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Nashville schools interim director taps Tennessee’s Achievement School District chief for top post

In a major coup for Nashville public schools, interim Director Adrienne Battle is appointing the state’s education turnaround czar to a top Cabinet position.

Sharon Griffin, who heads the state-run Achievement School District, will join Metro Nashville Public Schools on July 1 as the chief of innovation.

As well, Hank Clay, Communities in Schools of Tennessee CEO, will rejoin the district as chief of staff on July 1, replacing Marcy Singer-Gabella.  

The high-profile moves show Battle’s desire to leave a stamp on the operations of the district after securing a two-year interim contract. While the board could decide to start a search at any time, Battle’s appointment is a signal she doesn’t plan to be just a caretaker of the district.

Under the district’s previous interim director, top positions were left unfilled or were appointed in the interim.

“I think what is clear to everyone is (Griffin’s) track record and her work in the turnaround space with the iZone work in Shelby County,” she said.

And she cited Clay’s institutional knowledge of MNPS and his connections with statewide resources as part of why she hired him.

Battle’s decision to bring in the two won praise from at least one school board member. Board member Gini Pupo-Walker said Battle is showing through both hires that she wants to make district improvements immediately and spoke highly of Griffin.

“Adrienne Battle is not your average or ordinary interim,” Pupo-Walker said.”Her (Griffin) coming to MNPS signals she believes in Adrienne, but it also shows the urgency Adrienne has.”

Griffin’s departure from the state’s turnaround district

Griffin’s move, however, means more leadership woes for the ASD. The state will need to find a fourth replacement to lead the district in as many years.

The Tennessee Department of Education will appoint an interim within the next week, said Amity Schuyler, a deputy commissioner who helps oversee the ASD. Griffin’s last day as ASD chief is June 28, according to her resignation letter.

Schuyler said the state Education Department will embark on a national search for a replacement and could have a new leader in place as early as January.

Schuyler said the turnover of leadership in recent years is a concern.

“Changes of leadership have to be managed carefully,” Schuyler said. “You are hoping to get a leader that will stick around and remain committed in the long term. It is hard work, and it is understandable that turnover is more frequent than desired.”

A top school turnaround expert 

Nashville public schools will get a leader who is recognized as one of the top school improvement experts in the state. Griffin was tapped in 2018 by former Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen to lead the ASD.

The Achievement School District is the state district tasked with taking over and improving the bottom 5% performing Tennessee schools in terms of academic achievement.

The ASD works mostly in Memphis and employs a more hands-off approach by using primarily charter schools. Nashville has two ASD schools operated by LEAD Public Schools, a charter management organization.

Since her appointment, Griffin has sought to align the district’s work with the best research practices. She has also sought to ensure the charter schools tasked with running the ASD schools have a stronger teaching staff.

Marty McGreal, who oversees Pathways in Education, a school in the Achievement School District, said he is sad to see Griffin leave.

“She gets kids,” he said. “She really, really gets it. She stops by a lot. Not as many people get it right away.”

The leadership position also placed Griffin in a role where she helped advise low-performing schools, even if they weren’t part of the ASD.

Before her stint leading the ASD, she served as Shelby County Schools’ chief of schools, overseeing direct support to schools, principals and teachers. 

In Shelby County, she helped lead the iZone, which is known nationally for making strong improvements among Memphis’ lowest-performing schools.

Battle reorganizes the central office

Clay heads to Nashville schools after previously serving under former Superintendent Jesse Register as an assistant to the director.

Clay has led Communities in Schools of Tennessee for two years. The nonprofit works statewide to help connect community resources and ensure students stay in school. 

Battle said she will not fill the vacated chief of schools position formerly held by Sito Narcisse.

Her administrative Cabinet will also see changes, including appointing associate superintendents who oversee the elementary, middle and high schools. 

Here’s the No. 1 concern that Tennessee’s new education chief heard during her statewide listening tour

After visiting classrooms in 30 school districts across the state, talking regularly with superintendents and other stakeholders, and reviewing more than 25,000 comments from teachers, Tennessee’s new education commissioner says one theme keeps emerging: the need to support the mental health needs of students.

“Without question, it’s the No. 1 piece of feedback I heard from every single group,” Penny Schwinn told Chalkbeat this week. “There is a growing concern about how we can support our children, not only academically but also behaviorally.”

Student mental health — an issue that has received a lot of lip service in Tennessee in recent years, but little in the way of funding — is one of 12 priorities identified in the state education department’s proposed five-year strategic plan, released Friday.

“We have an increasing number of children living in predominantly low-income communities and also coming from environments of addiction or abuse. We’re seeing upticks in suicide rates and bullying behaviors,” Schwinn said.

The commissioner unveiled the first draft of what she calls a “roadmap for the future,” after conferring this week with superintendents during regional gatherings in East and Middle Tennessee. She’ll meet with district leaders in West Tennessee later this month.

Schwinn also is inviting all Tennesseans to offer their input via an online survey that ends on June 21. “The voices of our students, our educators, and our superintendents are throughout this document, and we want even more feedback,” she said.

The final strategic plan is scheduled to be released in late July.

In addition to mental health, the proposed version lays out other priorities, including strengthening the state’s pipeline of teachers, developing and retaining school leaders, defining pathways to give students opportunities after graduating from high school, supporting rural schools, engaging with families, and STEAM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math.

When Schwinn left Texas in January to become Tennessee’s new education chief, she promised to “listen and learn” as she kicked off her tenure by touring three schools — one rural, one urban, and one suburban — on her very first day.

She’s since visited more than 175 classrooms statewide and says it’s important that the state’s next strategic plan is rooted in ground-level conversations in school communities, not top-down edicts from her department.

“Commissioner Schwinn has been very open and willing to listen in developing this proposal,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents group. “Right now, I’d give her two thumbs up.”

In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Schwinn identified classrooms, educators, schools, and community as the four main pillars that will set the plan’s parameters. Girding those are academic standards, testing, accountability, and teacher evaluations — four policy strategies that grew out of Tennessee’s overhaul of K-12 education as part of its federal Race to the Top award in 2010.

Those four policies — all of which have generated controversy at one time or another — are “foundational,” Schwinn told reporters, calling them “not something that’s up for discussion.”

But other strategies and needs are on the table.

For school improvement work, the draft calls for “restructuring school turnaround so that there is more shared ownership between the state and local districts.” That suggests that Tennessee could choose to rely less on the state-run Achievement School District — its most intensive model in which the state has taken over low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville and converted them to charter schools — and more on “Partnership Zones,” a collaborative state-district approach that just finished its first year in Chattanooga.

The draft also suggests that rural schools will get more attention under the administration of Gov. Bill Lee, a farmer and businessman who attended public schools in rural Williamson County and has pledged to make additional investments in the state’s more remote areas.

“We have to take a really strong position around how we support educators in those communities,” Schwinn said.

The need to beef up student mental health services has been a topic of conversation in Tennessee, especially since 2018 when one former student’s shooting spree killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida. In response, then-Gov. Bill Haslam convened a task force on school safety and urged local districts to explore ways to step up support for students’ emotional needs. However, most of the $25 million in extra funding approved by legislators that year went to improving school security, including upgrades to door locks, entryways, and screening equipment.

More than a year later, Schwinn said it’s becoming more apparent that — whether it’s called mental health or the “whole child” approach — schools need to do more to help their students feel healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged in order to achieve long-term success.

She recounted a powerful conversation with one student in Robertson County, north of Nashville, who told her: “What I need in my school is to have a buddy to eat lunch with in the cafeteria every day and an adult I can go to when I have a problem. Those would make all the difference.”

“Too many of our kids can’t say they have both of those things, and that’s something we have to take seriously,” Schwinn said. “We’ve got to find ways to better support them as they develop as people.”

How Can States and Districts Make Teacher-Leadership Roles More Effective?

Research has shown that teachers having leadership roles in their schools can lead to improved student achievement. So why not formalize those roles?

That’s the argument in a new report by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, a group that works to increase educator effectiveness. The group convened a panel discussion at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to discuss how state and district leaders can create sustainable systems of teacher leadership. This form of professional learning—in which an accomplished teacher is given instructional leadership responsibilities while still remaining in the classroom—has become popular in many places, but the NIET report says there is a lack of explicit guidance on how to use federal funding to build this capacity.

“We need to have a larger national conversation about how do we formalize what teacher leadership is, in a way that actually moves student growth,” said Candice McQueen, the CEO of NIET and the former education commissioner for Tennessee, in an interview. “Giving a title is not the end. Giving the title begins the conversation of, ‘Now, what capacity do you need to grow other teachers and serve on this leadership team?’ We see too often that we stop at, ‘OK, now you’re the teacher leader, … with no release time, no additional compensation, no coaching, no professional learning, and no clarity around goals that are now part of the vision for your particular role.'”

“When you do [teacher leadership] well, you get results,” she added. “We sometimes give teacher leadership a bad name by creating a title without any of these other components around it.”

Some of NIET’s recommendations for building these formal teacher leadership systems include: 

• District leaders should work with teachers and principals to develop a clear vision for teacher leadership roles. This will help create buy-in.
• Teacher leadership can be funded through both Title I and Title II dollars. NIET recommends districts combine local, state, and federal funds into a single pool to support schoolwide goals.
• States should create sustainable, dedicated funding streams to support teacher leadership. 

Iowa, for instance, invests nearly $160 million per year in the teacher-leadership system. Ryan Wise, the director of the Iowa Department of Education, said on the panel that there are more than 10,000 teachers serving in funded leadership roles. 

“Formalizing these roles and having teacher leaders in every building has been the fuel to get things done,” Wise said.

For example, the state has been prioritizing early literacy, and making sure every student can read by the end of 3rd grade. To help spread that work, teacher leaders are trained in best practices and then can spread that information to other teachers.

In the 2019-20 school year, NIET will partner with about 90 districts to provide training and support as they implement the group’s instructional framework on teacher leadership. NIET runs a teacher-leadership system called TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Achievement, which puts high-performing teachers into “master teacher” and “mentor teacher” roles.

After all, Christina Jamison, a teacher leader in Grand Prairie High School in Texas, said one-size-fits-all district training is rarely useful for teachers. 

“None of that is relevant to my work,” she said. “Being able to be a leader of professional development on my campus has allowed my students to grow exponentially. … Teachers want to know stuff that’s going to help them.” 

Indeed, many teachers say that professional development delivered by facilitators from outside groups is often disrespectful to teachers’ expertise and experience.

“Teacher leaders can go to a conference and come back and teach what they learned,” said Ross Wiener, the executive director of the Education & Society Program at the Aspen Institute, in closing remarks. “No outside vendor can do that with that kind of cadence and that kind of credibility and level of context.”

Bill Gates eyes the work ahead for Tennessee in education during visit to Nashville

Tennessee is making strong improvements in raising academic achievement among its students, but Bill Gates believes there is plenty of work still ahead for the Volunteer State.

Improvements for the state over the last several years include changing its academic standards, curriculum and feedback to teachers, Gates said.

But low academic achievement in concentrated sections of urban areas and poor rural counties continue to plague the state. Tennessee is near the middle when compared nationally on academic achievement in math and reading.

“On a relative basis, Tennessee is still below average,” Gates said during a Friday interview in Nashville with The Tennessean. Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest men, pledged during the visit to continue investing millions of dollars in the state’s education through his foundation. 

Nationally, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focuses its education efforts on minority and low-income students near urban centers. The foundation has invested about $34 million in Tennessee statewide, with an emphasis in Memphis.

Gauging support for Gates Foundation work

The Gates Foundation works in higher education, K-12 and early learning in Tennessee and that is “one of the very few states that we do all those things,” he said.

The billionaire philanthropist came to Nashville on Friday as part of a flurry of meetings to gauge the climate under first-term Gov. Bill Lee, who was elected in August. 

Gates said in his interview that his foundation focuses primarily on working with local and state governments. The effort can be difficult if they change priorities, he said.

But after Thursday and Friday in Tennessee, Gates indicated his foundation will continue to invest in the initiatives it is undertaking. Gates was encouraged by Lee — who hosted Gates Thursday at the governor’s residence — and said it looks as if there will be another seven years with a governor whose focus is on education.

“Tennessee is a big focus state for us because education has been prioritized,” Gates said. “I am not sure what we would have done if the governor didn’t have education as a priority, but he does so … we are committed to keep working here with the partners in Tennessee.”

Tennessee’s progress

He was complimentary of Tennessee for its collaboration, and also for tackling tough changes under Govs. Bill Haslam and Phil Bredesen. Tennessee is shown to be one of the few states from 2009-2015 seeing academic improvement in almost every county.

Recent changes — such as the state’s academic standards — need patience, he said.

“The lag time in all these educational-related things are very long and you have to stay the course,” he said.

The work in Tennessee

Over the course of a 35-minute interview, Gates touched on aspects of Tennessee’s work in education.

The foundation is spending money in higher education, Gates said, to help systems align resources for students. Nationally, he said he worries that more than a third of students are not ready for college.

In Tennessee, about 46% of students enter Tennessee’s colleges needing remediation in math. About 33% need remediation in reading.

“You shouldn’t have more than a third that needs remedial classes,” Gates said.

He said the state is delving into dual credit opportunities for students, which allow students to come out of high school either exposed to college classes or earning some type of college credit. Under Haslam, the state also embarked on a concentrated effort to help 55% of its residents earn a degree or certificate by 2025.

The Gates Foundation also is working heavily in early education in Tennessee, which has been the focus for districts such as Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools.

The quality of voluntary pre-Kindergarten programs across the state varies, but those two districts are showing strong results.

Gates and his visit to Chattanooga

Gates shared thoughts on Chattanooga’s efforts, which were also part of the reason he was in Tennessee for his two-day trip.

He applauded Chattanooga for its efforts to get businesses involved in education through a community effort.

“… I am a huge believer that communities, especially the private sector, if you draw them in that is where you get things done,” he said. “That is where get permission to raise the community tax rate.”

He also visited with students, whom he said were positive about their experiences but complained about teacher attrition and resources.

Students told him resources were focused on students either in the top or bottom 10%.

“They said the teachers are amazing, but then they would leave,” he said.

Gates Foundation Launches Postsecondary Value Commission in Hopes of Influencing the Ongoing Higher Ed Reauthorization in Congress

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is launching a new initiative to measure the value of higher education, an effort leaders hope will influence the ongoing federal debate over reauthorizing the Higher Education Act.

“This cannot, and must not, be done like any other report that we’ve heard, that goes right to the shelf and no one uses it,” said Mildred Garcia, co-chair of the new Commission on Value in Postsecondary Education and president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “We intend to produce relevant, actionable information to help people make decisions.”

The goal is for the results to be used by students and families to make decisions about attaining higher education, by college leaders to determine how well their programs are performing, and by policymakers to help gauge the value of public investments, Garcia said on a call with reporters last week.

One of the groups the commission hopes will find the information immediately relevant: Congress, which is in the midst of rewriting the Higher Education Act.

“If we can provide that clear definition about college value,” one that can be measured and that has been created by a diverse group of advocates, “we definitely are hoping it will affect the higher ed reauthorization,” Garcia said.

Specifically, the definition of value the commission comes up with could help Congress make decisions about Pell Grants, the approximately $28 billion the federal government spends annually that helps support low-income students, and federal-state partnerships, which would incentivize states to maintain public investments in higher education in an effort to hold down costs for students.

Time, however, is not on their side. Reauthorization efforts on Capitol Hill have begun in earnest, with Senate education committee leaders reportedly releasing a draft of the bill later this month, but the Gates commission is not scheduled to produce its final report until mid-2020.

“We are going to be working through our value commission in real time, as there are conversations happening on Capitol Hill … To the extent that we can inform those conversations, we certainly will,” said Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation and co-chair of the commission.

Gates will also use the commission’s definition of higher ed to judge future investment decisions, Desmond-Hellmann added.

The 30-member commission will emphasize the economic value of degrees, but it will also look at other factors like the better health outcomes, voting participation and critical thinking skills that correlate with higher ed attendance.

Most people would say they attend postsecondary education to enhance their career opportunities, Cheryl Oldham, vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a member of the commission, told The 74.

The economic measures that reflect better career opportunities are particularly important to the growing number of students who are older adults going back for additional education to boost their job prospects, rather than the traditional 18- to 22-year-old student entering right after high school, she added.

The Gates effort will go further than existing earnings data, such as the federal College Scorecard, which provides average earnings for graduates of every university. Beyond earnings, the value measurement will include things like employment and economic mobility, and how those outcomes vary across race, gender and family income.

Americans are increasingly worried about the value of a higher education, the Foundation said in press materials. It cited polling data that showed that a majority of respondents believe higher ed is going in the wrong direction, with “tuition costs too high” and “students not getting needed skills” as top reasons for that perception.

The economic value of higher education is much like the value of a healthy diet — widely recognized, but unavailable to some groups for reasons like community norms, inaccessibility and competing options, Desmond-Hellman said.

“Our goal is to uncomplicate the connection between higher education and economic opportunity,” she said.

This senior signing day has nothing to do with athletics. Celebrate academics | Opinion

On May 16, LEAD Academy’s largest ever graduating class will walk across the stage at Belmont’s Curb Event Center for our sixth annual senior signing day.

Surrounded by parents, teachers and community members, these young men and women will declare to friends and family the next big step in their journey.

All of them have worked hard to determine this next best step, whether it be to a university, college, military or career pathway. All of them have overcome challenges to get here. And thanks to their hard work— we are pleased to say this is the sixth-straight year that 100% of LEAD’s eligible graduates have been accepted to college.

In some ways, this senior signing day is even more important to us at LEAD than graduation day–because we know our job does not end with high school graduation. Our goal is to prepare our students for the lifetime of opportunities ahead of them.

Nationally, students from low-income backgrounds, students of color and first-generation college attendees— the same students we serve in Nashville— are much less likely to complete a post-secondary degree than their middle-class peers.

We are not OK with that.

That’s why we are working to prepare every student, regardless of family background, socioeconomic status or zip code – to graduate with the knowledge and skills they need to be both Ready for College and Ready for Life.

That may be a revolutionary perspective for some. But our students deserve nothing less.

According to the Tennessee State Report Card, 35% of LEAD Academy graduates are considered truly “Ready Graduates,” which combines students who graduate on time and who also scored a 21 or above on the ACT–a widely accepted measure of college and career readiness.

That’s much higher than Metro Nashville’s district average of 24%, which also includes the highly selective academic magnet schools.

We are proud of the progress our school and students have made, but we are nowhere near done.

As we looked at our alumni data, we saw that some of the biggest barriers to post-high school completion aren’t just academic but related to what happens outside the classroom.

So we have developed a comprehensive approach to preparing students for their next step, with a focus on helping them make college and career decisions based on the very best fit— for their own unique goals and needs.

Our students actively participate in an intensive college seminar for all four years of high school.  They research and evaluate college and career choices based on what is the best fit for them and make a decision based on five buckets—financial, academic, social, emotional and living. We challenge them to think through questions about paying for college, housing, study habits and classes, confidence and mental health. We challenge them to own their decision.

No one else is doing anything like this. We believe our LEAD college and career process is much more intentional and intensive—for both the student and the school. But we believe it makes a huge difference.

All of this leads up to Senior Signing Day, an opportunity for students to make a commitment to themselves, to their families and publicly to our school community. It is that one big day when every single year they’ve spent within our building is finally paying off.

That’s why we invite all of Nashville to come to our senior signing day and witness and celebrate as these students take this next big step in their journey. They’ve done the work both academically and personally to get here.

Please join us on May 16 at the Belmont Curb Event Center at 9:30 a.m.  We hope you will come cheer our students on and see firsthand how the hard work of these students will pay huge dividends both for them and for our community in the years ahead.