September 5, 2010
September 5, 2010
Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) system serves over 75,000 students, and covers Davidson County, an area of approximately 525 square miles. It is the 49th largest school district in the nation. There are 132 schools, including 73 elementary schools, 37 middle schools, 17 high schools, two alternative learning centers, three special education schools and two charter schools. As a large urban system, MNPS faces a myriad of challenges. The district serves a diverse population made up of a high percentage of low income students, students of color, English Language Learners and students with special needs. More than 55 percent (39,775) of all MNPS students are economically disadvantaged. In the last five years, the low income student population of the district has increased by more than ten percent (8,815 students).
The MNPS District recognized a specific need for intervention with incoming freshmen. Among the 12 comprehensive high schools, many ninth graders in the District never make it to the tenth grade. Not only was the graduation rate below MNPS expectations and requirements, but many students who graduated did not attend postsecondary education or did not complete and graduate upon postsecondary education attendance.
In light of these challenges, the principals of Nashville’s public high schools and the district leadership stepped forward to activate sweeping change to improve student performance. As of 2009, all of MNPS’ large high schools are moving in the direction of re-organizing as Small Learning Communities (SLC) to help teachers collaborate around improving their curriculum and teaching and giving more personalized attention to each student, so that every student knows and is known by caring adults and his or her peers. In concert with the SLC approach, Nashville is also implementing Career-themed Academies to engage all students with learning that is rigorous and relevant – preparing them for college-level work through the context of career interests. The goal is for all students to be college and career prepared.
As of early 2009, the district has in place freshman academies and advisories in all 12 comprehensive high schools. Seven of the 12 high schools are beginning career centers (a transitional activity) during the 2008-2009 school year. The district is moving toward career\thematic academies in all 12 of the districts high schools by 2010-2011.
Your browser may not support display of this image. To honor its bold initiatives in high school redesign using the career academy and SLC reform strategies, in April 2009 the Ford Motor Company Fund recognized the Metro Nashville Public Schools as one of the leading communities in the nation as part of the Next Generation Learning Communities.1
This case study explains where Nashville currently is positioned in its journey of school redesign, and gives a glimpse of the future directions it is pursuing to build strong community and employer connections. These connections will sustain, protect and guide the district’s ongoing efforts to improve student learning and prepare students for lives of learning, earning and civic engagement.
Back to TopIn 2006, based on a number of factors, including poor academic performance and high dropout rates, MNPS was placed in corrective action by the Tennessee Department of Education.
In January 2006, eight high school principals began working together informally, questioning how they could improve the poor performance of high school students in Nashville. They determined they needed to take aggressive action to increase attendance and graduation and cut the high dropout rate. With help from Alignment Nashville, a nonprofit organization working with Metro Nashville Public Schools to align community resources on behalf of improving education, these principals applied for a Smaller Learning Communities grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
The purpose of the federal funding for the Small Learning Communities (SLC) program is to organize large public high schools (over 1,000 students) into smaller grouping of students to improve personalization strategies and student achievement. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “SLCs include structures such as freshman academies, multi-grade academies organized around career interests or other themes, “houses” in which small groups of students remain together throughout high school, and autonomous schools-within-a-school, as well as personalization strategies, such as student advisories, family advocate systems, and mentoring programs.” 2
Design Element on Display. See 3.a. “District approach to Themed-options
In the fall of 2006, MNPS received a $6.5 million Small Learning Community grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help redesign its large comprehensive high schools. In its original application, district leaders and principals recognized a specific need for intervention with incoming freshmen, since among the comprehensive high schools, many ninth graders never make it to the tenth grade. The grant provided resources to help the proposed eight high schools begin implementing small learning communities, which included freshman academies, advisories and career/thematic academies on a school wide basis.
Design Element on Display. See 2.a. “Strategic alignment to economic sectors
During the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years, the district conducted intensive needs assessments and professional development activities to support effective implementation of
In October 2006, the district opened the Office of Redesign and Innovation with James Briggs as Director. Also, in October 2006, shortly after the grant was awarded, Starr Herrman was moved from another position in MNPS to manage the SLC implementation process. Ms. Herrman shared her previous role and the new role for a few months, then in early 2007, began working full-time on SLC implementation.
During late 2006, district leadership and school-based staff wrote job descriptions for the site coaches, held meetings with SLC principals to plan for implementation, identified best practices and important research to support implementation of freshman academies; and began planning “advisory programs” in the first eight project high schools.
In January 2007, a large constituency from eight high schools attended the national meeting of the National Career Academy Coalition that met in St. Louis. At the conference, the concept of the Career Center was presented. This led to discussions and ultimately to the decision to implement career centers in tenth grade in preparation for full implementation of career academies in eleventh and twelfth grades for the comprehensive high schools.
In the beginning of 2007, schools were asked to complete a career center proposal to determine readiness for moving from freshman academies to career centers. The SLC office wanted to be sure schools moving from freshman academies to the next step were prepared for success. They were asked to address how they were choosing career centers based on information given from the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and workforce development data along with assessing needed resources and surveying students regarding their career interests.
Design Element on Display. See 5.c. “Supports for teaching excellence
Also in early 2007, site coaches began working in the eight high schools. In the MNPS model, each school employs a “site coach”, using the SLC grant funds.
These site coaches were trained in many aspects of school organization and district objectives and worked with the Project Director to determine the implementation strategy to be used by the district to meet the timeline of the grant. The coach is responsible for organizing the implementation effort, requesting funds and overseeing the school’s professional development initiatives.
During this time, the SLC principals identified the barriers to implementation that were unique to their school, as well as common district-wide barriers, and possible remedies to those problems. Site and district personnel expanded their knowledge by attending SLC conferences and model schools for site visits in such locations as Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lincoln County, Tennessee, Bowling Green, Kentucky, St. Louis, Missouri, Blythewood, South Carolina, Chicago, Illinois, and Russellville, Kentucky.
Building on this knowledge, district and school leaders articulated vision, mission and objectives for the district to help drive the implementation of SLCs in the district.
In February 2007, the district SLC coordinator met with staff from the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor’s office, Alignment Nashville, and assistant superintendents. Through these meetings, the district developed a more specific plan for career academy implementation in the district, looking at regional workforce needs, known resources, needed resources, and the status of the Freshman Academies. In addition, the regionally-based PENCIL Foundation which focuses on education in Nashville, the Alignment and postsecondary institutions were engaged to determine the best way to increase business engagement with career academies.
During the Spring and Summer of 2007, one of the growing pains that emerged was that some leaders in the district saw the Smaller Learning Communities grant as a stand-alone grant program, rather than a key component of a strategy for driving and coordinating the serious improvements that were urgently needed in high schools.
In July 2007, CTE Coordinator Starr Herrmann made a presentation to the Board of Education, explaining the history of in the district and the possible reasons behind decline of enrollment and students who took a concentration of CTE courses. This presentation helped the Board understand the connection between declining CTE and increasing drop-out rates, and the promise of career academies to bring a fresh sense of relevance to high school programs. In the fall of 2007, there was another important Board presentation by the SLC director and site coaches to educate and update the board regarding implementation and planning for SLCs.
For the career academy model to work effectively, it must draw from both academic and Career and Technical Education programs that are well-developed and supported. As previously noted, CTE had fallen by the wayside in the district over a number of years. To begin to remedy this oversight, during summer 2007, the Director of SLCs was also named as the Director of Career and Technical Education for MNPS. The office hired a CTE coordinator and a CTE program specialist to assist the director manager in improving CTE in the district. CTE lead teachers were also designated in each high school as well.
In Fall 2007, Alignment Nashville helped the director of SLCs organize a Career Academy Alignment Committee. The committee was comprised of district personnel, Alignment Nashville staff, business and community partners, which included representatives from the Mayor’s office, the Chamber of Commerce and the PENCIL Foundation, along with representatives from postsecondary institutions. The Alignment Committee’s purpose was to formulate plans for broader business, community, and political support for the district implementation of career academies.
In October 2007, the district brought in an expert recommended through the Ford Fund, Mike Neubig, to begin work with scheduling issues for the next school year. Neubig helped provide consultants for training for the site coaches, providing forms and processes to support effective advisory and team meetings within the academy. There was also some training provided in interdisciplinary planning for curriculum coordinators. Additional assistance by consultants Robin Shrode, Dave Holden, Bob Holman and Katy Bainbridge focused on needed assistance for implementing formative assessments, instructional coaching, teaching strategies for the longer “block” periods, the integration of academics and CTE, and planning for a forthcoming SLC Summer Institute.
Professional development also involved introducing guidance, curriculum and instructional resources about the national framework of 16 career clusters. At the end of 2007, during the advisory classes teachers provided information to students about the national model of 16 career clusters, and then students took career interest surveys.
In March 2008, the District approved a planning phase for career academy implementation to guarantee that schools were strategic and thoughtful in planning, while considering existing resources and requesting necessary items for career academy implementation in their respective schools (Criteria for the proposals is included in Appendix ?).
In April 2008, the SLC office requested schools to complete a proposal form to be submitted to a committee which would potentially approve development of career centers in 2008-2009 school year.
Also in May 2008, the district hosted a major SLC Institute, in which about 350 high school teachers participated daily over a three day period. They learned about all aspects of SLC’s, including freshman academy teacher teams collaboration around student achievement and student behavior, all the organizational aspects of a SLC, formative assessment, the role of guidance counselors, and differentiated instruction, among other topics. This spring institution was followed up by intensive summer training for teams of teacher.
Design Element on Display. See 3.a. “District approach to themed options
In Spring 2008, the Alignment Committee named a committee to review proposals from high schools for implementing career academies in the high schools (based on labor market data, student surveys regarding career interests, resources available in the high school and district, and status of implementation of freshman academies).
In the same time frame, the State legislature approved a proposal allowing MNPS to pilot-test an increase in CTE class sizes for certain classes, allowing greater flexibility to help with scheduling CTE and academic teachers on the same teams for career academies.
In June 2008, the district’s Office of Redesign and Innovation was dismantled and one of the directors of SLCs, Jim Briggs, was promoted to Associate Superintendent of High Schools in Curriculum and Instruction. The change in organization at the district office was intended to better support Curriculum and Instruction. The project director of the SLC grant and Director of SLCs for the district were moved under Curriculum and Instruction office and began reporting directly to the Associate Superintendent for High Schools.
In July 2008, the district’s new budget included funding for SLC site coaches for two additional high schools, which provided a site coach for each of the 12 comprehensive high schools, meaning that site coaches for four of the 12 high schools are funded through district funds vs. the federal SLC funds that support site coaches at the original 8 grantee schools. District funds paid an eleventh month for all 13 site coaches. Also, district funds were committed to hiring an additional SLC site coach at McGavock High, which is the largest high school in the state with over 3,000 students. One of the McGavock site coaches continues to focus on freshman academies and the other is coordinating plans for career centers and career academies.
In August 2008, the PENCIL Foundation and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce began efforts to establish a speaker’s bureau to work with all high schools. These speakers will help students understand career options, how to determine their interests and move into the work world, and what are the general employability/workplaces skills and attitudes that are necessary for success.
Also that month, the Communications Department of the district created a compact disk (CD) on the Career Academy initiative to educate and inform the public about career academies in MNPS. Through the division of Family and Community Communications, and Parent University, which is a parent group developed through Alignment Nashville, this CD was distributed extensively to community organizations, business groups, and families.
During summer of 2008, the Career Academy Alignment Committee submitted invitations to community and business organizations to provide advice how best to strategically engaging business to support career academies in the comprehensive high schools. The Chamber of Commerce and the PENCIL Foundation led the efforts to develop industry councils for support organized around six broad category career clusters that represent the many beginning high school academies. The six categories include:
These councils will work to develop an ongoing partnership relationship between local organization or businesses and the various schools. This will allow all schools to have equal access to support. In September 2008, the first Industry Council (Hospitality and Tourism) began work to support career academies. As of early 2009, four of the councils have been formed and are meeting regularly. In March 2009, the Business, Marketing and Information Technology Council met was organized and met, and in April 2009, the Arts, Media & Communications Council will meet. These councils have later been named partnership councils rather than industry councils.
Design Element on Display. See 5.c. “Supports for teaching excellence”
Throughout 2008, extensive professional development (PD) was offered to high school teachers, particularly in the areas of highly functioning teams, formative assessment, differentiated instruction, and advisories. These were targeted for ninth and tenth grade teachers who would be implementing freshman academies and career centers in their high schools. Offering such a wide range of PD for high school teachers was new to Nashville schools. Much of the emphasis for PD for the past seven years had not targeted high school issues. An innovative model, in which consultants worked throughout the 2008-09 school year with the teams to help them become highly functioning, proved to be beneficial to the teams and to the staffs as a whole.
Back to TopDesign Element on Display. See 3.a. “District approach to themed options”
In many districts across the nation, career academies are offered as a specialized program within a school that is offered only to a small number of students, perhaps between 40 to 80 students. Through the SLC federal grants, several hundred schools have undertaken the effort to implement themselves as “wall-to-wall” small learning communities, using career academies for its upper classmen, if not all students in grades 9-12. Still, these “wall-to-wall” schools usually co-exist with a majority of high schools in their districts that operate on a traditional structure that offers a minority of students true college-preparatory studies, some students career preparation, and other students a watered-down set of classes that neither prepares students for college nor the workplace. However, Nashville is one of only a handful of districts in the nation that is bringing “wall-to-wall” reform for ALL of its large high schools. The Nashville strategy is designed to integrate college-prep rigor with career-prep relevancy.
As noted earlier, as soon as the school principals applied for the SLC funding and received the grant, the district took action to put in place a district-based project manager to work with and support each of the schools in their SLC implementation. As the reform took hold, the district approved the use of local funds to support SLC site-coaches in additional schools that were not directly covered by the federal grant. The district also funded an eleventh month for each site coach.
The district also took action to closely link the functions of SLC implementation to career academies and the district’s career and technical education activities. In contrast, it has not been uncommon in other districts for high school redesign/career academies to operate independently from career and technical education. This approach of consolidating these activities reflects one of the Best Practices recognized by the Ford Fund’s Next Generation Learning Communities.
In February 2007, another supportive district activity was the designation by the Board of a staff member within the Communications Department to be directly responsible for developing SLC communications. This person provided information to be posted on the MNPS website, developed a brochure about SLCs, recruited local press to attend announcements and events, and inserted up to date information in district communication tools that are sent regularly to school leaders and school staff members.
In July 2008, the district funded an SLC Program Specialist position to help with the implementation and sustainability of Freshman Academies, Advisories and Freshman Seminar, along with business engagement and community and parent participation and support.
Each school and CTA is required to submit an annual review of its program and also provide amendments to its original project proposal. The district staff conducts an initial review of these amended plans, and for some schools, requests an in-person presentation on the program’s review. The in-person presentation is made before the Partnership Council, consisting of representatives from the six industry councils, the chamber of commerce, and district staff representing curriculum/instruction and CTE.
Although MNPS is one of the largest districts in the state, student enrollment in its Career and Technical Education programs was relatively weak. The number students who took at least three CTE courses was below average in comparison to other districts. At the same time, Nashville students reported that they did not see relevance in their learning in school. Thus, it was decided that career relevance and other themes (like fine arts, journalism) would be a major emphasis of the district’s reform.
In the MNPS reform model, the Site Coach is responsible for coordinating the school redesign and to be the principal’s liaison to school staff, site-based planning teams, as well as the district SLC Director.. Site Coaches were trained in many areas, including the new 16 “Career Clusters,” which provide the broad structure for organizing career academies and linking these academies to clusters of economic sector, and pathways within these clusters.3 The Site Coaches need a thorough understanding of the Cluster/Pathway structure so they advise staff in adopting career academies. In addition, the site coaches began educating faculties on the structure and philosophy of smaller learning communities.
As the role of site coaches evolved, the district paid out of local funds salaries for the eleventh month of salary for site coaches (up from the original 10 month contract). The district also decided to fund site coaches and professional development for two other high schools that were not originally in the grant. This brought the total number of schools moving toward the SLC structure to 12 schools.
The MNPS high school redesign around Smaller Learning Communities and Career/Thematic Academies grew out of school-based leadership, among principals at the original 8 sites and their staff members. These leaders saw the dramatic need for improved student achievement, collaborated with each other, and sought external funding to support the effort. The district responded to and supported the school-based leadership.
As important as school-based leadership is, one of the biggest challenges to the CTA redesign effort in subsequent years is significant transition of leadership within Nashville’s high schools. Specifically, in summer 2008, under the State Department of Education’s guidance, four principals were removed from high schools and replaced with principals that had not previously been closely associated with the SLC reforms. It seems to take several months for the new principals to become acquainted with the SLC reform, and this process significant slows the school’s progress in implementing the CTA’s and raising achievement.
Through the course of the implementation of SLCs in Nashville high schools, there have been three changes of the Director of School (known as “superintendent” in many district)., which as impacted the SLC implementation. While none of the directors have been opposed to SLCs, there have been times of uncertainty until the new Director stated his mission and plans for the district.
The broader involvement of the employer community and community organizations is another key factor in supporting and protecting the high school redesign strategies underway in Nashville.
Alignment Nashville, a community based non-profit organization, helped develop a committee that included representation from MNPS, community and businesspeople to organize business engagement strategies for the career academies. Importantly, there is a district-wide strategy for employer engagement, rather than leaving each school and career academy on its own to develop those employer outreach strategies. This is particularly valuable to help businesses related to career academies in different schools that share the same career theme.
Marc Hill, the education and workforce development liaison with the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, actively supported legislative changes that allowed certain CTE classes to increase enrollment so that they could more easily accommodate scheduling demands for the freshman and tenth grade career centers. MNPS was successful in becoming a pilot to test the concept of increased enrollment for these programs. The Nashville Chamber in 2008 also hired an additional staff person to handle employer engagement and coordination with the career academies on a day-to-day basis.
External foundations like the PENCIL foundation have been active partners in offering resources for the career academies, and also for coordinating funding applications for national foundation support.
The Ford Motor Company Fund has a long-time relationship with the MNPS, dating back to the districts early adoption of a program called FAMS, the award-winning Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences (FAMS). FAMS laid the foundation for a successor initiative, called Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies, which offers project-based and inquiry-based teaching and learning strategies, supported for a sophisticated and engaging interdisciplinary curriculum.
In 2007, the Ford Fund launched a new initiative, the Next Generation Learning Communities, which supports broad community efforts to improve high schools through career and themed-academies, particularly through the development of a community and employer-led master planning process to support the career academies.
In summer of 2007, several leaders from MNPS attended a conference in Louisville, KY organized by the Ford Fund, and heard the stories and experiences of career academy implementers and their business partners from several regions of the United States. Another group of MNPS leaders attended a similar conference held in California in the summer of 2008.
This case study was prepared by Starr Herrman and Hans Meeder. Ms. Herrman is a 40-year educator in the Nashville Schools, serving as a high school CTE teacher and IT department manager before becoming the district Smaller Learning Communities Director. Ms. Herrman has several years experience working as a consultant for high school reform, career academies and interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
Mr. Meeder is President of the Meeder Consulting Group, a consulting firm providing research, analysis and strategic advisement on promising education practices, and was formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education. For more information, visit the website: www.meederconsulting.com.
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