Graduation Summit Recap

[Lisa Starbuck]

The graduation summit today at Fulton High School was quite inspiring and it was great to see so many School Matters friends there!

It was not so great that only a few school board members were there - I saw Indya Kincannon, Karen Carson and Robert Bratton. If any other SB members were there, I didn't see them. Also, there were a few commissioners and council members. I remember seeing Amy Broyles, Ed Shouse, Finbarr Saunders, Marilyn Roddy, and Bud Armstrong.

Some fairly dire information was presented on student performance and future implications, but also some really inspiring speakers talked about what is currently being done and what kind of changes need to occur to reverse some of those shocking statistics.

It was depressing to hear the facts about education statistics related to high school dropouts. Hearing about the NAEP national benchmark scores that were recently released was also very depressing: did you know that Tennessee 8th graders currently rank at or near the bottom nationally in math? I think we were told that Tennessee 8th graders ranked last in the nation, but I can't find where the NAEP scores show that - maybe 2nd or 3rd from the bottom anyway. The bottom - that's just unacceptable!

Also, I really hadn't done the math myself to see that our system-wide graduation rate meant that over 1,700 teens dropped out and didn't graduate high school last year in Knox County. 1,700 kids! Think of all that wasted potential!

The inspiring part of the summit was that about 300 people showed up today to start the conversation about how to fix it. Several local youth program leaders, educators, administrators and advocates gave brief overviews about things they are doing or opportunities they see to improve graduation rates in Knox County. It is becoming clearer than ever that we NEED community schools - that parents and educators can't do it alone.

But it was comments made by some of the students that made me tear up a little with hope and pride that we had such thoughtful and articulate young people in our community! It really gives me hope for the future - and I surely needed that.

After the large group program, we all split into smaller groups - one for each high school. I choose the Gibbs group - they are one of the high schools that are really struggling with graduation rates and community involvement - and it is the school my children would be zoned for, if I had any children.

The Gibbs group was facilitated by Ahnna Estes and Lynn Hill, the principal at Gibbs High. There were several students in the group, some teachers, other administrators, and a couple of parents and community members. I was impressed with the discussion in the smaller group, especially comments by some of the students about what they think causes kids to drop out, and ideas they have for solutions they think will work.

Our group will be meeting again soon to talk about how to impact the school in a positive way. I'm looking forward to the challenge - and to learning more about Gibbs High. I will be posting about our progress.

Kudos to the organizers - Jennifer Evans and Ahnna Estes with the Chamber workforce development group. They did a great job getting the ball rolling - now it's up to us to keep it going and make it grow.

[Vic Spencer]

I also felt that this was a very good meeting. It is actually very positive in my opinion that Jim McIntyre presented the bad news with NAEP results. Parents need to know that to be motivated to develop a higher expectation for the children, and to understand why the American Diploma Project has increased the amount of work our children have to do. It was good to hear that Jim McIntyre also explained what impact the low performance shown by the NAEP results will create many jobless people out of today's children, unless they work harder to increase those scores. It was good to hear from him as well the fact that the graduation rate went from 79% to 81%. These are all very needed and positive points.

I would like to suggest a few items to be covered for a subsequent conference for Jim McIntyre. He probably is considering it already, but here is what I think.

Currently we are presenting single year data on the situation, reflecting on how we did last year. This is static information. It gives a much better understanding to people in general if we present dynamic data; that is trends, and add, but not substitute, trend curves, if possible with forecast curves. With forecast curves it would not be a bad idea to talk a little about the options that they present for the future of our kids.

We are presenting everything in US focused terms. Yes, TN is doing poorly in US NAEP terms, but the competition today, and more in the future is not domestic but foreign countries, 33 of whom passed us in math as an example, when we used to be among the best 4 decades ago. That is why we are flooded with imported products and we are buying them because they are better. They are better because they graduate enough science and engineering PhDs for reasearch and development, and we are not. We are not graduating enough of them because the amount of knowledge with which we graduate kids from high school is not enough for a huge majority of them (88%!!!) to cut the mustard in college, and especially in science and engineering. That is why we must have much better performance coming out of our high schools and that will happen only if parental and teacher expectations become much higher, AND the school system adds a few simple programs to make our students much more motivated about the fantastic future possibilities they will have - if they produce much better results. So I would suggest an international focus instead of a domestic focus for these reasons.

Because of the above, I would also focus a little more on the fact that HS graduation is not an end in itself, but a vital gateway to jobs and more importantly to science and engineering careers that we need badly and where the real money is for the kids. Without it, the great majority of our kids will be unemployed, poor, and there is no way we will have the money to support them (less tax income, less social services - so say goodbye to welfare in the future under these conditions). I could tell you about designs in robotics coming in 5 years that will simply replace the manual jobs that today's high school grads hold. That does not leave much time to turn things around. If the American (TN) Diploma Project does not work better than specified within 4 years, we are cooked and will become like Mexico or worse. Robots will work 24/7, without complaints, doing a perfect job, for a lot less money (cost to the companies).

I would like to ask Jim McIntyre to please consider increasing the 100/90/90/90 ACT-related goals. I detailed this in an email to him and Indya M and to my BOE representative. The coming technology in robotics simply does not give us the amount of time we need specified in the strategic plan (2020). 100/90/90/90 needs to be achieved as specified by 2014 for our kids to be competitive enough. By that I mean that you need not change what is written in the 5-year plan, but the 100/90/90/90 goals have to be achieved by 2014 or robotics will take jobs away from our kids big time.

I would also suggest increased focus on those kids in the middle performance area who could be raised to go to graduate school in science and engineering eventually to save our countries economy.

Please remember that I am not just making up things. If you want to see expert opinion and backup for all this, you can find them at my Web site at www.knoxedu.info .

[Jamey Dobbs]

I join Lisa in her assessment. I thought it was a great event and valuable for seeing all the other citizens who will be working to help high schools meet their graduation goals.

Several of us who worked with Powell High will be doing some follow up to our session. Our session was facilitated by a staffer from Workforce Connections and included the principal, a student, and several members of the League of Women Voters. We were given individual statistics on the school, and the principal shared some context of their dropping graduation rate. More signed up for this session, so I will try to track them down to join us.

If you missed this event, KCS will be posting the video soon on the their website. We'll watch for it and post here when it does. If anyone from that area would like to join the Powell group, get in touch with me at [e-mail].

Thanks to all the folks who did the organizing! Great event!

[Ahnna]

Thank you Lisa for a wonderful and informative article! Thanks to all the School Matter's followers that were able to participate in the summit. We have received many positive comments about the success of the event and look forward to hearing about future activities that are a result of the summit. I would like to make a point to thank all of the other people who worked on our planning team to make this vision a reality. They are: Amy Brantham, Anna Graham, Anna Rennich, Ben Mallicoat, Bill Parker, Bill Phillips, Chris Graves, Clifford Davis, Dan Parker, David Dupper, Drema Bowers, Ed Hedgepeth, Indya Kincannon, Julie Hembree, Karen Pershing, Kelly Drummond, Laurie Driver, Leah Adinolfi, Lynn Hill, Mariah Watson, Matt Murray, Montina Jones, Nancy Headlee, Pam Trainor, Roy Gresham, Sarah Bast, Shelbi Bias, Stephanie Potter, Susan Ownby, Tammy Sommers, Trent Sanders, Zach Saunders. Most of this group met at least once a month since March and worked hard to ensure that this summit would be the catalyst to begin these conversations and develop partnerships between the schools and the community members.

Ahnna Estes