Dr. Jesse Register Director, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools The State of the Schools Address As Prepared Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thank you for the kind introduction, David. When we scheduled this state of the schools address, we did not know it would be during such a highly charged and eventful week. Tuesday night the Board of Education had the difficult task of approving a budget request for next year. Tax revenues are under projections and the Mayor has asked Metro Government departments to plan for 5 to 10 percent budget cuts. Over the past months, we have worked to find ways that we can become more efficient in our operations and to find ways that we can realize savings in our operational costs with one very important caveat. We have not made cuts in the number of classroom teachers or instructional support in the schools. In spite of recommending approximately $11 Million in budget reductions, a gap of $25 million still exists. We made a line by line examination of our budget because we knew we could not ask for additional funding without first making every effort to tighten our belts. Our priority was protecting our teachers and instructional programs and I am proud we were able to do that. The school board adopted a recommended budget that incorporates those identified savings but also requests an increase to close that $25 million gap for next year. This budget required some tough decisions that affect our central office staff, bus drivers, custodians and groundskeepers. We did not make those decisions lightly. I must commend the Board of Education for facing the budget crisis collaboratively and constructively and in the final analysis, for making sound and courageous decisions that focus our resources and efforts on the right things. Page 1 of 13
The economy has made this a challenging time for us all. I want to personally thank Mayor Karl Dean, the members of the Metro Council, and the Director of Finance, Rich Reibling, for their support of the schools during this process. I truly believe that we face these challenges together and that education is truly the priority in these tough times. Even with our budget challenges, we have a great advantage here in Nashville: our schools have the support of so many people across our community. David Fox recognized our event sponsors earlier and I would like to recognize other supporters this evening: •
The members of the Davidson County delegation to the state legislature who are effective advocates for urban schools;
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Parents, especially the members of the Parent Advisory Council, chaired by David Kern, and members of COPLA, chaired by Ernestina Gonzalez, who make considerable volunteer contributions to our schools;
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The many volunteers and mentors who share their talents with our students to give them a brighter future;
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Our school principals and assistant principals who do the daily—and nightly-work to provide a vibrant learning climate in our schools;
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Our school staff, including my executive team and our administrators, and all whose purpose it is to support our schools. They are committed to our mission and we appreciate their work.
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Most importantly, I want to recognize and thank our teachers who are the single biggest influence on our students’ academic achievement. Teachers make the magic of learning happen in classrooms across our district every day…and their legacies will outlast our lifetimes.
Those of us who care about improving the quality of education offered all our youth in our public schools face considerable challenges and long days ahead. We do not always see results as quickly as we would like, but we know we must be impatient on behalf of our children. We must chart our course so that our schools and our students will be fit and ready for the future. We are collaborating within our district, with other Page 2 of 13
Metro Government entities, and with outside partners more than ever, and we expect to do more of this in the future. We have more than 76,000 students in our schools now and we are predicting an even higher enrollment this fall. We take pleasure in our growing school enrollment because we know it is one indicator of a healthy city. We welcome the opportunity to educate more of Nashville’s children. That’s why the Board of Education has adopted a vision statement that includes our goal of being the first choice for Nashville’s families. That’s an ambitious goal, but we must not settle for anything less. Over the past year, we have gathered information and launched a comprehensive plan to transform the district. We call this plan MNPS Achieves. It is a collaborative effort among more community leaders, public school parents, outside experts and district employees working on nine crucial areas of focus. Our transformational agenda is addressing all of these areas of focus simultaneously. We simply do not have time to address one issue at the time, but at the same time, we must realize that such a broad reform agenda stretches the capacity of the organization and creates a risk of failure. I am pleased to report that we have traction in all nine areas of reform. We are making progress in all areas, and in some we are on the cutting edge of reform nationally. I will highlight a few of our MNPS Achieves accomplishments, starting with the Central Office Organization. By August of this year, we will have completed a 15-month process to transform the way our central office is structured. We started with an initiative to shift instructional leadership and support to a schoolbased model. Support and instructional leadership is most effective when it is close to the classroom. This year 281 positions from central office locations have been shifted to schools or school clusters. We now have 310 school-based instructional coaches whose focus is on supporting our teachers and improving the practice of instruction. We want the professional development of our teachers to be school based and job Page 3 of 13
embedded. We will continue to invest in our teachers and leaders with professional development opportunities and ongoing feedback, so they will continue to grow professionally and classroom instruction will improve. As part of MNPS Achieves, we are also taking steps to strengthen the school district’s business processes and practice. Business consultants have made 102 recommendations to improve our business operations, and we are now in the process of implementing all of them. We are transforming our business practices from slow and bureaucratic to efficient and effective. When we complete these changes, we expect our district to be a national model of good practice. Our consulting firm, CSS International, our district employees, and Metro Government have worked together to make these improvements and I commend them for their outstanding work. High school reform is another priority. We have presented our plan to the Board of Education for comprehensive changes at our high schools. We are creating academies and small learning communities at each of our high schools that are tailor-made for each school. For example, Pearl Cohn High School will become a magnet school with the launch of an Academy of Entertainment Industry Management where students can learn about the music industry, television production, music recording, sound and lighting, graphics and design…and more. With support from local universities, businesses, and organizations with expertise in the entertainment industry, students will graduate prepared for further study--or for careers in the industry. Hillsboro High School will build on its International Baccalaureate program to become a true international school where students can participate in an immersion Chinese program and participate in an international business academy. This approach allows students to choose an academy that interests them. They will delve deeply into a particular field as they complete their academic core courses in every academy. We have many exciting plans for each of our zoned high schools and Page 4 of 13
we will begin announcing them in early May. Included in these plans are innovative opportunities and a rigorous curriculum that will challenge our highest performing students. Small learning communities promote the development of strong relationships between students and teachers. We want students to have several teachers who know them well--teachers they can turn to for guidance. We have also developed new programs for students who learn better in less traditional environments or who face obstacles to completing a traditional high school program. •
The Academy at Opry Mills and the Academy at Old Cockrill are designed for motivated students who want to graduate, but who face obstacles that prevent them from attending traditional schools. These accelerated programs allow students to earn their final high school credits while working or meeting other obligations. Each school will have more than 100 graduates this school year who likely would have not completed high school without this opportunity…and these schools are cost effective. The Academy at Opry Mills facility is located in the Mall and the space is provided by the Simon Foundation at a cost of $1 per year.
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The Diploma Plus High School is designed for students who are over-aged and under-credited. The school provides a positive culture, relationships with caring adults, and both academic and real-world experiences that prepare students for college or careers.
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At The Big Picture High School, students have individualized learning plans that build on students' interests and lead to meaningful internships in related fields. The Big Picture High School has a rigorous college prep curriculum, but students find much more flexibility because their plans are individually developed and are community based. The first class will graduate next spring.
We will open a Virtual High School next year that will allow students to take online courses not offered at their own high schools from district instructors. Students may take courses to make up credits, to accelerate their high school progress or to take Advanced Placement courses not available at their home high schools. We also expect Page 5 of 13
to attract students from private and home school environments to the Virtual High School. A Transition school will be opened for students who have been incarcerated. Students will typically attend the Transition school for six weeks to a full semester while they receive academic, social and psychological services to prepare them to succeed when they return to a regular school. Another focus of our MNPS Achieves program is our investment in and development of human capital. We are making progress on our three priorities: •
Recruiting excellent teachers;
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Retaining our teachers by providing them the support and instructional leadership they need; and
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Developing the talents of all our teachers by providing meaningful professional development opportunities for both new and experienced teachers.
Let me say a few words about recruiting. We are fortunate to have several outstanding schools of education here in Middle Tennessee and we are pleased to hire their graduates. We have begun several initiatives to attract outstanding graduates and to support our teachers in the classroom, including providing coaches to mentor new teachers through their first years in teaching. Our developing human capital strategy is now known as Achieving Student Success through Effective Teaching, or ASSET. This combines the expertise of community volunteers, school employees and our joint work with Mayor Dean and the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative. It brings together the research expertise of Vanderbilt, the connection to national best practices from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the on-the-ground capacity of Teach for America and The New Teacher Project, the policy knowledge of Education First, and a partnership with TEA and MNEA. This year, the State Legislature and Governor Bredesen made fundamental changes in state laws that affect teacher and principal evaluation. I think this part of the legislation Page 6 of 13
will have a profound impact on public education in this state for years to come. We are responding to those changes in the approach we are taking in our initiative. ASSET is a powerful combination of people developing a plan to recruit, retain and develop talented teachers for our schools. We want our district to be known for attracting and retaining the best teachers. We recently announced plans to offer a free master’s degree to recruit outstanding newer teachers in critical needs areas. Our focus is on math, science and literacy for the middle grades, and we are targeting urban schools that serve a high percentage of disadvantaged youth. We are offering this program in collaboration with the nation’s leading school of education, Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, and we are getting interest from the best young graduates and newer teachers from across the country. The cost of the degree is paid for with a commitment to teach for five years in the targeted schools. Now, I would like to change our focus for a few minutes, and take you back a little over a year. If you followed the daily news, you could not help but conclude that our high schools were in a crisis. Almost every day, there was news of some new act of violence or other problem that had arisen in one of our high schools. One of my first acts was to change the leadership at one of our largest high schools. Other changes were made by the end of last school year, including the recruitment of new high school principals from across the country and a new associate superintendent for high schools this past December. I am so proud of the transformation that is occurring in our high schools and the work of principals like Karl Lang at Whites Creek, of Tony Majors at Glencliff High school, and some of those newcomers like Robbin Wall at McGavock and Steve Ball at East Literature. There are still many challenges ahead in this community with our youth. We cannot neglect our responsibility to address community issues that confront our youth, but have
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you noticed the change over the past year? Good things are happening in our high schools. I will use just two statistics that are current. •
We expect students to be in school and we have done a lot of work to improve this area. Our truancy rates have declined dramatically—year to date, by more than 12 percent from the same time period last year and by more than 45 percent over the past four years. We have taken an aggressive approach to managing truancy including moving our resources closer to schools as part of the Central Office Organization I mentioned earlier. We have more staff involved in following up with families with absent students, we are doing community outreach to ensure families understand the importance of having every student in school every day and we are collaborating with the Metro Police Department on an attendance center that helps us identify truant students and return them to schools.
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Out-of-school suspensions have also declined this year, by about 20 percent.
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We have placed more than 1,100 students in our new Twilight Schools, which are alternatives to out-of-school suspension in middle and high schools. Students who attend Twilight Schools are removed from the regular school day if they have been disruptive, but have the opportunity to continue their academic progress. In addition to academic offerings, Twilight Schools teach students coping skills and strategies for managing their own behavior. These schools have also provided access to other students who need after school tutoring and assistance.
We are making progress in two other areas of student performance that have been chronically underachieving. •
Our students who are English Language Learners tested proficient in math and reading in both the kindergarten through eighth grade and the high school levels. We still have much work to do in this area and are awaiting a year-long evaluation of our programs for ELL students that has been conducted by George Washington University, a leading University with expertise in the field.
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Our students with disabilities have also tested proficient in reading and math.
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We began last summer a major professional development initiative to implement inclusionary instructional practices across the district so that children with disabilities are no longer taught in isolation, and there is an ongoing initiative to offer all services in neighborhood schools so that children with special needs are not transported out of their home school communities for instruction.
I hope you have already noticed a very significant change thus far in my remarks that is very important to the success of MNPS. It is the development of a new culture of collaboration at Metro Schools where we work with more community partners, government organizations and between school system employees and departments. We are tearing down silos to improve efficiencies and to better serve our students •
Earlier, I mentioned our free master’s degree program with Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. That is just one of our university collaborations. At Vanderbilt we are continuing our collaboration on the Vanderbilt School for Science and Math. Participating high school students engage in a four-year, researchcentered approach to study that connects sciences, technology, engineering, and math. During the academic year, students attend classes on the Vanderbilt campus one full day per week. Dr. Ginny Shepherd, who is the inventor and matriarch of this program, is now collaborating with us to expand into new initiatives in the near future. We are planning to start STEM academies for science, technology, mathematics and engineering in some elementary, middle and high schools next year.
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We are also working with Lipscomb University on ways to help our ELL students achieve--and instructors from Lipscomb’s Conflict Management Institute are teaching some of our middle school students about peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. We are collaborating with Tennessee State University on reading labs in schools, with Trevecca on leadership and with Belmont on numerous fronts. We expect to continue to build on our university partnerships.
Our collaboration with Mayor Dean is extensive and deep. I don’t think I need to speak to the critical importance of having a Mayor whose priority is public education. In Page 9 of 13
addition to those efforts already mentioned, let me highlight our collaboration with the Nashville Public Library to give school librarians access to the Nashville Public Library collection. A pilot program has already begun at Pearl Cohn, Hillsboro and Hillwood to start this initiative. School librarians will soon be able to order a book and have it delivered to their school within two days…So, in just 48 hours, the seven thousand volume library at Pearl Cohn can become a rich resource with more than one million volumes. Ingram Books has joined this effort and has donated electronic books to the libraries to further expand access for our students and teachers. The Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA), which is the Mayor’s new after school initiative for middle school students, is another example of this new collaboration. It provides quality, engaging programs to middle school students when the school day ends. When NAZA is implemented across the county, it will give students a focus for their energies, opportunities for academic and social enrichment, and will ultimately keep them engaged and in school. I cannot begin to enumerate the invaluable, priceless partnerships we have in this community that exist now and that must be developed as we move forward…PENCIL, the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, Alignment Nashville, United Way, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the YMCA, Conexion Americas, and the Interdenominational Ministerial Fellowship are just a few. Let’s think in another direction now. You have heard about many of the programs we have in Metro Schools to help our students succeed. We are offering these programs in the context of providing our families more choices when it comes to creating the best educational plans for their children. The zoning plan implementation is completing its first year. Students in some areas may choose between two schools and all students may apply for schools that have open seats through our open enrollment process. We also offer students whose families
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move across school zones during the school year the opportunity to continue at their original school through the highest grade offered. These choices are in addition to those we offer families through our specialty and magnet schools. In the future, families will have even more options. We are developing a federal magnet school grant proposal that will create six new magnet schools, including: •
Museum magnet schools at Wharton Elementary and John Early Middle schools;
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Science, technology, engineering and mathematics magnets at Hattie Cotton elementary, Bailey Middle and Stratford High schools; and
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The entertainment industry magnet at Pearl Cohn.
These new magnet schools will offer the highest quality instructional programs and will reduce minority group isolation through expanded, attractive choices for all students and parents. So far, I have talked about our challenges and about many positive strategies to improve the quality of instruction in our public schools. We must recognize that our environment is rapidly changing on many fronts, and that there are more challenges ahead. This year, academic standards are being raised very significantly in Tennessee, as they should. We know that our schools will be graded against those higher standards this year when the new test scores come out and that the scores will not be as good. In fact, when the new math standards were applied to last year’s test scores across the state, the only high school in the state that passed based on the new standards was Hume Fogg... There must be a transition to the new standards that recognizes this change, but that is a policy decision outside our control. We must understand that test scores will be the last thing to change. One of the results of the special legislative session in January was the creation of an Achievement School District that allows the State Department of Education to take over Page 11 of 13
schools if any group of students consistently fails to make adequate yearly progress. Two of our schools were takeover candidates. Thanks to the leadership of Education Commissioner Tim Webb, we are collaborating with the department and incorporating its directives and ideas into plans to support our students. Through this collaboration, our schools receive the best of what Metro Nashville Public Schools and the State Department of Education have to offer. Innovative practices at Glencliff High and Cameron Middle schools are being developed now in collaboration with the State that will result in improved performance of our students in those schools. We will continue to work with our English Language Learner students and the thousands of children who are economically disadvantaged so they will excel academically. I am encouraged by the work in our transformation efforts in these areas. I believe there is a key element for success in these areas that we must address going forward. I believe that success lies in the extent to which we can meaningfully engage all parents in the education of their children. We must develop positive, active relationships between families and schools. It is distressing to know that many of our non-English speaking parents are not connected. It is distressing that too many of our families do not feel welcome and are not actively engaged. We must change this in our schools and community. We must encourage and enhance parental engagement. In a large and diverse community such as ours, this is not easy, but we embrace this task because we know our diversity is a source of strength. After hearing about our schools this evening, I hope you share my optimism. I am working with a dedicated and focused Board of Education, and a very talented leadership team, including our in-house staff, some external consultants, numerous volunteers and community allies. We have a large, committed group of people who are bringing their talents to execute our vision of being the first choice for Nashville’s families.
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An annual State of the Schools allows us to measure our work over time and that is appropriate. In some respects, we have much in common with Captain Earnest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. In 1914, he organized an expedition to explore the Antarctic. Before he reached land, his ship was hemmed in by ice in the waters around Antarctica. Eventually, the ship sank. Shackleton knew he and his crew would have to save themselves. Shackleton moved his crew and supplies to an ice floe where he established a routine for his men so that when they reached land, they would be fit…and disciplined…and ready for the future. Importantly, this routine kept the crew working together. They collaborated and supported each other. After months adrift, the party finally reached land. Most of the party set up camp while Captain Shackleton and five others crossed 800 miles of open ocean in a lifeboat…to reach an inhabited island. After a harrowing journey, Shackleton secured a ship, recruited a rescue party and returned every member of his crew—and one stowaway-safely home to England after nearly two years in the Antarctic. They endured harsh conditions and continual challenges by remaining disciplined…adapting to change…staying focused on their goal…and working together. We have put structures in place to ensure we share effective strategies across the district and we have tightened up on our resources to ensure we use them wisely. Like Shackleton and his crew, we will remain focused on our goal of preparing our students and our schools for the future, adapting to change, and working together. I appreciate your support of our schools and your time this evening. On behalf of Nashville’s public schools and our more than 76,000 students—thank you. --MNPS--
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