September 21, 2018 News
Nashville must unite, bicker less, on public school challenges | Opinion
The conversations surrounding our city’s public school system are persistent, and at times emotionally charged. The four of us wanted to take this moment to express that we are committed to working together in support of one another while ensuring Nashville becomes the highest achieving urban school district in the country. This goal is ambitious. Some might find it unrealistic in light of...Read MoreSeptember 19, 2018 News
Nashville schools asked to dedicate $432,000 for childhood trauma practices, reducing disciplinary issues
A state grant that funds Nashville public schools’ trauma-informed practices will end this year, threatening to stall work that has shown to reduce the need for discipline in the classroom. Trauma-informed schools work to focus on the reducing the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences, which can hurt brain development of children and cause behavioral issues. With the grant ending, a...Read MoreSeptember 12, 2018 News
TNReady listening tour makes stop in Middle Tennessee
Educators from Middle Tennessee met with Gov. Bill Haslam and state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen to discuss the difficulties of TNReady testing last week. The gathering was held at Freedom Middle School in Franklin and included educators from Nashville, the Franklin Special School District and Dickson, Maury, Hickman, Marshall, Rutherford, Williamson and Wilson counties. The...Read MoreSeptember 11, 2018 News
Summer camp lifts reading skills for third straight year in Tennessee
Tennessee’s campaign to help its children read better is seeing encouraging results from investments in school-based summer camps for youngsters at risk of regressing during school breaks. First-, second-, and third-graders who participated in the state’s Read to be Ready summer program showed gains in reading comprehension and accuracy skills for a third straight year, according to a report...Read MoreSeptember 10, 2018 News
Does Teacher Diversity Matter in Student Learning?
Research shows that students, especially boys, benefit when teachers share their race or gender. Yet most teachers are white women. As students have returned to school, they have been greeted by teachers who, more likely than not, are white women. That means many students will be continuing to see teachers who are a different gender than they are, and a different skin color. Does it matter?...Read MoreSeptember 8, 2018 News
Esther Cepeda: More minorities, females are entering STEM-career pipeline
Finally, some good news for brown and black students: A record number of them took Advanced Placement computer-science exams and earned a high enough score to qualify for college credit. The College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the AP program, recently reported these three very bright spots: African-American students saw the most growth in participation, with an increase...Read MoreSeptember 7, 2018 News
Hearing Looks at On-the-Job Training to Bridge Skills Gap
More than 6 million jobs are going unfilled in the U.S. as employers struggle to find applicants who can do the work. Forty-six percent of U.S. employers say they can’t find workers with the skills they need, according to a recent Manpower survey. A congressional subcommittee hearing Wednesday examined how the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) supports work-based...Read MoreSeptember 5, 2018 News
Walsh: Teacher Residencies Are Fine. But Districts Already Have the Power to Fix the Student Teacher Pipeline — at Far Lower Cost
A growing number of school districts are embracing the teacher residency model as a solution to their shortage of educators. For those districts with the financial resources or access to stable philanthropic support necessary to offset the high cost of this model, the investment yields real benefits: Residents tend to be more diverse and more likely to persist in the profession than the...Read MoreSeptember 5, 2018 News
One state, three lists of troubled schools – another consequence of Tennessee’s testing mess
After months of talks, federal and Tennessee education officials have come to terms on how to identify and address the state’s lowest-performing schools in light of last spring’s problem-plagued student assessment program. Their agreement, which navigates conflicting state and federal lawsover the use of test results, means the state Education Department will release three lists of challenged...Read MoreSeptember 3, 2018 News