News

Giving Rural Students ‘the Short Box’

SALT LAKE CITY — A student’s decision about where to apply to college can depend on what is in front of her, Jazmin Regalado said during a session at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s recent annual meeting.

Regalado, a freshman biology and premed student at New Mexico State University, recounted her application process in high school. She is from Fort Sumner, N.M., which has about 1,000 residents and is best known as the burial site of the outlaw Billy the Kid. Growing up, her elementary, middle and high schools were all together.

One counselor is supposed to help seniors, but she didn’t have time to do it all, Regalado said. An English teacher also tried to recruit colleges and universities to come talk to students.

“There are five in the state, and out of those five, like three came, and there was one from Texas that came,” Regalado said.

She had wanted to attend the University of Chicago, but the application was long, and she never finished it. She ended up sticking with the institutions that visited her school.

“Being from a small town, you only know so many colleges,” she said. “You have tunnel vision.”

Regalado spoke alongside several professionals involved in college admissions in a session about outreach to rural students. It’s a topic of interest at many colleges and universities as leaders continue to grapple with polling showing deep skepticism of higher ed from Republicans, and as a rural-urban divide contributes to the country’s political schisms.

Panelists didn’t address the politics of recruiting rural students. But they did make the case that those students can be very different from what admissions officers picture.

“Think specifically about the types of rural students that you’re looking to recruit to colleges, because rurality is different everywhere,” said Jennifer Carroll, professional learning lead at Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative.

For example, industry and agriculture don’t have meaningful presences in Carroll’s region of southeastern Kentucky. Tobacco was a major crop, but it disappeared because of government action. School systems are the largest employers. Students can’t model their careers on local businesses, because those businesses aren’t around.

Further, students don’t have money to spend on college applications or standardized tests. They likely take a standardized test once, when schools pay for them to take the ACT. Some students don’t have running water at home.

It’s a very different rural environment than one with, say, a large agricultural presence or energy industry. Carroll’s message wasn’t that some rural areas are better than others — it’s to remember how different they can be.

Beyond that, many students simply aren’t familiar with college campuses. The food is different. Attitudes are different. Norms are different.

“Our rural students, unless they are students who are kind of coached at home by parents or folks who have been in a college setting, they don’t ask for help,” Carroll said. “That is just one of those cultural things about kids from our area.”

High school counselors are facing challenges, too. In rural areas, they often have an inhuman number of responsibilities.

They can be responsible for scheduling, lunchroom duty, releasing buses, and social and emotional counseling, said Megan Dorton, senior associate director of admissions at Purdue University. Then at the end of the day, they have to find time to help a student sign up for the SAT or ACT.

Purdue, Indiana University in Bloomington and the College Board have a partnership called Making College Connections, which attempts to help high school students understand postsecondary options and prepare to apply to college.

They came up with the idea of a college planning night, selecting rural high schools in far-flung regions of the state and partnering with school counselors. They offered to help with SAT preparation and college planning if those services were in need.

“We have some resources and we have some tools, and so how can we use these to reach students that are really important to us?” Dorton said.

Purdue has made a point of showing up at high schools. Its representatives have visited all of the nearly 400 high schools in Indiana at least once every other year. It visited most schools every year.

“That’s not solving the problem, but it was low-hanging fruit to us, and we’re working on ways to evolve,” Dorton said.

Another panelist stressed that it is important to build bridges between colleges and rural communities that aren’t directly related to recruiting students to a college campus. Colleges need to be engaged in communities in ways that are responsive to their needs, said Rachel Fried, program coordinator at GEAR UP, a federally funded college access program at Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

“Folks start to see that universities aren’t on a hill, that they are there to help, not just to take kids to college, but really to support the surrounding area,” Fried said.

When it comes to recruiting rural students, many colleges are likely doing it the wrong way.

Too often, colleges think they can reach rural students virtually, Fried said. They know they can’t visit every place, so they go to urban centers and expect to connect with rural students over the internet.

But many Appalachian communities don’t have widespread internet infrastructure. Fried often hears someone say that isn’t a problem because everyone has smartphones. That’s not true, though. And even if it were, many students don’t have cellphone service at home.

“I would posit that colleges and universities suggesting virtual opportunities as the solution to rural education equity is actually giving the short kid the short box,” she said. “Maybe you do your virtual stuff with your urban schools that have tons of technology, that have videoconferencing, whatever, and you actually go visit places that don’t have that type of infrastructure.”

The messages students hear also matter. Students from Appalachia might go to college so that they can come back and “help their own,” Fried said. Are colleges thinking about messaging that shows the type of learning students can use if they return home?

Jeff Carlson told a similar story. He is senior director for strategy, operations and rural engagement at College Board and moderated the panel.

He talked about advertisements that showed a child from the Rio Grande Valley area who fell in love with art history because of Advanced Placement courses. The student enrolled in New York University and went on to hold a high-profile job in New York City.

“Wasn’t that great?” Carlson said. “Not for that kid’s family in the Rio Grande Valley. Not for that kid’s teachers. The biggest fear is that you’re going to put a ton of investment into this kid, you’re going to watch them grow up, and they’re going to run away to an urban area and never come back.”

Not coming back might be the best thing for some students, and it might be what some families want, Carlson said. But if admissions officers only think about their institutions plucking students out of town never to return home, they are sending the wrong message.

Carlson, who grew up in an 800-person town located three hours north of Boise, Idaho, also talked about rural resentment — a belief, perception or sense that rural areas are ignored by decision makers. The perception is that rural areas don’t always get their fair share, and that rural areas have distinct values and lifestyles that are fundamentally misunderstood, he said.

Yet rural areas are a significant part of the country. Half of U.S. school districts — 7,000 out of about 14,000 — are rural, Carlson said. One out of every three students grows up in a school district serving an area with a population of less than 50,000 people. About one out of every five grows up in schools located outside of areas with population centers of at least 2,500 residents.

Panelists suggested other ways to connect to rural students. Can a student be shown broader applications for their interests, or connections to other fields of study? A student interested in agriculture, for example, might also find a love for environmental sciences.

They also suggested asking students who go on to college to come back and speak at family nights about their experiences. On the question of coming back home after college, can families be introduced to the idea that a college-educated person might be able to live in his or her home region but work elsewhere — either working remotely or commuting? Or can they be shown certain jobs in their home communities that require college education that they never realized existed?

Connecting to rural communities can’t be done overnight, said Fried, of Appalachian State.

“When universities really decide to commit to developing rural pipelines, they are committing to a multiyear engagement process that will not yield results for the first three to five years,” she said. “We must get into communities and help and change the perception of our universities in those spaces.”

[Read more at Inside Higher Ed] Read More

As Tennessee Voters Prepare to Elect New Governor, a ‘Pivotal Moment’ for State’s Bipartisan Reforms on School Standards, Teacher Quality, Turnarounds

Few states have embraced education reform with the vigor of Tennessee, where leaders have instituted tough standards, rigorous tests tied to teacher evaluations, and state takeover of failing schools.

Those efforts — conducted under both Republican and Democratic governors for the past 16 years — have made Tennessee schools among the fastest-growing, as judged by scores on national benchmark exams. Now, a new leader will be in charge of that reform effort as it enters its second decade, facing problems with testing and turnaround of low-performing schools.

“We see the moment we’re in right now as pivotal to determining whether the progress that the state has made is not only going to continue but accelerate. Anytime you have transitions like this, it’s easy to go in a totally different direction or focus on other priorities,” David Mansouri, president of Tennessee SCORE, an education reform advocacy group, told The 74.

The men vying to take over stewardship of that progress are Bill Lee, a first-time candidate and the wealthy owner of a family heating and plumbing business who unexpectedly beat better-known candidates to win the Republican primary, and former Nashville mayor Karl Dean, the Democratic nominee. Current governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, is term-limited.

Most polls have Lee up by double digits over Dean, and independent election handicappers generally rate the race a “likely” Republican win.

Education has been one of the major issues in the campaign, experts said, and a poll by SCORE found it was top of mind for one-third of voters. Similar numbers of those polled cited the economy, jobs, and health care as their most pressing concerns.

The gubernatorial race so far has been polite, particularly as compared to a U.S. Senate campaign in the state, and education reform, with its bipartisan backing, hasn’t been the flashpoint issue in Tennessee that it has been in other places, experts said.

“Education and jobs have really been probably the top issues, and [both candidates] sound a lot alike, really, on that issue,” Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, told The 74.

Both support charter schools, for instance, though Dean’s website is clear that he supports only nonprofit charters (for-profit charters are banned in the state) and is skeptical that they work in rural areas.

They both think Tennessee teachers should be paid more, and they’ve called for improved career and technical education in campaign ads.

Lee’s, for instance, shows him welding and touting his company’s history of training workers.

“I don’t just talk about vocational training, we’ve actually done it … We’re going to do that all over Tennessee,” he says in the ad.

Dean, for his part, in his own ad lists “skills training for every student” as among several big ideas he’d bring to the governor’s mansion.

The candidates’ sharpest differences on education so far have come over private school choice and school funding, currently tied up in a court case brought by three of the state’s largest school districts.

On funding, Dean says there should be increases, while Lee has called for an inspector general to weed out waste and abuse. On private school choice (which the Republican-majority Tennessee legislature has rejected several times in recent years), Dean is a firm no, while Lee backs education savings accounts, according to a candidate survey by Chalkbeat Tennessee.

“Certainly there are places where each of them wants to move and put their own perspective and stamp on the work, but I think we feel like there’s been a pretty thoughtful conversation about where we go next in education in the governor’s race and feel good about the tenor of the conversation on those issues,” Mansouri said.

Strong history of ed reform

Outgoing governor Haslam is well known in the education world, notably for his moves to create the Tennessee Promise free community college tuition program and his “Drive to 55” campaign to get 55 percent of Tennesseans to have a postsecondary credential by 2025. But Tennessee’s K-12 education reform began in earnest under former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen.

Bredesen himself is on the ballot again this year, in the toss-up Senate raceagainst Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn to fill a seat currently held by retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker. It’s one of a handful of seats that could determine which party controls the Senate.

Tennessee had “a little bit of a head start” in implementing some reforms when it was a first-round winner of a $500 million Race to the Top grant in 2009, Jason Grissom, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, told The 74.

Some of those efforts have worked better than others.

The teacher evaluation system, which awards 35 percent of a teacher’s score based on the value they add to students’ learning, as judged by test scores, is becoming more popular with educators as the years pass, said Grissom, who is also faculty director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance, a partnership between Vanderbilt and the state education department.

Efforts to improve low-performing schools in Memphis, by giving them greater autonomy in what’s called an innovation zone, have had impressive results.

Even those successes raise additional problems for the next governor.

Despite the gains made by the innovation zone schools in Memphis, a separate state-takeover achievement school district hasn’t shown any positive results for the schools it served as compared with other low-performing schools.

And in 2016, the state had to suspend testing following failures with one vendor. Earlier this year, a host of technical troubles with another vendor, including a cyber attack, hampered exams, and the results won’t count for school ratings or teacher evaluations.

Both candidates have said they’re in favor of test-based accountability (though Lee has said he’d like to reduce the testing burden), but the specifics of how to give those exams will probably be an issue for the next governor, Grissom said.

Either Lee or Dean should also look into postsecondary completion, now that access has been expanded through the Tennessee Promise program, and how to better align the K-12 education system with higher ed and the workforce, Mansouri said.

Neither campaign returned requests for comment.

[Read more at The 74] Read More

Nashville mayor proposes $351M for schools, parks, sidewalks, east bank and more

Nashville Mayor David Briley has proposed a robust $351 million capital-spending plan that hits on a wide range of areas — including schools, parks, street and sidewalk paving, and the redevelopment of a portion of the Cumberland River’s east bank.

Briley’s administration filed a resolution with the Metro Council on Friday outlining the mayor’s first capital-spending plan since taking office in March.

Fresh off winning approval of a $275 million Major League Soccer stadium last month, Briley framed the plan as a focus on more basic projects as part of his return to the “fundamentals.”

“As I said before, we’re going to focus on those fundamentals this year, and that means spending money on public works and Metro schools and parks and the public library system,” Briley said in an interview with The Tennessean on Monday.

He pointed to new positive bond ratings that came last week from Moody’s Investor Services, which affirmed its Aa2 rating for Metro, and Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, which reaffirmed its AA rating for Metro’s general obligation bonds. The ratings come after the council issued $775 million in general obligation bonds last month to pay for capital needs.

“This is a financially prudent and smart way for the city to proceed, and I’m confident the city will move it forward,” Briley said.

The council — which received a letter Monday from the city’s finance director Talia Lomax-O’dneal discussing the spending plan —  is set to take up the resolution Oct. 16.

Like all capital-spending plans, Metro will borrow though general obligation bonds to pay for the various projects.

In addition, Briley has proposed de-authorizing $200 million in debt from previously approved projects. This effectively means canceling projects that were never undertaken that the city now believes are no longer needed, allowing funds to be diverted elsewhere.

Briley, who is up for re-election in August, said that decision demonstrates a commitment of “not stretching” beyond the city’s means to the get new projects funded.

Public works to receive third of funding

Nearly one-third of the new 2018-19 capital-spending plan — $107 million — would go to Metro Public Works, including $30 million apiece for sidewalks and street paving and an additional $15 million for new roads.

Metro Nashville Public Schools would receive $60 million in the plan: $10 million for site-work on the future relocated Hillwood High School in Bellevue, and an additional $50 million in dispersed across the district.

The plan allocates $12 million each to take the first steps to build Ravenwood Park in Donelson and Mill Ridge Park, both acquired under former Mayor Karl Dean. It would set aside an additional $10 million for greenways and future park land acquisition.

The plan earmarks $25 million for affordable housing projects, duplicating the same amount that the city set aside last year under former Mayor Megan Barry. There’s also $15 million for a new Donelson Library.

East bank development to get help

In a push to help a massive new private development on the east bank, the spending plan would dedicate $20 million to infrastructure work for the overhaul of the Cowan Street area, site of the ambitious 105-acre River North Nashville project.

River North, which is near the city’s TopGolf location, is envisioned as a mix of urban residential, retail and commercial space.

The $20 million in public money would go toward new streets, a revamped intersection at Cowan and Jefferson streets and other infrastructure work. It would not cover a bridge that the developers have discussed to connect the Germantown neighborhood, on the west side of the river, to River North.

n Nashville, mayors propose capital-spending plans to receive approval for major projects covered by bonds. The most recent capital-spending plan, under Barry, was $288 million. Before that was a $475 million plan in 2016.

Separate from the capital-spending plan, Briley has also proposed tapping an additional $3.1 million for equipment for the sheriff’s office, police and other departments by tapping the city’s 4 percent fund, a special reserve fund for smaller capital needs. The council is scheduled to vote on a resolution to use the 4 percent funds on Oct. 16 as well.

Here’s a full breakdown of Briley’s propose capital-spending plan:

Metro Nashville Public Schools

• $10 million for site work on Hillwood High School replacement in Bellevue 
• $50 million in district-wide projects

Public Works

• $30 million for street paving
• $30 million for sidewalks
• $15 million for roads
• $4 million for bridges
• $3 million for the department’s traffic management program
• $2 million in matching funds to move to twice-a-month recycling pick-up
• $1.5 million for traffic-calming efforts
• $1.5 million for bikeways
• $20 million for east bank infrastructure work near River North

General Services

• $10 million more for the new Criminal Justice Center (site of the downtown jail) still under construction
• $17 million more for the new Metro Nashville Police Department headquarters and family justice center under construction on Murfreesboro Pike. 
• $15 million for the construction of a new Donelson Library
• $5 million for Nashville’s Emergency Communications Center
• $2.2 million for renovations of the McGruder Center, a family resource center in North Nashville
• $1.8 million for work on Nashville’s warehouse that houses voting machines

Public parks

• $12 million to begin work on Ravenwood Park
• $12 million to begin work on Mill Ridge Park 
• $10 million for new greenways and park land acquisition
• $8 million for deferred maintenance built up in the department

Libraries

• $15 million for a new Donelson Library
• $500,000 for upgrades at the downtown Main Library, including a new room to honor the women’s suffrage movement
• $200,000 for planning on upgrades at the Richland Park Library

Miscellaneous projects

• $25 million for affordable housing projects 
• $20 million for various stormwater projects
• $10 million for Metro arts projects through the Percent for the Arts program/contingency
• $15 million for fire trucks, dump trucks and other large vehicles
• $6.3 million for IT work across Metro
• $5 million to update software at the Metro Finance Department
• $3 million to replace voting machines
• $2.3 million for repairs and upgrades at Nashville General Hospital
• $1.2 million on an HVAC replacement at the Nashville Farmers’ Market

[Read more at The Tennessean] Read More

‘Showing that they care’: College faculty called on to aid floundering students

CARLISLE, Pa. — When the new student walked into Steve Riccio’s first-year seminar at Dickinson College, her enthusiasm impressed him.

A dancer, “she was . . . excited,” said Riccio, a lecturer in international business and management. “Like a lightning bolt.”

Then, the student stopped submitting assignments. She came to class but looked as if she hadn’t slept. Instead of excited, she seemed fretful.

Riccio fell back on the training Dickinson gives faculty members, who are expected to contact the college’s “early alert” team of advisers when they spot a student who appears to be struggling. They swooped in and found the woman had been paralyzed by a compulsion for perfection. Never satisfied with her work, she labored at it endlessly, unable to submit it for a grade.

The intervention got the student back on track. But, Riccio said, “if this program wasn’t in place, who knows?” The student may have ended up among the 1 in 5 nationally who enroll at universities or colleges only to drop out.

That has some institutions pushing faculty members to do something that largely hasn’t been expected of them: help head off problems that can derail students.

Only a small minority of col­leges and universities explicitly include their faculty in this work and teach them how to do it, though that number is beginning to grow.

“It is extraordinary” that having faculty involved with this remains uncommon, said Dickinson President Margee Ensign. “Maybe it’s the way we set up colleges and universities in the Middle Ages. Faculty were responsible for scholarship and research, and that’s all.”

Financial and other realities are forcing this to change. Students who drop out cost colleges $16.5 billion a year, collectively, in forsaken tuition, according to a review of 1,669 institutions by the Educational Policy Institute, a think tank. Replacing students who enroll and drop is also getting harder amid a decline in enrollment, with the number of college students falling by 2.9 million since the most recent peak, in 2011, reports the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit higher education data exchange and research organization.

Some faculty members have always watched for signs of problems, said Carrie Espinosa, director of the Center for Student Success at Carthage College, which has a new early-alert system and puts its faculty through training twice a year.

Faculty care about their students, Espinosa said. “They want to see the student succeed,” she said.

What has changed, she said, is “the institutional commitment. There’s a moral piece” to having faculty members help students who may be at risk of dropping out. “But it’s also for the good of the institution. The more students you can retain, the more revenue you have.”

For many faculty members, this new role requires a culture shift. Some still do not consider it their job, said Patricia Rieman, an associate professor of education at Carthage College who was on the subcommittee that created that school’s early-alert system. “ ‘I’m not somebody’s mother,’ ” she said some faculty members have carped. “A lot of professors also don’t feel they have time. We’re expected to do more and more, without additional compensation.”

Also, faculty don’t always know a lot about mental health or other issues that can undermine their students’ time in college. “They’re trained in biology and they don’t know what to do when a student comes in and says they have significant depression,” said Amy Powell, associate dean of students at Duke University and director of its DukeReach program, which helps faculty members respond in such cases. For the first time, an introduction to DukeReach was added this fall to the university’s orientation for new faculty members.

The faculty’s inexperience in addressing students’ nonacademic problems stems from the evolution of American higher education, said Adrianna Kezar, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California who studies the issue.

While faculty members at smaller colleges once functioned almost as substitute parents, said Kezar — the director of USC’s Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success — larger universities “took their ethic very much from the German tradition, which said, ‘These are adults. They sink or swim. It’s not our place to guide students.’ ”

Over time, Kezar said, many faculty members began to view their job as weeding out students who couldn’t meet the challenge — not helping them. Now, she said, “it’s kind of like we’re returning to the old idea” of having faculty members serve in a more supportive role.

Students have changed, too. Many are older than the traditional 18- to 24-year-olds and have families and jobs; they come to class but don’t have time to visit the counseling center.

“Professional advisers are great resources for the students, but they might not have that day-to-day contact. A faculty member is right on the front lines,” Espinosa said. “How can you not” involve them in looking out for problems, said Penny MacCormack, chief academic officer at the Association of College and University Educators. That group, in collaboration with the Council of Independent Colleges, is coaching 500 faculty members at 25 colleges and universities in instructional and career advising techniques.

Doing this requires faculty members to know how to respond when there’s a problem — an increasingly complex task made harder at a time when students are not only older but more likely to come from ethnic and racial minorities and to be the first in their family to go to college. Growing numbers are military veterans paying for school with GI Bill benefits.

A survey conducted by the consulting firm Kognito suggests that faculty members do not always comprehend the problems confronting some students. It found more than 70 percent of faculty and staff members did not feel qualified to recognize signs of psychological distress in students who are veterans. Three-quarters said they were not equipped to approach those students and discuss their concerns.

McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., brings together faculty members, deans, coaches and residence advisers to discuss students who show signs of being at risk of dropping out. Ohio Wesleyan University debuted a system last year that encourages faculty members to flag students who are struggling.

Dickinson also sets checkpoints, beginning about three weeks into each semester, for faculty members to report trouble. They watch for increased isolation or irritability, withdrawal from friends, flare-ups of anger, signs of drug use and emotionally erratic conduct. Students who exhibit such behaviors are referred to an interdepartmental support team.

For the past three years, the University of Texas at Arlington has trained faculty members to understand the special needs of its many first-generation and Hispanic students, who represent 42 percent and 24 percent, respectively, of the university’s enrollment — proportions that are much higher than when many of those faculty members started teaching there.

This year, the training is being extended to part-time faculty members and graduate and teaching assistants, said Carla Amaro-Jiménez, an associate professor who works on this project.

“A person can make a change,” she said, “just by asking questions and showing that they care.”

[Read more at the Washington Post]

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Why change in top leadership is needed at Metro Nashville Public Schools | Opinion

Editor’s note: On Sept. 23, The Tennessean ran a guest column titled “Nashville must unite on improving schools” by Mayor David Briley, Vice Mayor Jim Shulman, Nashville School Board Chair Sharon Gentry and MNPS Director Shawn Joseph. This guest column is a response from three school board members who share a different perspective.

The level of dysfunction in Metro Nashville Public Schools has reached crisis levels, and it is well past a mere personality clash among adults; now, there is proof that the dysfunction is affecting children.

We recently learned that the number of Nashville’s priority schools (those in the bottom 5 percent of the state) has more than doubled under Director of Schools Shawn Joseph’s watch.

Nashville now has the largest number of priority schools in Tennessee, and achievement gaps are widening. Proficiency levels in nearly every MNPS high school have dropped, and only about a quarter of MNPS students read proficiently on grade level.

Although concerns remain about the implementation and efficacy of state testing, it’s clear that Nashville has not kept pace with other districts, including Memphis city schools.

These numbers didn’t fall out of the sky; they are a reflection of the culture.

We are paying our director substantially more than any other superintendent in the state; yet employee morale is at an all-time low, and the district suffers a chronic teacher shortage.

Employees complain about vindictive treatment by district leaders, a lack of clear guidance from the district, and unfair pay practices.

Cronyism abounds; certain employees are paid more than others and earn special perks. Employees report that principal meetings and other assemblies are often unprofessional, with comments by the director amounting to election interference, personal attacks on board members, and other unprofessional remarks.

At a time when the district does not have enough bus drivers, causing children to wait hours while drivers double routes, the director insists on using a bus driver as a chauffeur, even though no previous MNPS director has required a personal driver.

Furthermore, the administration is slowly dismantling effective programs, such as our reading partnership, with no plan to replace these desperately needed services.

This spring, the director suddenly cut a nationally renowned reading program, thereby firing 87 teachers (with no plan to repurpose them) as revenge against a board member (Jill Speering) who championed the program, after she called for an audit.

Effective and experienced teachers with advanced degrees are being forced to use canned lessons, and many principals doubt the director’s ability to effectively lead. The director has attempted to impose a ban on communications between staff and board members, seemingly to avoid detection of these problems.

Sexual harassment lawsuits and claims of inappropriate behavior by district employees and leaders continue to arise. Instead of swiftly addressing these allegations and condemning inappropriate behavior, the director has repeatedly tried to sweep these claims under the rug, failing to conduct proper investigations or to place offenders on administrative leave.

In fact, board members were informed that there was no validity to one sexual harassment lawsuit only weeks before MNPS attorneys admitted in court documents that the allegations were true.

The district is now exposed to millions of dollars in potential legal settlements at a time when we need every cent of funding that we are granted. It also appears that the director has broken state law by failing to report teacher misconduct to the state, a protection put in place to guard children.

The number of unauthorized purchases has skyrocketed under Dr. Shawn Joseph’s leadership, increasing over sevenfold during Joseph’s first year, from approximately $300,000 to $2.3 million.

The director has also failed to comply with proper purchasing procedures by not engaging in competitive bidding, by paying vendors without a contract in place, and by spending over $100,000 without required board approval.

When the school board held a governance meeting to discuss these issues and violations of board policy, the director didn’t even bother to show. Meanwhile, the audit requested in spring has now grown into at least two new investigations based on numerous hotline calls to the Metro Auditor, and negative news stories about MNPS have become an almost nightly occurrence.

Enough is enough. We are failing our children. As some of Joseph’s strongest supporters when he first arrived, we now believe that it is time for change.”

Fran Bush, Amy Frogge and Jill Speering are members of the Nashville School Board.

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Parents As Literacy Partners

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What Literacy Skills Do Students Really Need for Work?

There’s a gap between what schools teach and what employers demand, but it’s a fuzzy one.

Schools are under growing pressure to make sure that students are ready for work or job training, as well as college, when they graduate from high school. But employers say their young hires haven’t learned the reading, writing, and verbal-communication skills that are most important to a successful working life.

That gap between reality and expectations begs a boxful of questions about whether there’s a preparation problem and, if so, how to solve it.

Should K-12 schools add workplace-oriented literacy skills to their already-heavy lineup of classics like the five-paragraph essay? Who should teach young people how to write an environmental-impact report or explain quarterly business results to investors: High schools? Colleges? Or are such skills better learned at work or in job-training programs?

Surveys of employers paint a picture of discontent. Executives and hiring managers report that they have trouble finding candidates who communicate well. Good oral-communication skills, in particular, rank especially high on employers’ wish lists, alongside critical thinking and working in teams.

But do companies’ hiring struggles mean that K-12 schools, colleges, and job-training programs are doing a poor job of preparing students for work?

Some labor economists argue that the much-ballyhooed “skills gap” is caused not by inadequate career preparation but by companies’ refusal to provide the pay and training necessary to get the workers they need. And many educators argue that the primary purpose of schooling isn’t to create a jobs pipeline but to prepare young people to be informed, active citizens.

Education Week‘s new special report on literacy and the workplace won’t be able to resolve these arguments for you. But it can give you a glimpse of how some schools and employers are grappling with the workplace-literacy demands that young people face. Relatively few K-12 schools, it seems, are seriously exploring this kind of work.

From Mechanics to Managers

Perhaps unsurprisingly, career and technical education programs are more likely than regular K-12 schools to teach literacy skills in ways that link directly and explicitly to work. Helping aspiring engineers decode complicated technical reports, for instance, can help students make real-world connections and fire up their motivation. But they also need strong general-literacy skills so they don’t bump into glass ceilings.

“Are we creating students who can be lifelong learners, not just the oil changers and mechanics, but the managers, the owners of the business? If you’re in it for that game, then reading is vitally important for their long-term success,” said Travis Park, who studies the integration of core academics into CTE programs as an associate professor of agricultural education at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

By most accounts, students are bringing weak writing skills into college and entry-level jobs. Eight years after nearly all states’ adoption of the Common Core State Standards, which call for more writing, studies show that high school students do very little substantive writing at all, let alone writing in specific genres such as business or science that would give them a taste of the working world.

The kinds of writing employers prize most are often not the most highly technical ones. They want workers who can explain things concisely, support their requests with evidence, and understand the appropriate shifts in tone necessary for different audiences. One teacher surveyed local employers and found that what they really wanted was for her to teach cursive writing, so workers could sign their paychecks.

Some kinds of workplace writing, however, should be taught by employers, because schools can’t cover them all, said Steve Graham, a professor at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, who specializes in writing instruction.

“If we make an assumption that writing differs by context, some of the responsibility [for teaching students] just realistically is going to have to fall on businesses, and I think businesses should accept that,” Graham said.

“Schools are not going to be able to be responsible for all … the different kinds of skills that [businesses] want. And even if they were more responsive, there would still need to be some on-the-job training.”

The Newest Literacy

Digital literacy is also claiming its place, alongside reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as a crucial skill set in the workplace. Education Week spent time with four employees in very different jobs at a big Delaware health-care provider and found that those new-age skills are essential at every stage of the employment ladder.

On the lower rungs, for jobs such as environmental service assistants (who clean and disinfect rooms) and patient-care technicians (who take vital signs), the ability to go beyond basic familiarity with apps and digital communications tools to manipulate and make sense of information using different software packages is a big key to advancement.

At the top rungs, people like health information management executives need deep clinical knowledge but also a rich understanding of where and how information is generated, stored, analyzed, presented, and used across different systems, and the ability to synthesize that information and use it to make strategic decisions.

“Schools absolutely need to be teaching these skills. If students don’t get the technological know-how and mindset to adapt to and learn these technologies, they can’t be competitive,” said Hiller Spires, a professor and senior research fellow in literacy education at North Carolina State University.

Matthew T. Hora, who studies workplace communication as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urges schools and employers to embrace a blended concept of responsibility for workplace-literacy skills.

“I’ve talked to a lot of educators who think it’s not their job to prepare students for careers, that their job is to perpetuate disciplinary knowledge and build engaged citizens,” Hora said.

“But it’s problematic to completely ignore what is going to happen to these graduates when they go out into the world. We need to think about the labor market and careers and make sure that a broad range of things are on the table when we talk about the purposes of education.”

[Read more at Education Week] Read More

‘We do not need to start over,’ educators advise Haslam on TNReady

Tennessee’s 3-year-old standardized test is rife with problems big and small — but doesn’t need to be scrubbed and rebuilt from scratch, according to a new report summarizing what educators told Gov. Bill Haslam during his recent statewide “listening tour.”

The report instead recommends fixing the test, called TNReady, both online and on paper, and forging ahead with Tennessee’s transition to computerized testing.

The 14-page summary, which was delivered to Haslam on Tuesday, gleaned feedback from about 150 educators who met with the outgoing Republican governor during six roundtable meetings across the state in August and September, along with input submitted online.

Haslam said the responses will help inform TNReady’s administration this school year under Questar, the state’s testing company, as well as the selection of Tennessee’s next vendor to manage the assessment beginning with the 2019-20 school year.

“We must get this right and this report and recommendations will help us get there,” he said in a statement.

The governor launched his tour after technical glitches marred the online administration of TNReady last spring in hundreds of middle and high schools, while problems also emerged with paper tests given to younger students. It was the third straight year of testing headaches in the TNReady era, placing the assessment’s credibility at an all-time low after emergency legislation rendered the most recent results inconsequential.

But “we do not need to start over,” the report said. “We must never let the implementation challenges we’ve experienced cloud the real value TNReady provides: detailed, actionable feedback for educators and families about students’ strengths and weaknesses to help inform instruction.”

The report was submitted by an advisory team of four respected educators tasked with summarizing the feedback. The advisers encouraged the next governor, who will take office in January after Haslam’s second and final term, to “strongly consider the findings” in formulating state testing policies going forward. They also warned of the costs of making large-scale changes in testing under a new administration, and noted that many of their recommendations already are being followed for the current school year.

The problems with TNReady are numerous — from flimsy boxes of paper tests that make for difficult handling to unequal access to computer technology among districts, educators told Haslam.

Solutions to many of the smaller problems — such as sturdier boxes and releasing the state’s testing manual earlier so educators have adequate time for review — are already in the works. In addition, the state will conduct a large-scale “stress test” to its computer-based platform on Oct. 23 to troubleshoot problems before fall and spring testing.

But challenges such as a shortage of devices are more difficult to address and should be reviewed with an eye toward improving students’ digital skills and the logistics of online testing, the report advised.

“Access to a one-to-one technology environment varies considerably across the state and carries with it a large cost,” the report said.

Some teachers told Haslam that the state needs to invest more in technology before moving ahead with digital testing, while others recommended reverting to paper tests until the risk of online disruptions can be reduced. Still others suggested that each district should make that decision.

The report recommended sticking with the state’s current timeline for the digital transition, which Education Commissioner Candice McQueen rolled back after last spring’s problems so that only high school students will take TNReady online this school year.

“We live in an ever-increasing digital world,” the report said, noting that tests can be scored faster on computer than on paper — another big concern for educators who said they want to receive more timely results. The state plans to deliver this school year’s preliminary results by May 20, earlier than last year, assuming that all tests are completed and shipped on schedule.

Educators also had advice for picking the state’s next testing vendor, which they said should be a proven company with experience in online testing and large-scale student assessments.

“Given the considerable challenges that Tennessee has experienced during the last three testing cycles, we strongly recommend the state partner with a third-party technology expert to work alongside [the department] and the state’s chief procurement officer to set the highest standards for what is required in terms of technology capability and delivery going forward,” the report said.

[Read the full report at Chalkbeat] Read More

Business, education partnerships are helping Williamson County students | Opinion

Two months into the school year is a good reminder of the role talent plays in successful economic development.

With an unemployment rate at historically low levels, access to skilled talent is the most important attribute of a community.

In addition, automation has created an uneasiness among workers, especially lower-skilled workers, and it is clear the exponential growth of technology in the workplace will continue to have an impact on productivity and staffing levels.

For this reason, providing students with real-world, immersive work experience is one of the best things Williamson, Inc. can do for the next generation of employees.

Williamson, Inc. combines both the Williamson County chamber of commerce and the office of economic development.

As technology evolves and conditions change, Williamson, Inc.’s role in Williamson County continues to develop to meet the changing demands of the workplace.

Williamson County Schools Superintendent Dr. Mike Looney preaches the four Rs:

• Relevance
• Relentlessness
• Rigor
• Relationships.

In addition to growing Williamson County’s economy in a strategic way to create career opportunities for Williamson County’s children and grandchildren, our role as an economic development organization now centers on talent development.

Today, talent development is economic development.  Talent development starts even earlier and involves creating relationships and relevance for students by connecting them to workplaces and employers.

Preparing students for the future

Our partnerships with Franklin Special School District and Williamson County Schools are strong and critical to the future of Williamson County.  Two recent examples highlight the importance of community partnerships to create relevancy for students.

Williamson, Inc. helped introduce an Unmanned Aerial Systems program at Nolensville High through a partnership with our business community and Snaproll Media, a pioneering drone company in the film industry and a Williamson, Inc. member.

Recently, two Nolensville High students have become the first certified drone pilots to come out of the program.  They have even launched their own business, Next Generation Filming, that offers aerial photos to local real estate offices.

In addition to our work at Nolensville High, we played a key role in the creation of a mechatronics program at Fairview High.  Williamson, Inc. contributed to the buildout of a classroom in the high school that now serves as a lab to give students hands on experience in mechatronics.

Through another partnership with one of our members, APCOM, we helped create internship opportunities for Fairview High students.

Thanks to the efforts of our state legislative delegation, funding for scholarships for the program for the next two years was secured during the previous state legislative session.

This first of its kind high-school program was recently named the Tennessee Association for Career and Technical Education secondary program of the year.

Although large corporate relocations generate headlines, we take even more pride in creating partnerships like these to grow our economy one small business at a time and provide career experience for Williamson County students.

Our small business community plays an important role in Williamson County’s economic success.  In fact, 90 percent of our members are small businesses with between one and 10 employees, and those businesses benefit greatly when a large employer like Nissan comes to town.

Nissan and their 1,800 employees create opportunities for our small business community to serve those employees.  A strong pro-business environment is good for large and small business alike, and both kinds of businesses rely on a pipeline of talent to fuel their success.

Partnerships between the business and education community will continue to be a focus of our economic development efforts at Williamson, Inc.  I am proud that we house a WCS employee in our office during the week and that we have an employee of FSSD attend our weekly team meeting on Monday mornings.

Williamson, Inc. is focused on providing career opportunities for our friends, family and neighbors and helping to create pathways for WCS students to get real-world experience.

Matt Largen is president and CEO of Williamson, Inc.

[Read more at The Tennessean] Read More

Here’s what school and district leaders have to say about Tennessee education

Concerns about school funding and the condition of school buildings were front and center in results published Tuesday from a statewide survey of Tennessee education leaders.

Of the 575 leaders who responded, none said that they thought Tennessee’s funding formula should stay as it is, according to TennesseeCAN, a Nashville-based education advocacy organization. This is the third year of the organization’s survey.

School funding has been a high-profile topic in Tennessee for years, and is the backdrop of a three-year legal fight between the state and Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Tennessee’s two largest districts are suing the state over whether it allocates enough money to provide an adequate education, particularly for urban school systems that serve more students who live in poverty, have special needs, or come from non-English-speaking homes.

In the survey, 71 percent of district and school leaders said they support some sort of change to the way Tennessee funds schools. More than 40 percent of both groups said they favor weighting school funding based on student need.

Only 4 percent of the 63 district leaders surveyed said they believe they receive an adequate amount of funding.

About 6 percent of the 512 school leaders surveyed said they had more than $500,000 worth of deferred maintenance on their school building, while about 30 percent said their building had $50,000 worth of repairs or less.

The surveys also covered topics like leader preparation, parental involvement, and previous educational experience. You can find results for district leaders, school leaders, and overall takeaways on TennesseeCan’s website.

[Read more at Chalkbeat] Read More