own learning. Our leaders can’t do that if they are preoccupied with defending the system from real or perceived threats from the outside. Metro Schools needs to focus much more on its own competitiveness and a lot less on its future competition.

3) We had hoped that the two sides could resolve the conflict over the Great Hearts appeal and avoid the $3.4 million sanction, but they’ve been unable to do so, so it’s time to move on. It’s also time to move on regarding the current legislation creating a state charter authorizer. In its current form, HB702/SB830 creates a new state entity that will make charter appeal decisions for any district that has one of the lowest-performing schools in the state. If this state entity grants the appeal, then they would have the accountability for authorizing the charter, instead of the local school district.We support the current bill because it preserves local school boards as the primary authorizer and begins to clean up a charter appeals process that has proven to be dysfunctional. In all likelihood, the bill will become law this year and when it does, school boards would best spend their time and energy being operators and authorizers of high-quality schools, rather than pursuing legal action that could lead to their future obsolescence as charter authorizers.

      We appreciate Will Pinkston’s leadership in acknowledging that the current fight over charters isn’t helping to improve public education in Nashville, and we will take him up on his offer to try and “reboot” the education conversation at the April 20 meeting at Casa Azafran. We hope other community stakeholders will do the same and that all will make a good faith effort to work toward consensus about what is really needed to improve our schools. And let’s take specific, productive action so that this one meeting becomes a series of community discussions leading to real, scalable reform.

Over the past year in Nashville, the Metro School Board and the Tennessee Department of Education have been at an impasse over a charter application that was denied by the local school board and then appealed to the State Board of Education. The state board overturned Metro’s decision and sent it back to the local school board for approval. But the Metro School Board refused to follow the state directive, and MNPS was hit with a $3.4 million fine from the Commissioner of Education. What has become abundantly clear throughout the controversy is that the state law governing the charter school appeals process needs to be fixed.

Currently, local school boards serve as the primary authorizers of charter schools. In addition, the state’s Achievement School District can authorize charter schools to serve students attending the bottom 5 percent performing schools in the state. While some charter supporters have advocated for the creation of a new state authorizer, in which an applicant could bypass a local school board and operate independently of a district, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce supports a state authorizer solely in the case of successful appeals. Today, the House Education Committee approved an amendment on HB 702/SB 830 setting up a new state panel that would only hear charter appeals after they have been denied by local school boards. If the state panel approves the appeal, then the applicant receives its charter from the state, instead of the decision being sent back to the local school board to implement. Here’s why the Nashville Chamber supports this new legislative approach:

• It provides finality and clarity to the charter appeals process. No more impasses, fines and threats of lawsuits.
• It sharpens accountability for every participant in the chartering process. Local school boards must be deliberate and thorough in their review of applications, knowing a denied applicant could end being chartered by the state. When the state overturns a local charter decision, the state panel will be responsible for monitoring that charter school’s performance. No longer will a state appeal be sent back to a local school board that didn’t agree with the decision in the first place.
• This new appeals process will be applied uniformly across the state. An earlier version of the bill would have allowed charter applicants in Nashville and Shelby County to bypass their local school board completely, while the 93 other Tennessee counties would have been operating under the dysfunctional, current appeals process.

We would like to thank Speaker Beth Harwell for her leadership in helping to craft a charter school appeals process that makes sense, is fair to applicants and districts, and is consistent across the state.



Speaker Beth Harwell is greeted by student ambassador Simone Cawl at the Academies of Nashville VIP Tour at Overton High School, March 4, 2013.

Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, recently spent time with the Chamber’s Education Committee talking about the leadership challenge in education and what can be learned from the business sector. Hess talked about two necessary components of educational leadership. The first, “instructional leadership,” encompasses the areas practitioners and policymakers traditionally focus on: pedagogy, curriculum and professional development. These are important, but Hess contends that the second component of effective leadership, “cage-busting leadership,” is essentially ignored.

Hess argues that educational leaders have to operate within an insular, bureaucratic system with a culture that has been solidified over a period of decades. The vast majority of leaders—principals and superintendents—were former teachers and received their leadership training from schools of education. Consequently, these leaders are “walled off” from other disciplines and new ways of thinking that would cause them to approach their work differently--outside the “cage.” This can happen in business too, Hess noted, as companies get large, bureaucratic and lose their ability to change quickly to marketplace demands. The difference is, more often than not, these companies eventually end up going out of business, noting that the average lifespan for a Fortune 500 company is 50 years.

One of the ways education leaders can begin thinking outside the “cage” is to spend an extended amount of time shadowing professionals in other fields to see how they manage talent, resources and data. That’s the idea behind the teacher externships that the Nashville Area Chamber sponsors each summer with the support of the Memorial Foundation. Over the past three summers, 62 high school academy teams of teachers have spent three days with a business partner learning how their academic standards are applied in the “real world.” Hess’s new book, Cage-Busting Leadership, makes the case that we need the same approach for our education leaders.




View highlights from Rick Hess's visit with the Nashville Area Chamber above. To view the full program of Rick Hess’s discussion with the Chamber’s Education Committee, click here. To view and download photos from the event, click here.

This week, I've been in Washington, D.C. attending the Grad Nation 2013 conference hosted by America's Promise. The goal of the conference is to bring together nonprofits, educators and business leaders to increase the high school graduation rate. The first day of the Summit coincided with news that there are now fewer "dropout factory" high schools, and that Tennessee was leading the nation in graduation rate increases.

General Colin Powell and Alma Powell, along with former First Lady Laura Bush, were among the featured speakers. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the launch of a new $15 million Americorps program focused on assisting low-performing turnaround schools. Community organizations or school districts must file a letter of intent to apply for the matching funds by April 2, with applications due on April 23. The approximately 650 Americorps members will be supporting parent engagement, out-of-school-time programs or academic remediation.

I had the opportunity to serve on a panel with Linda Noonan of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and Tim Taylor with America Succeeds. We talked about how the business community can effectively partner with school districts and other organizations to improve public education, and we had a lively exchange with our standing-room-only audience. The Grad Nation Summit is a great opportunity to network and learn best practices from more than 1,000 delegates across the country.


U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a new program for low-performing schools at the Grad Nation conference.