Improving public education is the Chamber’s No. 1 priority because of the many ways school quality impacts our community’s overall prosperity. That’s why we’re part of the Expect More, Achieve More coalition, a statewide alliance of business, community and education organizations working to build local awareness around Tennessee’s new Common Core State Standards. Along with 46 other states, Tennessee is taking the important step to implement these internationally competitive standards and better prepare students for the future. The new standards include an increased focus on skills necessary for college and career, including critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork.

As was the case when Tennessee raised its academic standards in 2010, the move to more rigorous standards requires widespread community outreach. The coalition has developed a new video to raise awareness and support for higher academic standards, and we’re hoping it will reach 10,000 views by the end of this week. You can help us meet this goal by watching the video today and sharing it with your friends, family and colleagues.

Raising the bar and expecting more is hard work, particularly for students and teachers. To support students and teachers, we must all come together for a common cause: When we expect more, our children achieve more. Help us spread the word by joining the cause and sharing this video today.

The Chamber’s Education Report Card Committee presented its 18th annual report to a packed audience of Chamber members, educators and elected officials today. The report examines the 2009-2010 school year in Metro Schools and makes 10 recommendations for improvement. Because of the state’s move to implement more rigorous K-12 academic standards, the committee considers the past school year “a baseline for future improvement.” 2010 also left the committee “encouraged, but impatient.”

The encouragement comes from the graduation rate continuing to trend upward, as well as momentum from reform initiatives such as ASSET (human capital reform), the Academies of Nashville (high school reform), and the creation of a district data warehouse. The impatience comes from the fact that many of these initiatives are entering their second year of implementation or longer, and it is time for demonstrated improvement in academic achievement. In particular, the report considers the district’s high school student performance on the ACT test to be “mission critical.”

The committee’s 10 recommendations, which are explained more fully in the report narrative, are:

School System Performance

• Conduct an external, business processes audit of a sample of individual schools to identify inefficiencies in school-level infrastructure and staff deployment.
• The State of Tennessee should preserve a consistent comparison of high school graduation rates across years by continuing to report the current National Governors Association (NGA) calculation of four years and a summer school for most students, and five years for English Language Learners and students with disabilities.

School District Leadership Development

• The many leadership development programs and initiatives within MNPS should be integrated into a cohesive system, creating a true pipeline of leadership from the classroom to the director’s office.
• Teacher leadership roles, such as team leader, department chair and mentor teacher, should be encouraged and rewarded as part of a differentiated compensation system.
• Each principal evaluation should include a section on how they are developing leadership capacity in their building, including the periodic reassignment of duties among assistant principals so that these future school leaders have experience with all aspects of running a school.
• Support efforts by the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association (MNEA) to play a leadership role in education reform, such as human capital reform or the creation of a teacher-led school.
• Each school should develop a plan for student leadership beyond the traditional student government structure that engages a significant portion of its student body.

Kindergarten Readiness

• The governor and Tennessee General Assembly should protect existing pre-K funding as a critical building block for the effective education of Tennessee's children.
• The State of Tennessee should create a measurable definition of kindergarten readiness.
• The Mayor’s Advisory Council on Early Childhood Development and Early Education should create a citywide plan with a unified vision for Nashville’s existing pre-K programs that is driven by current research, best practices and program evaluation.

At the Chamber, we believe that having a successful public school system is essential to the long-term prosperity of Nashville and the Middle Tennessee region. In 2008, the Chamber senior staff and our volunteer leadership created a three-year plan, Education 2020, to assure Nashville’s future prosperity by engaging community leadership to transform public education.

The Chamber’s education work leverages our organization’s unique strengths, and, in most cases, fills a need or a gap not being addressed by others. Longstanding Chamber education initiatives such as the Education Report Card Committee, SuccessPAC and our support for charter schools fit perfectly alongside newer initiatives like Friends of Metro Schools, ONE NASHVILLE and our support of the Academies of Nashville.

To carry out this strategic work, the Chamber’s education department has four full-time, committed professionals:

Marc Everett Hill, Chief Education Officer
In late 2006, Chamber leadership created a new leadership position focused on the key priority of improving public education. Marc Hill became the Nashville Chamber’s first chief education officer in April 2007. Marc previously spent seven years in Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell’s administration as director of the Mayor’s Office of Children and Youth and special assistant for education. In the 1990s, Marc spent five years with the Tennessee House of Representatives, both in the Majority Leader’s office and as the research analyst for the Education Committee. Marc is a graduate of Antioch High School, Vanderbilt University and Middle Tennessee State University. When he is not working on education policy, Marc is usually thinking about music and soccer, but not at the same time.

Etta Carson-Bell, Program Manager
A Metro Schools parent, Etta Carson-Bell has been with the Chamber’s education department for six years. She previously worked in higher education at Tennessee State University. In addition to managing the department, Etta leads the Chamber’s work on the Mayor’s First Day Festival and Friends of Metro Schools. Etta is an alumna of Kentucky State University in Frankfort and is renowned for her ability to plan and pull off a multitude of committee meetings, public events, policy summits and baby showers.

Zack Blair, Director of Business Engagement in Education
Following in the footsteps of Chelsea Parker, who now works for Metro Schools, Zack joined the Chamber team in August 2010. Zack is a graduate of Lipscomb University and was previously employed as a technical specialist at his alma mater. Zack leads the Chamber’s work to support the Academies of Nashville, Metro Schools’ effort to reform its 12 zoned high schools into smaller learning communities with a career or thematic focus. He is also quite possibly the best-mannered sports fanatic you will ever meet.

Rita McDonald, Director of Community Engagement in Education
Though Rita McDonald is the newest education department staff member -- having joined in September 2010 in a newly created position to lead the ONE NASHVILLE campaign -- she is the consummate Chamber veteran. Rita has spent 20 years serving in the Chamber’s research and information services division. A graduate of Metro Schools and Middle Tennessee State University, Rita would like you to stop reading this blog post and join onenashville.org right now.


L-R: Marc Hill, Rita McDonald, Etta Carson-Bell and Zack Blair at the launch of the ONE NASHVILLE campaign.

On September 8, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and our community partners launched the ONE NASHVILLE campaign. The mission of ONE NASHVILLE is for every Nashvillian to find a way to help our public schools succeed. We created the onenashville.org website to make it easy to find the opportunity that’s right for each person. Our goal is to increase the overall number of volunteers through PENCIL Foundation and Alignment Nashville; individual donors through the Nashville Alliance for Public Education; and the number of advocates through Friends of Metro Schools. During the 2009-2010 school year, individual volunteers, donors and advocates through these organizations totaled 11,764. We would like to see that number increase by at least 5 percent by June 2011.

We’ve been developing this campaign over the past two years, and the Chamber has retained McNeely, Pigott & Fox throughout the research and implementation phase to assist us in our work. The campaign's premise is simple: there is tremendous value in every single person in our community getting involved in public education. Of course this means public school families, but it also includes seniors whose kids may have grown, adults without children and private-school parents. We all have a stake in having a successful public school system -- it is the key to our city’s future prosperity. But, in our research, we found that few people know how to get involved based on their interest or availability.

So we decided to create a “one-stop shop” website portal focused on education engagement that answered all those questions simply and quickly. We did extensive polling and focus group research at the beginning, discovering what different groups thought about Metro Schools and how they most wanted to get involved. We also tested different messages about the importance of public education. The impact of a successful public school system on the economy, workforce, and quality of life all tested positively. But we believe the two messages that tested the strongest reinforced what is special about Nashville. Seventy-one percent of Nashvillians felt, “If schools improve, we will have met our responsibility of helping all our city’s children succeed.” It was topped only by the 73 percent who responded, “If schools improve, Nashville will be an even greater city.”

These results came to us in May 2008, well before the 2010 flood, pointing to the enduring, unique spirit of our city. That’s what inspired our campaign theme, ONE NASHVILLE. We hope you’ll go to www.onenashville.org and join us today.


Rita McDonald, director of the ONE NASHVILLE campaign, helps Mayor Karl Dean, Dr. Jesse Register and Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Ralph Schulz log on to www.onenashville.org to join the campaign.


Denine Torr from Dollar General Corporation talks about her company’s commitment to employee volunteerism at Hattie Cotton Elementary School and Hunters Lane High School. Behind Denine, L-R: Melissa Spradlin (Book ‘Em), Lisa Wiltshire (Eakin Elementary parent), Rita McDonald (Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce), Cathy Holland (Metro Nashville Airport Authority), Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, and Director of Schools Dr. Jesse Register.

The Chamber’s Public Education Advocacy Committee focuses on two primary activities: communicating the importance of K-12 public education to the broader community and serving as advocates for important education issues, such as school funding, with our local and state elected officials.

Chaired by Robert Lipman, CEO of Lipman Brothers Inc., the committee met on April 15 at the Boy Scouts of America to hear an update from Hal Cato, executive director of Oasis Center, on Nashville’s Youth Master Planning process. Mayor Karl Dean has formed a task force to develop a coordinated approach to addressing the many life factors that affect a young person’s success: including education, health, home stability and out-of-school activities. The plan is scheduled to be completed by July 2010.

Committee members discussed the need for every child in Nashville to have an engaged and supportive parent. If a child’s parent is not present or capable, that role needs to be filled by another adult relative, mentor or advocate. Knowing that many children in our city do not have this critical support, the committee brainstormed about possible next steps toward making this a reality for every child and encouraged the Youth Master Plan to make this a priority.

The committee also spent time considering ways in which Nashvillians can be involved in Metro Schools by volunteering. One such way is for adults to share their interest or hobby by sponsoring an afterschool club. Stephanie Brakefield, the afterschool club coordinator at J.T. Moore Middle School, told the committee that her school offers more than 25 student clubs throughout the school year, from the “hula hooping club” to the “rock & roll history” club. The PENCIL Foundation performs background checks on the volunteers leading the clubs and 2/3 of the student body at the school is involved in clubs or sports, giving these middle school students a safe and engaging way to spend their out-of-school time at minimal cost.

If you are a Chamber member and are interested in attending a future meeting of the Public Education Advocacy Committee, contact Marc Hill at 743-3155 or mhill@nashvillechamber.com.