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.

Yesterday, the Chamber’s Education Report Card Committee presented its annual evaluation of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) to a standing-room-only crowd at the Adventure Science Center. Along with school system performance, the committee analyzed charter schools due to the timeliness and urgency around addressing how charter schools will be integrated into the district’s overall strategy.

After an in-depth examination of the 2011-2012 school year, the committee believes the district is moving in the right direction, having made incremental gains across multiple measures; however, the pace of improvement is of great concern.

Less than half of Metro students met the state’s proficiency benchmarks in math and reading, and the percentage of students scoring a 21 or higher on the ACT – a measure of college- and career-readiness – has improved by only one point per year for the past three years, up to 29 percent in 2012.

The committee is anxious for dramatic gains and believes it will take bold action to accelerate progress and increase accountability in Metro Schools.

The committee presented five recommendations that they believe will help the district meet these goals:

     1. The school board should develop a dashboard to review progress on key performance measurements at their regularly
     scheduled meetings.
     2. MNPS should create and implement a comprehensive strategy for integrating charter schools into the district, as a step
     toward creating an overall strategic plan that clearly connects all reform efforts.
     3. MNPS should develop a system to offer shared services for charter schools as a way to increase efficiencies and cost
      savings.
     4. MNPS should broaden the Innovation Zone to the bottom 25 percent of district schools.
     5. The Tennessee General Assembly should amend state law to implement a default closure mandate for charter schools that
     are placed on the state’s priority schools list for not meeting performance standards.

The committee hopes this year’s report will be a catalyst for the bold actions and strong community support needed to see dramatic performance gains in Nashville’s public schools.

To view the full report, click here.

To view photos from the event, click here.



Chamber’s Education Report Card Committee Co-chair Todd Vandawater presents findings and recommendations from the 2012 Education Report Card.


Audience members, including Education Report Card Committee member Derrick Hines and School Board member Elissa Kim, listen to the presentation.

The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 brought a focus on data, accountability and success for all students. Still, most education observers believed the goals and deadlines were unrealistic. Tennessee now has a waiver releasing schools and districts from the NCLB accountability requirements and replacing them with new accountability measures. So what does that mean for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS)?

At the April 24 school board work session, Dr. Paul Changas and Dr. Tina Stenson of MNPS provided an overview of the new statewide school accountability system.

The new “absolute accountability” system sets new goals for the district and the schools to increase student achievement in third grade math and reading, seventh grade math and reading, 3-8 grade math and reading, high school Algebra I, high school English II and the high school graduation rate. Algebra II and English III will be added in future years. There are two overriding goals under this new system: growth for all students every year, and closing achievement gaps by ensuring faster growth for students who are furthest behind. Value-added scores for all students serve as a safe harbor for the achievement portion of absolute accountability.

“Relative accountability,” measured every one to three years, ranks schools against each other. The top 5 percent of schools showing the highest achievement and the top 5 percent of schools showing the greatest student progress will be recognized and rewarded. Schools' relative success rate will be measured by gains in reading, math and science proficiency levels, as well as high school graduation rates. Every three years, schools with success rates in the bottom 5 percent will be identified as "priority schools" and will be subject to rigorous turnaround strategies.

Finally, 10 percent of Tennessee schools will be identified as “focus schools,” based on the following criteria: high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent; schools with less than 5 percent proficient or advanced for any subgroup; or schools with large achievement gaps. Focus schools must implement research-based strategies that support students and subgroups with the greatest needs. These schools will have an opportunity to compete for $100,000 grants to aid in these efforts.

The Chamber continues to support public education as our No. 1 priority because of the important role public schools play in the future of our community. We are optimistic that, under the new state accountability standards, the goals and targets will remain aggressive but be more feasibly met, while the incentive for real improvements in student achievement will dramatically increase.

Last week, the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) released its State of Education in Tennessee report. SCORE’s work in 2012 centers on four priorities: sustained policy leadership; robust professional learning for educators; strengthening teacher preparation programs; and expanding and strengthening the principal pipeline.

These priorities are centered on the need for strong leadership from educators and policymakers as Tennessee’s bold education reforms are implemented at the school level. They also tie directly to the idea that, by creating a pipeline of stronger, better-prepared and supported educators and school leaders, Tennessee will be more likely to meet the challenge of becoming the fastest-improving state in the nation in terms of student achievement gains.

The Chamber understands the importance of developing school leaders. Last year, we partnered with the Committee for Economic Development (CED) in bringing national experts on human capital reform in public education to Nashville to speak to approximately 200 Chamber members and educators. The speakers all agreed that reform does not occur overnight, but the effects of shifting a school system’s organizational culture to expect and reward exceptional performance can have a profound impact on student success.

The Chamber’s 2010 Education Report Card also included leadership development as one of the report’s main areas of study. The report encouraged Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) to create a more formalized system for leadership development and broaden its scope beyond principal identification.

These needs are being addressed by MNPS. The Achieving Student Success through Effective Teaching (ASSET) initiative is the district’s plan to attract, retain and reward outstanding teachers in Metro Schools. By taking deliberate steps to develop outstanding teachers and educators, MNPS has demonstrated that it is committed to improving student learning through strong school leadership.

Because school leadership is such a critical piece of improving our education system, we commend SCORE – particularly SCORE’s founder, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and SCORE President and CEO Jamie Woodson – for taking the lead on this important work at the state level.

More than 50 community leaders participated in the final Academy VIP Tour of the school year at Glencliff High School on March 14. Increasingly, Metro’s academies are garnering national—and international—recognition. Earlier this month, 60 school district leaders from around the country spent two days in our city learning about Nashville’s academy model, and a team from Nashville has been asked to make a presentation at an international conference in the UK this June. The purpose of the Academy VIP Tours is to make sure our own community leaders in Nashville are familiar with what the Academies of Nashville are, how they work, and the results to date.

The touring group visited Glencliff’s four academies: the Ford Academy of Business, the Academy of Environmental & Urban Planning, the Academy of Medical Science & Research, and the Academy of Hospitality & Marketing. Student ambassadors led four different touring groups around the school, explaining the various offerings. In an added twist to this tour, students from Hillwood High School’s Academy of Art, Design & Communication were on hand to videotape the tours, which you can watch below.

We’d like to thank the following elected officials for participating in the Glencliff tour:
Metro Council member Buddy Baker
Metro Council member Chris Harmon
Criminal Court Clerk Howard Gentry
School Board member Ed Kindall
School Board member Gracie Porter

We were also pleased to be joined by two candidates for the state legislature, Harold Love, Jr., and Jason Powell. Also touring were CEO Champions Peggy Cooning (Trevecca Nazarene University), Bill Lee (Lee Company), and Ron Samuels (Avenue Bank), as well as Chamber board member Kent Adams (Caterpillar Financial Services). Members of the PENCIL Foundation board of directors were in attendance, as was Cheryl Carrier of the Ford Motor Company Fund.

We’d like to thank the 30 members of the Metro Council and the nine members of our state legislative delegation who attended a VIP Tour this school year. In addition, special recognition goes to all nine members of the Metropolitan Board of Education, each of whom attended at least one of the tours at Antioch, Glencliff, Hillsboro, McGavock, Stratford, or Whites Creek. We’re excited about plans for Academy VIP Tours at Cane Ridge, Hillwood, Hunters Lane, Maplewood, Overton and Pearl-Cohn during the 2012-2013 school year. To view photos from the tour, click here.


Teacher Deborah Crosby explains what students are working on in the Ford Academy of Business.

On Tuesday night, Nashville’s Metropolitan Board of Public Education met for a work session, where they learned about Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ data warehouse, also called LEADS (which stands for “Longitudinal Educational Analysis and Decision Support”), a database that provides a consolidated view of the whole child through academic data, attendance, discipline, supports and interventions, and other information. The district has been able to implement this data warehouse using federal Race to the Top funds.

The topic of this work session was of particular interest to the Chamber because of our focus on the data warehouse in our 2011 Education Report Card, released December 20. One of the Report Card’s five recommendations relates directly to the system: “Use the MNPS data warehouse to help determine the effectiveness of resource allocation to drive improvement in the classroom.”

So how close is MNPS to making this a reality?

While the data warehouse has opened up powerful opportunities for teachers and staff to adjust their instructional support and interventions for individual students, the capabilities of this tool are still far from being reached. As MNPS Director of Enterprise Data Systems Vicki Philpot and MNPS Director of Information Management and Decision Support Laura Hansen described at the meeting, the data warehouse is only as strong as the content it includes and the people who use it. Still, MNPS is working very hard to increase the capabilities of the system – both by adding new information and by continuing to train every teacher in the district.

At the meeting, Hansen presented some information that will be added to the data warehouse over the next year:

• Teacher and staff data, including professional development, certifications and evaluations
• Financial and payroll information
• Value-added assessment data from the Tennessee Department of Education
• Student health information
• Data from community organizations that support students outside of MNPS

School Board member Cheryl Mayes asked if it was possible for information from the data warehouse to be automatically updated in GradeSpeed, the district’s online parent portal for student progress and assignments. The district hopes this will be possible in the next two years.

While the data warehouse is already a great resource for teachers and staff, the real power of the tool will be evident when these additional data sets are added. We look forward to these changes leading to more informed decision-making about resource allocation in Metro Schools.

The Charter School Support Network, a Chamber committee composed primarily of business leaders who serve on the boards of one of Nashville’s 11 charter schools, met at Nashville Prep on January 19. Founded by Ravi Gupta as a college-preparatory academy, and still in its first year of operation, the charter school serves fifth-grade students, with plans to add one grade level each year.

Located inside the downtown campus of Tennessee State University, the school offers a longer school day (7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Saturday school every other week, resulting in approximately 15 additional instructional days per academic year. As a component of the extended day, students receive one hour of daily tutoring and participate in one hour of enrichment activities, which include basketball, chess, chorus, dance and drama.

This month, committee members heard an update from Alan Coverstone, executive director of MNPS’ Office of Innovation, regarding the Charter Compact and the Performance Management Replication Closure (PMRC) timeline to establish benchmarks for Nashville charter schools. Nashville’s charter compact outlines the ways in which Metro Schools and the city’s growing charter sector should work in partnership. As part of the compact work, members took part in a preliminary conversation to identify indicators for high-quality schools. Graduation, matriculation, school climate, academic rigor, attendance and parent involvement were some of the defining characteristics committee members believe are important when evaluating school performance. At the next meeting, the committee will further examine the question, “What is a high-performing school?” Committee members are encouraged to invite other members of their respective charter boards to participate in this important conversation.

The committee also received an update regarding the existing charter school landscape in Nashville. Currently, there are 11 charter schools in operation, with an additional three schools approved to open this fall. In addition, a new KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) school is authorized to open in 2013. Applications for new charter schools will be accepted between March 1 and April 1, with a 60-day review period to commence on April 1.

Click here to see more photos from the meeting.

In late October, 300 business volunteers spent the day at the Nashville Convention Center interacting with nearly 5,000 Metro Schools ninth-graders. Sponsored by Shoney’s Restaurants, the purpose of the event was to get these teens thinking about their future: what type of academy they might choose for the rest of their high school career, what kind of postsecondary institutions they should explore, and what types of careers they might eventually enjoy.

Want to get a taste of the event? View a brief video of the 2011 fair below. You can also view and download pictures from the fair here.

The Chamber Education Report Card Committee presented its 2011 report card for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) today at the Adventure Science Center. In looking back at the 2010-2011 school year, the committee felt MNPS has “taken a first step forward,” by showing broad, if modest, improvement across nearly all academic measures. Co-Chair Ron Corbin added that it was time for the district to “pick up the pace” of improvement, particularly on the ACT exam, a strong predictor of college preparedness and success.

Co-Chair Pam Daly shared public opinion polling data exclusive to the Chamber report card, showing Nashvillians overwhelmingly understand the importance of the public schools, even if their perception of MNPS performance over the past three years has remained static. In addition to assessing overall school system performance, the committee analyzed parent and family involvement. Poll respondents listed parent involvement as the No. 1 issue facing Metro Schools, and most of the committee’s recommendations addressed this area.

2011 Committee recommendations:

1) Create a professional development curriculum for educators on how to communicate and work with culturally diverse parents and families, and incentivize teachers to take the training.
2) Set ambitious goals for parental usage of Gradespeed, the district’s online portal for student progress and assignments, and ensure ease of use with cell phones and other mobile devices.
3) Ensure a welcoming, customer-service-oriented culture toward parents and community by raising the expectations, accountability and compensation for front desk staff in each of our schools.
4) Use the MNPS data warehouse to help determine the effectiveness of resource allocation to drive improvement in the classroom.
5) The State of Tennessee should make growth on ACT performance a factor in determining whether high schools and systems meet the state’s annual accountability targets.

In his response to the committee’s presentation, Dr. Jesse Register shared that “the five recommendations are very much on target.” It was standing-room only at the presentation today, with business leaders, school district staff, non-profit executives and elected officials all receiving a hard copy of the report. We’d like to thank members of the Metro school board who attended: Gracie Porter, Mark North, Jo Ann Brannon, Sharon Gentry, Michael Hayes (a former co-chair of the committee), Anna Shepherd, and Kay Simmons. Metro Council members in the audience included Berkley Allen, Jacobia Dowell (a former member of the committee), Steve Glover, Walter Hunt, and Sandra Moore (a current committee member).





Click here for more photos from the event.