Innovation in Nashville: How Community Partners Connect Schools with Parents
By Gini Pupo-Walker, Executive Director of Family and Community Partnerships, Metro Nashville Public Schools
On a recent Sunday, two dozen Latino parents and their children gathered at Casa Azafrán, a community center located in the heart of the immigrant community in Nashville, TN. They came to celebrate the close of another successful semester as facilitators for Padres Comprometidos, an outstanding series of parent workshops developed by the National Council of La Raza to empower and inform Latino parents across the country. Through the Padres Comprometidos class, these parents learned about adolescent development, role-playing parent-teacher conferences, and planning for college. Upon graduation from the class, parents often volunteer to be trained as facilitators, suddenly and improbably becoming leaders and trusted resources in their community.
According to a 2009 report from the Pew Hispanic Center, 89 percent of Latino parents believe that college is important for success in life, yet 40 percent feel they have the knowledge to help their children prepare for college. The reality is that in Nashville, and the country, Latino parents are often ill equipped to support their child’s learning, or to come to the school with questions or concerns. Metro Nashville Public Schools offer programs, like Padres Comprometidos, in partnership with a local nonprofit – Conexión Américas – so that Latino parents can learn from one another, and bolster their sacrifices and hard work with information and strategies that are concrete, often complex, and always focused on empowering parents to fulfill their role as the first teacher and primary influence of their children.
Read More →Encouraging Collaboration, English Language Learners, Expanding Student Success, On The Ground, Parents
State Leaders Support Standards for All Students
By Chris Minnich, Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers
Four years ago, when states set out to create rigorous standards to ensure each student graduates college- and career-ready, they meant all students. We knew all students would face challenges, whether it was an advanced high school junior or a classmate who struggled with English. This was a foundational consideration, albeit it a daunting one.
Still, as state leaders, we refused to set low expectations for any child.
Read More →The Common Core: Meeting Students Where They Are, Preparing Them for Where They Are Going
By Cicely Woodard, 8th Grade Mathematics Teacher, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools
When I first met my student, Mary, in August, she had an infamous mantra. Every time I saw her she said to me, “Mrs. Woodard, I hate math.” Whether in the halls during class change, at my door just before class started, or even in the cafeteria, she had the same greeting. She told me stories of how she had struggled with math in the past and how her parents stayed on her about her failing grades. Enter the Common Core State Standards.
Read More →Commentary, Expanding Student Success, Implementation, Teachers
Resetting The Leadership Compass to Achieve Student Success
By Frank Till, Superintendent, Cumberland County Schools, North Carolina.
Dr. Till was a panelist and resource expert on improving educator effectiveness through evaluation and compensation reform at The Hunt Institute’s 2014 Holshouser Legislators Retreat. (To learn more about this issue, see The Institute’s special reVISION series on educator effectiveness here.) Under Dr. Till’s tenure, test scores have risen significantly. In the 2011-2012 school year, over 90 percent of schools achieved growth, and all of the high schools were above the state average for graduation. Last year, his school district was one of four finalists for the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education, which recognizes large urban districts for significant progress in increasing student performance and closing the achievement gap. Below he shares how his district transformed teaching and learning.
Read More →Commentary, Expanding Student Success, North Carolina, Resources
The Collaborative for Student Success: The Need is Great for Truth-Telling on Common Core
By Stacy Carlson and Julie Mikuta
Imagine a lifeguard course in which more than half of its graduates don’t know basic CPR. Or a pharmacology college in which three-quarters of the graduates routinely commit dosage errors because they don’t understand proportional math.
If it sounds far-fetched, it shouldn’t. Every year, nearly six in ten first-year college students arrive on campus and are shocked to learn they require remedial courses in English or mathematics – classes that cost just as much as college courses, but don’t earn credits.
Among students entering two-year colleges, the statistics are even more sobering: three-quarters of incoming students require remedial instruction in English, math or both.
A New York Post report published last year found that an astonishing 80 percent of New York City high school grads enrolled at CUNY community colleges required remedial classes.
The problem isn’t unique to CUNY. Lack of college readiness is one of the leading factors nationally responsible for a failure to earn a college degree. Every year, it imposes enormous costs on students and their families – an estimated $3 billion annually – and also on taxpayers, who are forced to foot the bill for duplicative instructions, in high school and then again in college.
Read More →“A police chief, retired general and business CEO walk into a hearing…”
By Miriam Rollin, VP/COO, Council for a Strong America
It may sound like the opening line of a joke – but it’s no joke. It’s a powerful reality to make the case for the continued implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and aligned assessments.
For instance, last summer, 23 police chiefs from across Tennessee released a Fight Crime: Invest in Kids report demonstrating the connection between educational deficits, unemployment, and crime in their communities. Research shows that long-term changes in wages and employment opportunities among non-college educated men may explain as much as half of property and violent crime rates. The report also focused on the importance of continued implementation of the CCSS to address those educational deficits. The media coverage included stories on four local TV networks, as well as in The Tennessean and another local paper.
Read More →Lessons Learned from the Volunteer State
By Jamie Woodson, President and CEO, State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) Nashville, Tennessee
Just a few years ago, Tennessee embarked on an ambitious plan to better prepare students for the future. Tennesseans took a hard look at student proficiency and concluded that continuing to accept mediocre academic performance was a disservice to our students. When SCORE was launched in 2009, we identified a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for unprecedented growth in student achievement in Tennessee.
Now, Tennessee has reached an important milestone. The November 7 release of the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) for 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math confirmed that student achievement in Tennessee has grown faster than any other state. Tennessee’s 2011-13 growth is the largest by any state since NAEP began consistent assessments in 2003. We are very aware that we have much work to do to sustain and accelerate these gains.
Read More →Gov. Hunt Speaks on Early Childhood Investments
Recently, Governor Jim Hunt spoke to a crowd of business, political, and civic leaders in Greensboro about the importance of investing in early childhood education in Guilford County, NC. Gov. Hunt, a keynote speaker, – along with psychologist Nathan Fox a professor at the University of Maryland and David Lawrence, Jr., president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation in Florida – stressed that children should begin school ready to learn, prepared mentally, emotionally and socially before kindergarten. He urged leaders to understand that “85 percent of brain growth occurs by age three and that that the first 2,000 days of a child’s life are critical to shaping who they will be. Investing in early childhood education is morally important and economically the smartest thing we could do.”
Read More →U.S. Military Supports Common Core
Data have shown that the Common Core State Standards are key to education reform and a strong military. In The Daily Caller article, “Support for Common Core Strong in U.S. Military,” education editor Eric Owens explains two major reasons why the United Sates military endorses the Common Core.
The first reason is the expectation that the Common Core will, in fact, standardize education for the better in the 45 states (and the District of Columbia) which began implementing it this fall. The Pentagon’s education department — Department of Defense Education Activity — has also adopted the Common Core.
Read More →Rising to the Common Core Challenge
North Carolina Superintendents Dr. Mark Edwards, 2013 National Superintendent of the Year, and Dr. Heath Morrison, 2012 National Superintendent of the Year, share their views about the importance of the Common Core in The News and Observer article, “Common core Essential to Student Growth.”
Over the centuries, public education has been a great equalizer, serving as the foundation upon which we’ve built an upwardly mobile society that is a melting pot of diverse people from every part of the world.
Today our nation is engaged in a debate focused on how best to educate every American child. As educational leaders, our delight at seeing this national conversation take place is tempered by the knowledge that it is often waged with misinformation and factual distortions, even though all sides of the debate are passionately committed to what they believe is in the best interest of our children.
Read More →Expanding Student Success, In The News, North Carolina, Teachers