Dr. Jesse Register Director, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools 2011 State of Schools Address As Prepared March 3, 2011
Good afternoon and thank you for that introduction Madam Chair. You may know that Mrs. Porter became the school board chair last fall when we also welcomed three new school board members, Michael Hayes, Cheryl Mayes and Anna Shepherd. They joined JoAnn Brannon, Sharon Gentry, Ed Kindall, Mark North and Kay Simmons on our board and I am pleased to say the board has jelled. Even though we sometimes have diverse opinions on specifics, we are united in our commitment to improving the district’s performance and we stay focused on that common goal. Last year, when I delivered the State of Schools address I was about one year into my tenure with Metro Nashville Public Schools. We were just beginning to gain traction with MNPS Achieves, our district-‐wide transformation effort. During last year’s address, I shared with you some specific changes we had made in the district and some new programs we planned to implement. Tonight, MNPS Achieves will be the focal point. The difference is the amount of progress and growth our students, staff and schools have made and continue to make. MNPS Achieves is transforming this district in daily operations, expectations, and outcomes. I will share details regarding the work of MNPS Achieves, update you on some of the programs we have launched and share our ongoing challenges. First, I want to thank some of the many supporters of public education in Nashville. Their support gives us confidence that we are equal to any challenge: • • •
The members of the Metro Nashville Board of Public Education, chaired by Gracie Porter, who continue to put children first as they work together to improve our schools. Mayor Karl Dean, our education mayor. The Mayor and the members of the Metro Council are passionate advocates for our public schools and our students. The Davidson County delegation to the state legislature, who keep the unique needs of our very diverse urban district in mind as they represent us at the State Capitol.
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The members of the Director's Parents Advisory Council, chaired by Erica Lanier, and all the parents whose involvement in our schools is vital to our success. The many other volunteers and mentors who give our students a brighter future. They may work with us through OneNashville, the PENCIL Foundation, Alignment Nashville, the Nashville Alliance for Public Education or through a school PTO or PTA. However they come to us, we are thankful for their involvement. Our school principals, whose days typically begin before dawn and end well after dusk as they lead instruction, manage the day to day operations of a school, assist families, and do so much more to ensure a positive learning climate in our schools. Our support staff, the individuals whose jobs center on providing support to teachers, which consists of administrators, counselors, librarians, coaches, bookkeepers, our food service team, bus drivers, maintenance teams, mechanics and more. They help create the environment where our teachers and students can be successful. Most importantly, I want to recognize our teachers. They are our front line. They make the difference in our schools and in the lives of our more than 78,000 students. They are helping our district become a national showcase for excellent teaching. The Metro Nashville Education Association, under the leadership of Erick Huth, is our valued partner in this work. MNEA’s willingness to consider new approaches in education has been a source of innovation for our partnership.
Teaching in a large urban district like Nashville is not a small task. Our teachers and support staff must learn to successfully assist students and families from more than 100 nationalities, languages and cultures; a variety of socio-‐economic classes; differing beliefs and value systems; and a wide variety of learning styles and individual needs. That's one reason we are making a tremendous investment in our people in Metro Schools. We are focused on adult learning, as well as student learning, because we know that if we can make our teachers more effective in their classrooms and our principals more effective instructional leaders, our students' achievement will increase. In fact, recruiting, developing and retaining great teachers are primary goals of MNPS Achieves. To help you get the best picture possible, let me take a minute to explain MNPS Achieves – the concept behind it and the implementation. Over the past year-‐and-‐a-‐half, some 200 community leaders, public school parents, and district staff have worked in one of nine Transformational Leadership Groups, or TLG’s, established through MNPS Achieves. These volunteers are working to evaluate nine areas of needed transformation and to plan and implement reform in each of these areas. We have TLG’s working to improve the academic performance of students Page 2 of 13
• Who are learning English, • Who are economically disadvantaged, and • Who have special needs. We are working to improve • High schools and • Middle schools. And we have TLG’s established to determine how our infrastructure can better support this transformation process by examining our • Informational Technology and Data Management • Central Office Effectiveness • Communications and • Human Capital. ASSET Our Human Capital group is known as ASSET, which stands for Achieving Student Success through Effective Teaching. ASSET brings together the work of the Mayor’s office, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and Metro Schools to recruit, develop and retain the best teachers. We have made considerable progress in this area and we will see more exciting changes in the year ahead. Since the last State of Schools address, we have enrolled our first cohort of teachers in the Master's program in Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools at Vanderbilt's Peabody School of Education. The program provides a tuition-‐free master's degree to teachers who commit to teach in one of our hard-‐to-‐staff subjects in the middle grades. The second cohort of teachers is being recruited now and, as we had hoped, the program is attracting talented teachers from across the country. In early May, we will announce the first class of 25 to 30 teachers for our own Teacher Leadership Institute. We will select the best of our third-‐ and fourth-‐year teachers for this program that will develop a pipeline of future leaders for our district -‐-‐whether they want to remain in the classroom as teacher leaders or move into administration. The Teacher Leadership Institute is a key piece of our plan to develop the next generation of leaders in our schools. You will hear more about additional aspects of our plan in the months to come. We are also changing the way we are recruiting teachers. We are working to make offers to promising candidates earlier in the year so we can better compete with other districts for the best talent.
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We have expanded our approach to recruiting new teachers by using social media, including live online chats and job interviews via Skype. This allows us to reach more candidates while containing our travel budget. We have developed strong relationships with colleges and universities right here in Middle Tennessee and around the world, and we have increased our partnerships with Teach for America and The New Teacher Project. Each step has helped us recruit the newest class of educational leaders from all around the world. COMMUNICATIONS Communications is a big issue. For an organization as large as MNPS, we have to pay equal attention to our internal and external communications. During the past year, we have explored new ways of informing our students, staff, parents, and community members. One major change came in the form of social media. Facebook, Twitter, live blogs, live chats, online videos, and daily updates to a district blog have enabled us to have much more immediate and direct communication with our employees and families. For example, we expanded the audience for the press conference announcing our state report card results by live blogging at the event. More than 5,000 people have read that blog, which is about 100 times as many people as actually attended the event. We have more than 1800 Twitter followers and more than 6,400 likes on Facebook and those numbers grow by the day. At last count, our live blogs had generated more than 42,000 views, in just eight months. These tools provide us direct, accurate, timely communication with our families. And they allow us to reach our families with important messages where they are and in the way they want to communicate. CENTRAL OFFICE EFFECTIVENESS We are well down the road of a complete transformation of the central administration of the district. Last year, our Magellan Project made our business practices organization in the Central Office more effective. Our Federal Programs department has been restructured and streamlined and we are now working on our Human Resources practices in collaboration with the ASSET group. We're in the first phase of that work and when it is complete, the differences will be striking. Our employees will see changes in how they apply for jobs, in their performance evaluations and in how human resources supports our organization.
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This is an important next step in transforming our district into a performance-‐driven organization and I am excited about the changes that are occurring now and will occur later this year. We are sharply focused on leading and supporting quality instruction rather than just being managers of a big bureaucracy. Our people are being asked to do things that they've never done before and to work with colleagues and departments they've never worked with before. When I got here two years ago, I heard about a disconnect between central office and the schools and I observed staff working in isolation of each other. Our goal is to eliminate that disconnect, to build a strong network among our schools and district. At the last Principal's Institute, I could feel a difference-‐-‐and I could see a difference when a group of principals and central office staffers actually started a conga line! We are definitely moving forward in creating a more collaborative culture and our infrastructure now better supports our strategy, but there is more work to be done. It takes time to change the culture of an organization. It begins with a common vision, which is now posted in every building and many offices and classrooms throughout our district: To provide students with the foundation of knowledge, skills and character necessary to excel in higher education, work and life. A change in culture also requires steadfast commitment to developing quality employees, strong supports, and a system of collaboration, all of which remain top priorities. HIGH SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT Perhaps the most visible changes in our schools have happened at the high school level. Of course, the major goal for high schools is to get students college and career ready and the Academies of Nashville are proving to be a key tool. These Academies allow students to study common core curriculum in the context of a particular theme or career area, offer students engaging classwork, hands-‐on experience, exposure to “real-‐world” lessons through internship and job-‐shadowing, and the chance to network with industry leaders. In fact, this week and next, more than 500 students at seven of our Academy high schools are spending a day working in some of Nashville’s most successful companies. AT&T, CMT, Ford Motor Credit, Gaylord Entertainment, Loews Vanderbilt, and LP have opened their doors to our students and staff for a collegiate-‐level learning opportunity. Our goal is for all graduates to have a personal plan for post secondary education and a career. We want graduates to score at least a 21 on the ACT, which qualifies for the HOPE scholarship Page 5 of 13
under the current rules. And we want students to graduate with certifications in their chosen fields in addition to their diplomas. We have a five-‐year plan to implement these Academies, and we are making rapid progress. The first part of the plan covers professional development for teachers. The second covers redesigning high schools, and the third addresses sustaining change through business and civic partnerships. We have more than 100 such partnerships spread across the Academies at our 12 zoned high schools and we are just beginning. In 2010, our graduation rate jumped dramatically, to nearly 82.9 percent. While many of you may have heard that piece of good news, you probably have not heard some of the wonderful stories coming out of our high school Academies. One student taught her unemployed mother some of the interview skills she learned in a freshman seminar and helped her mother land a new job. Another student, who considered dropping out and is already a mother herself, is working toward a health care job certification that will allow her to support herself and her child when she graduates in May. We are still early in the implementation of Academies, so much of the progress we see is anecdotal, like the stories mentioned above. Some of the schools that began implementation several years ago do have solid data showing the benefits of Academies. They are seeing improved achievement levels and decreases in disciplinary incidents. As we move forward, we will continue to track student success in our Academies so we can identify programs that engage our students and help them graduate. The Academy at Old Cockrill and the Academy at Opry Mills, now relocated to Hickory Hollow, are not new this year, but they are so successful that I want to mention them. These programs are fast-‐track, second chance programs for students who have recently dropped out or are at very high risk. We have four graduations each year-‐-‐winter and summer at each program-‐-‐and every graduate is a credit to our district. In January 2011, after just one and a half years in existence, the two programs helped nearly 400 students earn a high school diploma. Another key change in the past year has been the design and implementation of our virtual program. We began with a small class of 13 full-‐time students. Other students throughout the district are also eligible to enroll part-‐time and take additional courses, or ones not offered at their regular school. This program will serve students who have unique needs, scheduling conflicts, or want to recover credits. Our high school transformation plans really boil down to offering students options, meeting them where they are, and giving them the tools they need to graduate from high school
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prepared for college and career. MIDDLE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT Middle School is a critical time in education. It’s the period when students start to drop out of school mentally, making middle school an important part of success in high school. It can also be one of the most challenging places to teach, so the TLG is working on plans for leadership training and an induction process for teachers new to middle school. Our Middle School TLG is using a National Middle School Association survey to assess our schools on 16 characteristics of successful middle schools, including leadership, instruction, assessment, school culture, transitions to high school and more. Every middle school teacher had the opportunity to participate in the anonymous survey. We are using the results to improve individual schools and our middle school program as a whole. One area that has been a particular weakness for our middle schools has been our student achievement in math. One reason is teachers may be certified by the state to teach middle school math with just a course or two of college-‐level math. We currently have almost 200 teachers of middle grades math working on Saturdays and on line to receive high quality professional development in mathematics. They also participate in Professional Learning Communities with other math teachers where they can share best practices, receive expert instruction from their peers, and develop new tools and lesson plans together. I am hearing wonderful success stories from teachers who have begun using their new tools with their students. PERFORMANCE OF DISADVANTAGED YOUTH With more than 70 percent of our students eligible for free or reduced price lunches, the performance of economically disadvantaged youth will drive the performance of our district. This population is highly mobile and research has shown that mobility hurts academic achievement. Addressing the issues of student mobility -‐ through internal adjustments and outreach efforts -‐ is a priority. We now have district curriculum pacing guides that are divided into nine-‐week increments to keep teachers in synch from school to school. Now, when students change schools they won't miss anything or have any overlap. The pacing guides are online so parents and afterschool programs can use them and the site gets hundreds of hits every day. We are working to educate our parents, on a variety of topics including mobility, through Parent University. We are working to ensure families understand options such as continuity
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that will help decrease our mobility rates and help students succeed. We are also working with MTA to make continuity a more viable option for families. We are providing professional development for employees regarding youth mobility. We are giving teachers access to data on how many times a student has moved or changed schools. We want to help our students stay in a single school. If we can identify what is going on with a family before they move or change schools, we can help prevent that move—or help the child continue in the same school-‐-‐and decrease student mobility. We want our work for disadvantaged youth to be supported by other initiatives at Metro Schools, such as networked learning communities, virtual and online professional development and utilization of the data warehouse. The data warehouse provides teachers and administrators with immediate access to information on each student, which is vital with this highly mobile population. We are now using data-‐driven instruction and assessment much more effectively throughout our district. We must recognize the importance of early intervention, such as pre-‐Kindergarten; extended learning, including after school hours, summers and weekends for teachers and students; and differentiated instruction as key ingredients to helping our disadvantaged youth thrive. We have to be able to reach students in a way that is meaningful to them. For example, at Cole Elementary, where more than 80 percent of students qualify for free lunch, we have 205 third and fourth graders who are coming to school for half days on Saturdays for about two months. More than 60 teachers, retired teachers and community volunteers are helping the children prepare for TCAP. That kind of community support will make a real difference in their academic performance. We are working on teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution of teachers in high needs schools. We are using our data warehouse for faster access to student data that can drive instructional practices in classrooms and for individual students. Our goal is to break down the barriers that keep students from succeeding. Every child, regardless of his or her family’s socio-‐economic status, deserves an excellent education and the opportunity to excel. That’s what we intend to give them. PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Our Transformational Leadership Group focused on Students with Special Needs is working to increase students' achievement levels, to provide inclusive services, and to design and implement a research-‐based model to meet the needs of gifted learners. Once again, professional development is key. It is involved in every aspect of transformation this TLG has initiated. Page 8 of 13
Some examples of the work this group has done include: • Building technology-‐enriched classrooms for our pre-‐kindergarten students. • Training teachers in large numbers on quality, inclusive practices. • Screening more than 5,000 students in kindergarten and second grade. • School-‐wide positive behavioral support in 38 schools. If you walk into any of these schools, you will see a more positive learning environment and increased learning. For example, Amqui and Hattie Cotton saw huge reductions in office referrals with the introduction of the school-‐wide positive behavior support. That represents hundreds of additional hours of learning time. • Social and emotional learning -‐ Students can't make progress unless barriers are removed. We have a five-‐year district plan for Social & Emotional Learning. We also developed a district support team policy and procedure. This spring, we are focusing heavily on kindergarten, fifth and sixth grade inclusive practices. We want each school to be equipped with trained personnel and programs that will enable them to educate all of their students with special needs. When we do this, all students with disabilities will be able to attend their school of zone or preference. I am proud to announce that this school year, all fifth and sixth graders with special needs were able to attend their school of zone. Next year, all students with special needs entering kindergarten will be able to attend their school of zone. Those are significant achievements for this or any district. We are working on educating children in the "least restrictive environment". The goal is to get our students into a general education environment for most of the school day and we're making progress. We will always have a full continuum of services for our students that may include special schools for some students for short-‐term placements, or those with specific medical needs. Another area of great focus is academically gifted services – also known as our Encore program. This school year, the program is in 123 schools, which is up from 81 last year. We want our Encore teachers mixed among our general education teachers, working collaboratively to differentiate lessons for gifted students. Our goal is to provide gifted services every day in every class, not just once a week in Encore classes. We are also working with students who were in Encore at the middle school level. We are following them into their high schools to examine if and how they are continuing their gifted learning. •
We have identified more gifted students this year and have students with more than 40 native languages represented in Encore;
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We are now conducting a thorough evaluation of our gifted services, which will enable us to move forward in the most effect manner; We will also conduct a parent survey and focus groups with parents to evaluate our services. Some parents were concerned when we reduced Encore from 3 hours per week to 2. We know Encore students needs to be challenged every hour of every day, not just for 2 or 3 hours a week. That's why we're focusing on training teachers for every day instruction of gifted learners.
PERFORMANCE OF ENGLISH LEARNERS Did you know that 22% of Metro Schools students do not come from English language backgrounds? That figure surprises most people and it will continue to grow. Other than English, the top native languages in our schools are Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, Somali, Vietnamese, Lao, Chinese, Nepali, Burmese and Karen. This year, 50 elementary schools, 21 middle schools and all high schools offer EL services. Our goal for the 2011-‐2012 school year is offer to EL services at every school. EL students no longer belong to the EL department…but to the schools and teachers. This not only helps the EL students learn English faster, it also provides a much richer learning environment for all students. The English Learner department is working to create effective school leaders. The first step is to shift from separate EL professional development to collaborative professional development for teachers in literacy, numeracy, science and social studies. The next step is to train all school-‐based coaches in the needs of students learning English and in differentiated teaching strategies so we can reach students where they are. By this point, I hope you are hearing a theme among our TLG's-‐-‐they are all making professional development a priority because it will provide sustainable change in our staff and in our district. Professional development will help us expand our team of dedicated and quality educators and help us reach our goal of having a great teacher in every classroom every year. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY and DATA MANAGEMENT That very philosophy, centered on staff development and sustainability, even applies to our Information Technology TLG.
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We have adopted the U.S. Department of Education’s National Educational Technology Plan that calls for applying advanced technologies used in daily personal and professional lives to the entire education system. Soon, we will also be adopting the International Society for Technology in Education standards that serve as a roadmap for effective teaching and professional growth. This summer, our Department of Instructional Technology will be doing a "Lesson Plan Makeover" to show teachers how to better incorporate technology into their daily lesson plans. We're also going to try a Classroom Observation tool in 12 schools that will allow us to see how well teachers are using technology. Right now, the student-‐computer ratio is about 3-‐1 and with the state talking about online assessments, we have to boost that. You may have read about our data warehouse in the newspaper earlier this week. Tennessee is in the forefront of the nation in data warehouses for school districts and Metro Nashville Schools is leading Tennessee. The data warehouse brings together academic, discipline and attendance data. It helps our counselors identify gifted students and place them in more challenging courses. It helps teachers and support staff identify students who are at risk of dropping out and get them refocused and on track. It will also help us evaluate teacher effectiveness and student progress. Our data warehouse is state of the art and getting better every day. Our teachers and school leaders produced 50,000 reports from the data warehouse in the past month alone, so we know the data is being used to help our students. There are two more exciting initiatives for the IT and data management TLG. First, we are working to provide all students and educators access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are developing a program to refurbish our old computers and give them, along with internet access, to the families who need them most. We're also working on a pilot program that will allow students to bring personal electronic devices into school and still have a safe internet experience. I wish I had more time to discuss all the wonderful programs and changes in our district, but I’ll conclude the portion regarding MNPS Achieves by saying this: Our transformation plan has more than gained traction. It is working. But we are not finished. We must keep our eyes on our vision, we must continue working to increase our professional capacity, we must continue to keep students and staff at the center of our decisions, and we must continue to solicit the support of our community. Community support will be crucial in the coming months as we face one of our biggest continued challenges: the operating budget.
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THE BUDGET The continued economic slowdown has made it difficult to adequately fund government services, including education. This year, state funding for education is uncertain and we will see the last of millions of dollars in federal funding we have received in recent years. Our federal budget will lose $30 million in stimulus and jobs money this year. That will require some restructuring in our district and some very difficult choices. We do not plan to outsource any functions. I am often asked if Race to the Top funds can be used to fill the gaps in our budget, but they cannot be used for ongoing operational expenses. This is a very real budget shortfall. Together with the Board of Education, I have made protecting our instructional staff a priority for our district, but even our teachers will not be immune from tough decisions. As we continue work on this year's budget over the next few weeks, we will share more details of our plans. We are grateful Mayor Karl Dean has been steadfast in his support of public education. Our community has also voiced its support of public education. In the annual opinion poll commissioned by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, 79 percent of respondents agreed Metro Nashville should provide more funding for the public school system in order to meet the challenges our schools face. And our district continues to grow. We are projecting about 1,600 more students next year, bringing our total to just short of 80,000 students. LOOKING AHEAD As we look ahead, we face a great challenge in maintaining urgency in our work. We have developed some good plans and won some victories as we begin to transform our district, but so much work remains we have no time to wait. Test scores are last to change, and they are just one measure of success, but right now they are our most important measure. We are working hard to prepare for and to be successful in just a few weeks when out students are tested on the new standards. In time, we will make Metro Nashville Public Schools the first choice for families. Our six new magnet schools are already generating excitement. On the first day of open enrollment, we accepted 560 applications for these schools and we had about 40 people waiting in line to apply when we opened our doors at 6:30 in the morning. • • •
On Tuesday night, hundreds of people attended our Museum Magnet showcase for John Early Middle School and Churchwell Elementary School. On March 8, there will be a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math magnet showcase at Stratford High School that includes Hattie Cotton and Bailey Middle School. And Pearl Cohn Entertainment Magnet will have its showcase on March 22.
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If you are interested in these magnet schools, get your application in now! In closing, I want to talk about yesterday. I joined MNEA leaders and school board members for “Read Across America” day. School board vice chair Mark North and I read to students from Buena Vista and Jones Paideia elementary schools. It was Dr. Seuss’s birthday so I wore my “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish” tie. What fun! We all need that focus. Teaching is not just a profession, but also a calling. I hope you will join me in answering the call to support our schools and Nashville’s 78,000 public school students. -‐-‐MNPS-‐-‐
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