What We Are Learning

May 13, 2020 What We Are Learning

What We’re Learning: See What’s New in Our Updated School Cluster Profiles

In 2019, the Scarlett Family Foundation released the Cluster Profiles resource, a data-driven look into the performance and demographic metrics of Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) zoned school clusters. With these profiles – one for each MNPS high school feeder pattern or “cluster” – we aim to present the educational pathways of students who choose to attend their zoned school from elementary through high school. This month, we’ve released an updated version of these pages, to include school data from the 2018-19 school year. With this updated data, one stark truth remains the same: too many Nashville students attend low-performing schools.

In some cases, the data are startling. In the Maplewood cluster, a child may very well attend a Priority school – a school ranking in the bottom 5% of public schools statewide – for every year of their K-12 education. The same is true of the White’s Creek cluster. Still, there are bright spots to celebrate: in the Hunters Lane cluster, Gateway Elementary stands out as the only Reward school (ranking in the top 5% of public schools state-wide) in a cluster that includes four Priority schools. The accomplishments of this school community deserve celebration, and the same can be said for dozens of others within MNPS. However, taken together, the Cluster Profile data overwhelmingly point to a lack of high-quality public school options within the zoned pathways.

Though no cluster is perfect, we must acknowledge the distinct geographic divide in the location of our city’s highest-performing traditional public schools. These are found disproportionately in the West Nashville area, with Hillsboro and Hillwood clusters standing out as two primary examples. Both clusters contain three Reward schools, and high school graduates in these clusters post ACT scores of 19.9 and 18.9, respectively – the highest average ACT scores among all MNPS clusters.

Students in East and North Nashville, in clusters such as Pearl-Cohn or Hunters Lane, are far more likely to follow a K-12 pathway dominated by some of our lowest-performing schools. Three of the Pearl-Cohn cluster’s seven schools are Priority schools, and Hunters Lane High School – the only zoned high school option for families in this cluster – rank near the bottom for every metric included on our profiles.

This year’s updated Cluster Profiles include two new metrics: Three Year Enrollment Trend and Building Utilization Capacity. With the addition of these measurements, we are able to better understand changes in school population, which may point to broader population trends in a particular neighborhood. For example, we can see that the Hillwood cluster has experienced a -14% three-year enrollment trend decline, while the Overton cluster has seen a 10% enrollment increase in the same time period. With this information, we are prompted to wonder whether Nashville families are leaving the Hillwood cluster for another area of the city, or if they might be choosing to enroll their students in schools outside of their cluster. Conversely, the Overton cluster’s enrollment increase trend indicates that this Nashville neighborhood might be experiencing population growth, or perhaps Overton High School has attracted a large number of new students through MNPS’ high school open enrollment system.

The addition of the Building Utilization Capacity metric serves a similar purpose – if we know what percentage of student seats in a school building are occupied, we can understand not only the utilization and therefore the cost efficiency of the facility, but also how families in a particular neighborhood are taking advantage of their zoned school options. If a cluster’s building utilization capacity falls on the low-end – like the 57% measure observed in the Maplewood cluster – we might draw the conclusion that the school-aged population choosing to attend zoned schools within this cluster has decreased over some period of time. On the other end of the spectrum, we see that buildings in the Cane Ridge cluster are utilized at a rate of 100%, indicating that students filled all seats planned for that cluster’s school buildings in the 2018-19 school year.

Though the updated Cluster Profiles allow us the opportunity to better know our MNPS zoned schools, the data leave us with a disappointing conclusion: we still cannot say that every child in Nashville has access to a high-quality education. Though some clusters include high-performing magnet or charter school options, students who live in these cluster neighborhoods are not guaranteed a seat in such schools. Attending a non-zoned school option may also necessitate lengthy travel on the part of the student, making this option less than truly accessible. The truth remains that Nashville cannot currently offer an excellent public education to all of its children. At the Scarlett Family Foundation, we remain committed to driving positive change in this area.

Explore the updated Cluster Profiles here.

April 17, 2020 What We Are Learning

Best Practices for COVID-19

Join Tara Scarlett, President of the Scarlett Family Foundation for a virtual fireside chat with Emily Freitag, CEO of Instruction Partners.

Instruction Partners is a nonprofit organization that walks arm-in-arm with educators to support great teaching and student learning. Emily and her team work with small school systems, both district and charter, to ensure ALL students have an excellent education experience.

As school districts across the country have been forced to quickly adapt to a new reality – one that takes students and educators out of the classroom and forces them to go remote – Emily and team have stepped up with clear guidance and resources aimed at making this transition as smooth as possible – though she’ll be the first to tell you, messiness is guaranteed.

For Superintendents & School Leaders

For Teachers

For Parents & Families

If you have more questions for Emily, you can connect with her through http://www.InstructionPartners.org To access Instruction Partners’ COVID-19 education tools, visit http://www.SchoolResourceHub.org.

March 27, 2020 What We Are Learning

What We’re Learning: Check Out Our Nashville Public Charter Schools Update for 2018-2019

Nashville will truly thrive when every student, no matter where they live in our community, has access to a high-quality school and an outstanding education.

As a city, we have not yet accomplished this goal. But for some Nashville families, the best possible educational fit for their student comes in the form of a public charter school.

When a city can provide several high-performing public school options – whether traditional, magnet, or charter – families benefit. But good, clear information about these options is essential if parents are to make the best, most informed school choice for their students. That is why the Scarlett Family Foundation seeks to equip parents, educators, elected officials, and community leaders with data-driven insight into Nashville’s public schools.

Last year, we released our Charter School Profiles – a data resource that provides comparable, straight-forward information on our city’s charter schools. Using these profiles, families and community members can quickly and easily take a look at a school’s academics, culture, and demographics.

(We also created the MNPS Cluster Pathway Profiles, which follow a student’s educational journey along each cluster pathway in Nashville’s traditional, zoned public schools.)

We are committed to making this resource relevant and useful to the community for many years to come. In that spirit, we are pleased to announce that our Charter School Profiles have been updated to reflect data from the 2018-2019 school year – the most recent data available. These updated profiles also include new measurements of College and Career Readiness for our high school charter schools. You can explore and compare each school’s updated profile here.

As more Nashville families look to options outside their traditional neighborhood school, it is more important than ever that data-rich educational resources be accessible to them. In the 2018-2019 school year, 15.5% of Nashville’s 81,407 students attended charters schools. This is a slight increase from the 14% of students who attended charter schools in the previous year.

Key Takeaways about Nashville’s Public Charter Schools

Demographics

Nashville’s charter schools continue to closely reflect the overall student population and demographics of the city. Although Nashville’s charter schools have a slightly lower percentage of English Language Learners and students with disabilities than Metro traditional schools, our local charter schools do enroll a higher percentage of lower-income, economically disadvantaged students.

Achievement

Similar to last year’s profiles, Nashville’s charter schools scored, on average, higher in both Reading and Math than traditional schools. In the 2018-2019 school year, Nashville’s charter schools’ math achievement scores were higher than the Tennessee average.

College and Career Readiness

Nashville has five charter high schools. Because the majority of these schools are only a few years old, most have just begun to graduate students. In our updated profiles, we have added key metrics on college and career readiness to help evaluate how our charter high schools are performing in this area.

In the 2018-2019 school year, five of Nashville’s charter high schools reported composite ACT averages and two reported graduation rates and “Ready Graduate” percentages (a metric the State of Tennessee uses to determine college and career readiness). Students at Nashville’s charter high schools scored almost three points higher on the ACT, on average, than students at Nashville’s traditional high schools. However, the 19.6 ACT composite score is still below a 21, the widely accepted indicator for college and career readiness.

Culture

Continuing the trend seen last year, there are mixed results when looking at student attendance and school culture. Nashville’s charter schools have lower than average chronic student absenteeism and lower student attrition than Metro’s traditional public schools, but they also have higher average suspension rates and slightly higher teacher turnover.

To take a deeper dive into the Charter Profiles, click here.

In the coming weeks, we will be updating our other Nashville Education Facts and data resources to offer the most up-to-date picture of Nashville’s public education system possible. Check back soon for this additional information.

February 24, 2020 What We Are Learning

Junior Achievement – Empowering Students to Own Their Economic Success

Since 1919, Junior Achievement has sought to empower students across the nation with the skills they’ll need to thrive in a global economy, providing lessons on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and work readiness through engaging, hands-on activities. Today, Junior Achievement reaches approximately 4.9 million students per year – from kindergarten through 12th grade – in all 50 states, and involves leaders from the education, business, and civics sectors in its mission to prepare America’s youth for a successful life. The Scarlett Family Foundation has proudly supported Junior Achievement of Middle Tennessee since 2008. \

In Middle Tennessee, Junior Achievement serves over 30,000 students per year, many of whom pass through its Nashville-based JA BizTown. This fully-interactive, simulated town allows its visitors to step inside a business community, creating opportunities for students to advance their understanding of the functions of banking, credit, taxes, customer service, and other essential work-and-life topics. Designed for students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, the JA BizTown program welcomes visitors from all school settings, whether public, private or homeschool.

In 2020, Middle Tennessee students in grades 7 through 12 will have access to their own hands-on, state-of-the art program within JA, with the launch of the new JA Finance Park.

A Day in JA Finance Park

In the JA Finance Park program, students will explore how the financial choices they make, from higher education to healthcare and more, affect their personal lifestyles and budgets. Upon completion of a 13-week, in-school course, students will visit JA Finance Park and make use of its digital tools to simulate real-life situations around topics like jobs, family support, budgeting, and investment. Students might use their JA Finance Park tablet to go to the bank to apply for a home loan, job hunt, or even pay for items using their “own” credit card. This experience offers exposure to key skills students might not get from a traditional classroom setting, such as negotiation and spending, role-playing, self-reflection, and decision-making.

Offering lessons like, “Got Skills? College or Not?” and “Where’s All My Money?”, combined with the hands-on experience of a day in JA Finance Park, Junior Achievement aims to give its student participants the knowledge they’ll need to make sound personal finance decisions throughout their lives. To learn more about JA Finance Park, click HERE.

Tags: Grantee Story

October 17, 2019 What We Are Learning

Nashville’s Third Grade Literacy Challenge: Where do we go from here?

In 1993, in its education report card, the Nashville Chamber of Commerce named literacy as a significant issue plaguing Metro Public Schools. 26 years later, this warning has snowballed into what can only be called a public crisis. In the year 2019, seven out of ten third-graders in Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) cannot read at grade level – approximately 4,500 children in total.

According to a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, students who are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than a proficient reader. As these students struggle to keep up with their peers academically, through fourth grade and beyond, the process of dropping out begins – a fate that research connects to higher rates of incarceration, along with other social repercussions. In Nashville, the lack of a high school diploma also carries startling economic implications. According to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce’s 2018 Vital Signs report, a local resident with no high school diploma will earn $23,389 on average – about $1,800 below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

But ultimately, no child’s future can be predicted with certainty, and Nashvillians should strive to set all children on a path to success in their earliest days. In some ways, the overall health of a community depends upon it. The Blueprint for Early Childhood Success tells us that “every child without a high school diploma costs society an estimated $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes and productivity [per year] – a number that will increase dramatically as low-skills jobs continue to disappear and demand for skilled work increases.”

Nashville’s struggle to turn its youngest residents into skilled, lifelong readers has been publicly acknowledged by city leadership, and has inspired a rise in both enthusiasm for and resources dedicated to fighting the early literacy crisis. In fact, a concrete goal was articulated as part of the city-wide Blueprint for Early Childhood Success initiative: to double the number of third-grade students reading on grade level by 2025. But with only 3 out of 10 Nashville third-graders achieving proficiency in English Language Arts in 2019, it is clear we are not moving the needle quickly enough.

To spotlight our city’s literacy crisis, the Scarlett Family Foundation recently released an interactive data tool focused specifically on third grade literacy rates in Nashville. We recognize that the proficiency numbers listed on this data map do not exist in a vacuum; there is context to every school community, involving factors such as poverty, proximity to resources, percentage of non-native English speakers, and so on. But if we allow these numbers to serve as starting points for discussion, they may have the power to inspire community-wide action that leads to real, tangible improvement for Nashville’s students.

Takeaways from the Third Grade Literacy Data Tool

As previously mentioned, the last few years of available testing data reveal that the percentage of Nashville third graders reading on grade level has barely moved from year to year— both districtwide and for key student subgroups. Only 15% of economically disadvantaged students and 20% of Black/Latino/Native American students are reading on grade level.

The data indicate some variance across school type, with 30.1% of students at public charter schools testing ON track compared to 25.6% at traditional MNPS schools. In Metro Nashville’s magnet schools, significantly more students (43%) are on track in English Language Arts.

But this discrepancy pales in comparison to that seen amongst the various geographic regions of Nashville. Literacy rates are at their lowest in the Pearl Cohn cluster, where only 13% of students on track, followed closely by the Hunters Lane cluster (15%). Comparatively, the Hillsboro (59%), Hillwood (34%) and Overton (37.5%) clusters see significantly higher rates of third-grade reading proficiency, though still far from acceptable. This correlation between literacy rates and geographic location points to a glaring inequity in our city – no child’s academic future should be dictated solely by the neighborhood in which they live.

Some notable improvements in third grade literacy are found across clusters, with two elementary schools standing out as bright spots for growth over the past three years— Napier Elementary and Crieve Hall Elementary.

Napier Elementary, in the Glencliff Cluster, moved from N/A (meaning less than 5% of students tested on track) in 2017 and 2018, to 17% students testing on track in 2019. Crieve Hall, serving students in the Overton Cluster, saw approximately 40% of students on track in both 2017 and 2018. That number increased significantly in 2019, with 67% of students measuring at the on-track level.

Explore the state of third grade literacy in your neighborhood by visiting our Data Tool here.

We have the data that proves the problem. How do we move closer to a solution?

As a city, we’ve articulated a bold, worthy goal: to double the number of third-graders reading on grade level by 2025. But with growth stagnant, what are we as Nashvillians prepared to do to see real improvement?

Start Early, and Empower Parents

A child’s relationship with reading should begin in their earliest days – making the home, the childcare center, or the preschool a perfect place to introduce young children to words, books, and texts of all kinds.

Nashville Public Library (NPL) stands as a hub for reading-readiness resources and programming. NPL’s Bring Books to Life is a free early literacy outreach program that operates in over 150 preschools, pre-k programs, and child care centers across Nashville. The Library equips teachers with the strategies and tools that will allow them to bring age-appropriate literacy practices into the classroom and provide workshops for parents and caregivers that will help create a culture of reading at home.

Almost 1,000 children are registered for the Library’s Read to Rise program, which helps parents get intentional about story-time with the goal of building a habit of daily reading in the home. Additionally, the Ready Rosie application provides quick videos demonstrating how parents or caregivers can incorporate literacy, math and social emotional learning practices into their family’s daily life. With these tools, parents can become better teachers of and future advocates for their young readers.

Not a parent of young children? Volunteer or donate books.

Consider volunteering time or resources to students in need. Through local organizations like PENCIL and Book’em, volunteers can be connected to MNPS students who have been identified as requiring reading intervention. Book’em also welcomes community members to host book drives, an important part of making sure all Nashville students have access to books. An up-to-date listing of open volunteer opportunities across the city can be found through Hands On Nashville.

Raise Your Voice

It’s important to recognize that YOU have the power to make profound change in the lives of MNPS students; and in order for third grade literacy rates to improve at a transformational level, we must all come together to see this issue as a city-wide priority. If the data presented in the Third Grade Literacy Data Tool is shocking to you, tell your elected officials. Make your voice heard by contacting your school board member, your Council Member, and the Mayor’s Office. Let our city’s leaders know that early childhood literacy must remain at the top of Nashville’s priority list if we are ever to truly live up to our “It City” title, and ask them what they plan to do to bring all students up to grade-level reading proficiency.

If we as a community truly believe that literacy is fundamental to our city’s health, we must raise a collective voice and demand more for the children at risk of being left behind.

Tags: Literacy

October 14, 2019 What We Are Learning

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee High School Bigs Literacy Program

Through the work of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee (BBBS), local children in need of guidance and support are provided with strong and enduring one-on-one mentoring relationships. One of BBBS’ school-based programs, the High School Bigs Literacy Program, gives at-risk elementary students the opportunity to be mentored by an exceptional high school student while also working on critical literacy skills.

The Scarlett Family Foundation has supported this innovative mentoring program since 2014. Rebecca Ackerman, Vice President of Programs at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, oversees the organization’s many mentoring programs. In this Q&A, we talk to Rebecca about how the program works, and why it has such a unique impact on its participants.

Why did Big Brothers Big Sisters start a literacy program?

One of the impacts we see of mentoring programs in general is increasing academic motivation. But we also see big disparities in academic preparation and achievement among elementary students. That time students are spending with their mentors could be leveraged to increase the number of hours of literacy support a child receives in the course of their school year.

So, we found the mentoring relationship is a great time to not only build connection and academic motivation, but build a foundation for academic achievement.

Where and how does the program operate?

The High School Bigs program matches high school students to elementary students within Rutherford County Schools. The Bigs spend about one hour a week with the student for one school year. The hope is for a healthy, long-term relationship because we know the best outcomes happen in relationships that are a year or longer.

Bigs make time to meet with their matches during the school day, and many give up their free periods to mentor. One high school starts an hour later than elementary schools, so those Bigs get up an hour early to meet with their Littles before their own school day even begins.

All of our high school students go through a rigorous application process and interview. We are looking for students who have a level of maturity, commitment and resilience. They are required to participate in a structured, formal training and connect with a coach on a weekly basis for the first year of their mentoring.

What kinds of things do the Bigs and Littles do together and how do these activities improve literacy?

Each match spends time reading together— the Little has the opportunity to read to their mentor or the mentor to the Little. We also provide literacy based-activities and games for the Bigs to do with the Littles.

Student voice is so critical in the learning experience. So conversation is a really important component of literacy building. Children don’t generally have a lot of time during the school day to engage in in-depth, one-on-one conversations. But having an hour for intentional conversation with their Big to read and discuss what was read increases their vocabulary and literacy comprehension.

How does having older students involved in the program make a difference for the younger students?

These matches are one of the sweetest things to observe. Often, the kids referred to us are struggling academically or socially. Because our Bigs are not an adult, they are safer to take risks with and the Littles have less fear. It is relationship-based learning.

Specifically, we often hear that the Littles feel important to their mentors, which is something that’s pretty remarkable when you think about the mentor relationship. Very often it makes sense where the mentor feels important— but this is one relationship in the Littles’ lives where by virtue of the fact that the high school student is showing up every week and giving them undivided attention, it communicates importance.

How does the program benefit the Bigs, too?

This is as much a resilience-builder for the high school student as it is for the Little. Empathy is a skill that is built through this process— and perseverance. It allows high school students to step out of themselves and to gain a different perspective from another person.

It helps them reflect on their own learning and how they’ve built skills and how they have grown as learners and as people. That process of relating to a young person who is struggling with a skill they have mastered is really grounding.

It helps them build the soft skills that are so necessary in the workforce. As they get ready to head off into college or career, for them to have this perspective that is broader than their own is really critical.

One of the only programs of its kind with an emphasis on literacy, the High School Bigs Literacy Program provides Littles with 30 additional hours of literacy programming over the course of the year.

Tags: Grantee Story, Literacy

August 20, 2019 What We Are Learning

Horizons at USN: Providing High-Quality, Engaging Summer Opportunities to Help Close the Achievement Gap

When we think of summer, we think of longer days and school-free schedules. But for too many students, summer can also mean learning loss— particularly for low-income students.

Each summer, Horizons provides critical enrichment programs and camps that allow participants to continue their learning even after the school year ends. By providing academic instruction during the summer months, students have the opportunity to improve their math and literacy skills before returning to school in the fall.

Launched in 2014, Horizons National partnered with University School of Nashville to host the first Horizons program in Tennessee. Through this innovative partnership, Horizons at USN supports low-income students from Carter Lawrence Elementary and Rose Park Middle the home school(s) of most Horizons students, who stay with the program through elementary and middle school, building their learning over eight summers.

The Scarlett Family Foundation supports Horizons at USN because all students deserve access to high-quality, engaging summer learning opportunities. There is no fee to any student who participates; and breakfast, lunch and snacks are served everyday.

The program runs for six weeks each summer, five days a week. In addition to academic classes taught by experienced teachers, the students participate in enriching experiences such as field trips, swim lessons, art, music, and drama.

In the summer of 2019, rising third graders completed an immersive unit on outer space, which included writing a research report on a planet, and traveling to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Rising fifth and sixth graders spent two weeks attending half-day USN Summer Camps, exploring topics like coding, engineering, painting, and biology.

Horizons aims to develop confident and competent learners who feel prepared when they return to school in the fall, and will continue to excel and succeed in their school lives for many years to come.

The program just completed its sixth summer, serving 85 rising first-through-sixth graders. The program will add a grade level each year until students are served through eighth grade, eventually hosting 120 participants per summer.

We know that summer learning loss can leave low-income students as many as three years behind their peers by the time they reach fifth grade. Through Horizons programming, students gain an average of two to three months of learning in reading and math skills in just six weeks, keeping them at grade level or above.

By the end of the 2019 summer, rising third grade students averaged six months of growth in reading; and rising sixth graders gained seven months of math skills.

Through high-quality, engaging summer learning opportunities, Horizons helps Nashville students fight learning loss, and ensures they are firmly planted on a path for future success.

Tags: Grantee Story

July 16, 2019 What We Are Learning

The N/A Epidemic in Nashville High Schools

At the Scarlett Family Foundation, we work towards the goal of one day seeing 100% of our high school graduates prepared for college or career. But in Metro Nashville in 2019, reality is very far from that goal. The numbers tell us that too few high school graduates hit the mark of college and career ready – and in some schools, the number is too low to even report.

In our MNPS Cluster Profiles, we dove deep into local data to understand how Nashville students are faring academically, and to evaluate whether or not our system of public education has adequately prepared them for success at the next level.

We explained how a student’s experience can vary dramatically according to where they live – and we discovered that most of Nashville’s highest performing schools are concentrated in just a few neighborhoods. We placed a spotlight on the unacceptable reality that three out of four students graduating from Nashville public high schools are not considered ready for college or career.

And as we unpacked data from across all twelve MNPS clusters, we found another disturbing trend: the N/A.

Usually, when we look at the performance data for an MNPS school, we would expect to see numbers – actual digits – in the spots reserved for Math and English proficiency rates. Instead, for 10 out of the 12 MNPS high schools, we see only N/A, or “not available”.

The N/A is easy to ignore; but in fact, it can tell us a lot about the state of Nashville’s schools. Unfortunately, the news is not good.

Proficiency or N/A: What does it mean and why does it matter?

Tennessee tracks proficiency by counting the number of students who are “on track,” meaning they’ve learned the subject material in relation to the state’s learning standards for their grade level, or “mastered,” which means they have extensive understanding and expert ability of the subject. Proficiency in Math and English Language Arts is the most commonly used indicator of a school’s ability to effectively prepare students.

Sometimes, proficiency levels are very high (95% or more) or very low (5% or less). In these cases, the state suppresses— or does not publicly release— a school’s proficiency data in order to protect the identity of that school’s students. Instead of a percentage, the schools receive an “N/A” score for Math, English Language Arts, or both.

Consider the following example to understand why this practice exists: One high school has a senior class of 20 people, and only one student (or 5% of the class) scores “on track” or has “mastered” the material. The state contends that if this data is made publicly-available, a person who is familiar with the school, or its students, might easily discern which student is the high-performer— and which 19 students are not on track.

Although the N/A can also be used as a substitute for near-perfect proficiency rates, it’s unlikely that this is the reason it appears here. In our city, this abbreviation is attached only to schools we know to be the lowest performing. N/A stands not in the place of very high proficiency numbers, but of very low.

The Troubling N/A Epidemic in Nashville

According to the most recently available data, ten of MNPS’ twelve traditional high schools register “N/A” proficiency scores— student proficiency below five percent in English, Math or both subjects. For the 2017-2018 school year:

Three high schools (Stratford STEM, Whites Creek and Maplewood) have N/A listed for both Math and English. These three high schools represent 2,563 students— but fewer than 130 students in all of these schools combined scored proficient in either of the core subject areas.

At the other seven schools, representing almost 10,000 students in total, only one in ten (or fewer) students met English standards for their grade level. All of these schools also show an N/A for math skills.

There are only two traditional high schools that do not have an N/A for either Math or English Language Arts: Hillwood and Hillsboro. However, proficiency levels for those schools are still low, and do not exceed 23% in either subject at either school.

Combatting the N/A Epidemic

Nashville’s N/A crisis has reached epidemic proportions. The lack of core subject proficiency across our traditional high school population is bound to impact the health of our city as a whole. Without a solid understanding of Math and English Language Arts, how can we expect students to succeed in higher education, or in the workforce? These are Nashville’s children, and its future economic talent pool. How can we continue to thrive as a city if fewer than 5% of our high school students are reaching academic proficiency?

The story behind N/A is that thousands of our high school students are moving through grade levels, from freshman to senior year, without ever having grasped the core competencies of math and English. N/A means that each year, our high school graduates are entering the workforce or college ill-prepared for the challenges that await them.

Most significantly, N/A means our city has failed to provide these students with the quality education they have a right to receive.

On behalf of the thousands of Nashville students who are slipping through the cracks, we urge you to join us in taking urgent action:

Share the data. Nashville needs more of its residents to understand the challenges our public education system faces, and to get involved. The N/A epidemic affects us all – no matter if you live on the Westside, Northside, Eastside or Southside. Every single child in Nashville deserves access to a high-quality public school.
Raise your voice. Demand that school board members and district leadership create a triage plan to help the students who are in schools today. We are witnessing a public education system in crisis, beginning with early childhood education and continuing through to adulthood. We must act now.
Volunteer your time. To establish a firm foundation for their academic futures, children need to be reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Become a mentor to a student, or read 20 minutes a day to a child who needs it. Today, only 25% of Nashville’s third graders have mastered or are on track in English Language Arts.

Tags: Feeder Pattern Profiles, High Quality Schools

June 19, 2019 What We Are Learning

What does school choice mean for Nashville families?

In Nashville, a child’s path to a high-quality school may extend far beyond his or her neighborhood block. That’s because, in Davidson county, families have the ability to take charge of their own education pathway through the school choice process. Access to school choice helps to ensure that families can choose the best possible fit for their children’s unique needs; and Nashville parents do have a wide array of school type options from which to choose.

Families in Davidson County can choose to educate their children in traditional public schools, public charter schools, optional and magnet schools, homeschool, or in dozens of nearby private schools.

But school choice only serves families if they are fully aware of their options, and understand how to access or pay for them. And even if parents are knowledgeable about their options, they may face barriers that prevent them from successfully enrolling their children in their top-choice schools, challenges like a limited number of open seats, transportation costs, or private school tuition.

If we want to ensure that all Nashville students receive an excellent education, we need more high-quality schools, regardless of type, existing in all neighborhoods. True school choice only exists when there are many good schools from which parents can choose, along with clear, widely available information about those options.

In an effort to help fill that gap, we have put together a short primer on School Choice Options in Nashville.

Public Traditional Schools

Metro Nashville Public Schools is divided into 12 clusters, or zones— with all traditional public elementary and middle schools feeding into one high school per zone.

Families in Davidson County are zoned to a traditional public school according to their home address, and will follow an assigned pathway from elementary to middle to high school. Traditional public schools are free to attend, and students are guaranteed a seat in their zoned neighborhood school. Parents can find their zoned school option through the MNPS online tool, ZoneFinder.

The Scarlett Family Foundation recently released Cluster Profiles to trace the experience of students who follow their assigned zoned pathway for all years of their education. When we look at cluster-level data, we find that student access to quality public education looks drastically different depending on where a student lives.

Public Option Schools

In Nashville, we have a variety of public schools available to our students beyond traditional schools, including public charter schools, optional schools, magnet schools, and alternative schools. All of these options are tuition-free public schools. To help families sort through these options and make an informed decision about what best fits their student’s needs, MNPS offers an online tool, School Match, that provides information on the variety of schools and programs offered within the district, as well as step-by-step instructions to apply.

Charter Schools

In addition to traditional zoned neighborhood schools, families in Nashville also have access to tuition-free public charter schools. Charter schools are independently run public schools that are granted increased flexibility in exchange for greater accountability around student growth and achievement. Sometimes, a public charter school will receive more applications than it has open seats. In these cases, students are accepted based on a lottery system. But four of Nashville’s public charter schools actually function as zoned public school options for their neighborhoods, meaning all students with a home address in these zones will be admitted if they wish to attend.

To help parents see and understand their options, we created Charter School Profiles that feature key metrics for each school. With this information, parents can compare the performance of Nashville’s charter schools to other options in the city.

Optional Schools

In additional to zoned traditional and public charter schools, Nashville families also have the option to enroll their children in a public school that is not in their assigned zone through the district’s optional school transfer application. This allows students to access programs and offerings at different public schools throughout the city.

But not every optional school is open to every student. Some have academic eligibility requirements, and many have a limited number of available seats.

Academic Magnet Schools

Academic magnet schoolsare tuition-free public schools that offer specialized courses. In Nashville, these schools range from Head Magnet Middle School of Science and Math to Glendale Spanish Immersion School.

Some have additional academic requirements to enroll, like Hume-Fogg High School, Martin Luther King, Jr School (7-12) and Meigs Middle. These three schools are among the highest performing schools in the district, but are only accessible to students who have met specific academic criteria.

Other Public Options

MNPS offers several other optional schools, ranging from Stanford Montessori Elementary School to the Nashville School of the Arts. These schools provide students and families the opportunity to take advantage of a variety of curricula, regardless of where they live.

Another optional school, Nashville Big Picture High School, provides students learning opportunities in the form of internships, workshops, and community volunteering. Middle College High School allows students to take classes on a college campus and earn post-secondary credit throughout their junior and senior years.

MNPS is also home to the first public online school in the state of Tennessee, MNPS Virtual School. As an optional school within MNPS, Virtual School is free and open to all residents of Davidson County, and is available to students interested in learning from home or outside of the traditional school setting, on a full or part-time basis.

In order to serve the children in Davidson county who have special needs, MNPS also has a number of schools dedicated to providing specialized staff, assistance and programming to these students. Additionally, Alternative Learning Centers provide an education option for students who would otherwise be excluded from public education due to expulsion from school.

Private

In addition to public school options, Nashville is home to dozens of private schools. Parents who desire a private education for their children must decide how to pay the tuition, a cost that varies significantly school-to-school. There are a handful of religious schools in the area with tuition costs between $5,000 and $9,000 per student per year, but the costs of most private schools in Nashville reach much higher— often ranging from $12,000 to $20,000 or more per year. There may also be application fees, technology fees, school trip costs, or supply purchases on top of that. But many private schools do offer need-based financial aid and tuition assistance to attract a diverse group of students.

The principal types of private schools located in or near Nashville are:

Independent religious schools – not affiliated with a specific church, but offering families a faith-centered education option.
Parochial schools – supported by a specific church or denomination. These schools commonly offer tuition subsidies for church members, and reduced tuition for families enrolling more than one student. Because of these considerations, parochial schools are often on the more affordable end of the private school spectrum.
Montessori schools – based on the Montessori method of education, which focuses heavily on child-led, activity-based learning.
Independent private schools – have no religious affiliation. Nashville is home to girls-only, boys-only, and co-educational independent private schools.

In 2019, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation to create Education Savings Accounts (ESA). The ESA program that will allow students and families in the state’s two-lowest performing school districts to access state funds that can then be put towards certain education-related expenses, including tuition at participating private schools. Tennessee’s ESA program, which will be in place no later than the 2021-2022 school year, will provide $7,300 of state funds per child to eligible families in Davidson County.

Homeschool

Parents may also decide to educate their children at home through homeschooling. Families interested in pursuing homeschooling have several paths to doing so, and should ensure that they are in line with Tennessee laws and requirements.

What’s next?

By giving Nashville families the autonomy to make their own schooling choices, our city increases the likelihood that students will be able to enroll in a best-fit school. However, school choice alone can only do so much; Nashville must have abundant high-quality school options if we want to ensure that every student is receiving an excellent education.

As our city works towards this goal, we must evaluate what is working in our schools and what is not. Clear information about the performance of available school options should drive a family’s school choice process. When this information is accurate, understandable, and shared widely, parents and local leaders alike can make sound decisions around education in Nashville.

Explore the local education landscape further by checking out our Nashville Education Facts webpage.

Tags: High Quality Schools

June 10, 2019 What We Are Learning

Homework Hotline: Providing cost-free tutoring to Tennessee students

For most Middle Tennessee students, the school day doesn’t end when the final bell rings – it follows them home, where they’ll continue to build on their classroom learning through homework assignments. But in this setting, there is no teacher on hand to help if the student faces a stumbling block, and parents or guardians may not be able to provide the guidance needed.

Since 1990, Homework Hotline has provided a solution to this challenge by offering cost-free tutoring to Tennessee students. In the 2018-19 school year alone, Homework Hotline teachers completed 11,731 tutoring sessions with 6,314 unique students, parents or guardians, sessions that totaled 3,780 hours of tutoring – all of it completely free.

The Scarlett Family Foundation has supported Homework Hotline (HH) since 2008. Each school year, Homework Hotline pairs thousands of Tennessee students and their families with certified teachers who can guide them through even the most challenging homework problems.

HH teachers work with all K-12 students, regardless of learning style or educational background, and can do so by phone or through online chat. Teachers and students can even learn together via an online whiteboard, allowing teachers to coach their students step-by-step through the problem-solving process. Students can also share typed essays with HH teachers to receive real-time, savable feedback. By making use of phone or online communication, HH brings homework help right into a student’s home – eliminating the need for a student to travel to a tutoring center.

Homework Hotline also recognizes that Tennessee students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and with different abilities, and seeks to find ways to serve all populations. That’s why the organization employs teachers who speak English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi, and Swahili. Students who are hearing-impaired can also work with HH teachers through the online chat feature, or by texting photos of their homework to the teacher using the Image Share program.

Homework Hotline strives to be innovative in their offerings in order to ensure that all students can learn and understand their assignments. In 2018, 94% of students expressed understanding of a concept and 83% proved mastery when given a post-test. By providing free, accessible, high-quality homework help, Homework Hotline prepares Tennessee students for success.

Tags: Grantee Story, High Quality Schools