e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e to establish a for Mr cins here M Albertson here Mr H
here Mr Gentile Victoria Haro design for Dr Gentile Mr Jensen here Miss Johnson here miss
Maxwell here M mcinturf here Mr mullenhour Mr Wells here chairman Eevee here here Mr chair you have nine voting
members present I declare we do have a quorum and we're duly established I would like to First say how excited we are at being here at tant Stanton uh we had an outstanding tour this morning and being hosted by the
tant e e e e e students uh just to guy told us in there in the tool and die 40 bucks an hour working up the
street here I mean that that's a whole lot of money here for somebody's 181 19 20 years old so we just got to figure out as a team how we get the obstacles out of the way uh and get get kids here and get them in these opportunities that that
are frankly pretty spe spacular so I want to thank y'all for being here and I especially want to thank the folks from the administration here and for uh and SK for what they're doing to really uh change our district uh and in the
opportunity that I think we all realize uh it's just really beginning to emerge and so just thank you for being here and look forward to our meeting I think what we heard this morning was that once again fully operational every 47 seconds
a car will be rolling off the assembly line and from the time that car uh materials first comes into the facility to the time a car comes off is only a day and a half pretty amazing pretty amazing good example of how again
education throughout K through 12 higher ed in Workforce are working together and this is a great example for that any other further comments yeah Vice chair cins we were fortunate to be joined by two other
superintendents uh today uh Dr versy Hammet from F County schools and Amy Marsh from Haywood County school so we want to thank them as well yes thank you very much any other
comments well pursuant to section8 of policy 1.400 the board meetings policy workshops or meeting of the State Board sitting as a committee of the whole I ask unanimous consent that the State Board then dissolve itself into Committee of the whole for the purposes
of conducting our Workshop is there any objection hearing no objection I declare that we are in the committee the whole for the purpose of conducting our Workshop I want to remind presenters to identify themselves by their title and position for the record when presenting
also remind presenters that the use of acronyms or jargon should be explained when used so that all tennesseans can readily understand the subjects being discussed regardless of their individual background with that we will get on into the
agenda first item is school turnaround pilot program miss Robin cot from the State Department of Education good afternoon my name is Robin cop I am the assistant commissioner for school turn around for the department
and I'm try to [Music] okay okay we did a we did a mic check but we didn't do a clicker [Music] check I've got the that just that the the system that we're
using here was actually installed on Monday and uh so we are we are the first folks that have been hosted here and uh we we went through some drills and got this working properly um
I think the board members there we go perfect this way okay okay we'll start again my name is Robin cop I'm the assistant commissioner for school turnaround for the department and I'm here today to do an overview with you
guys for the school turnaround pilot program act we'll talk we'll do a a quick overview then I'll go over the statutory requirements the timelines and Milestones and then at the end we leave some time for any questions that you
might have so in Spring of 2021 the general assembly passed the school turnaround pilot program act it is now cified in TCA 496 371 through
3708 and what this is It's a four-year pilot program that gives five schools that are priorities schools across the state the opportunity to partner with an outside turnaround vendor or a turnaround expert and a locally
appointed School turnaround committee to design and Implement a sort of an Innovative School turnaround plan at the end of this year we will measure the success of the pilot program by
comparing the student performance outcomes of the the five pilot schools to the student performance outcomes of the non-pilot priority schools so the statutory requirements really require several
entities to work together those entities include the department the Lea the school turnaround committee and the school turnaround experts and we will look through the statutory requirements for all of those entities but before we
get started I want to point out something because you might ask where's the school leader in here and where is the school staff they are represented on the school turnaround committee they are integral part of the school school turnaround committee and developing the
plan and implementing the plan however their roles are not specifically called out in the statute so the department um is th this is a statutory requirements of the department and it's a pretty long
list the um the Act was was passed in the spring of 2021 and we started right away with creating this 4year school turnaround pilot program and it did begin in the 2122 school year we were
task with the development of a model School turnaround plan we then procured a list of qualified School turnaround experts the department went through a process to select those five priority
schools and those schools were diverse in grade bands and in geographic region um we reviewed gave feedback and approved the school turnaround plans for each of those five schools we were
tasked with the monitoring of the implementation of the turnaround plans as well well as the the implementation of the pilot program itself as well as the evaluation and progress of the um
reporting the valuation and progress through the yearly progress report that we send to the general assembly to the education committees and then we will develop a final report at the end of this school year we also were tasked
with developing a grant to fund the implementation of the program and a grant to fund the turnaround experts this these are the statutory requirements of the Lea the Lea is
responsible for the appointment of the school turnaround committee and we'll look at the the members of that Committee in just a moment the initiation of the contract with the school turnaround expert the Lea approved the school turn turn around
plan manage the contract to the school turnaround expert and also manage the implementation grants the school turnaround committee is intended to be The Driver of the this
school turnaround plan and the school turnaround program they are tasked with the implementation of the plan and they are really the driver of the decision making the committee is the school
turnaround committee is is comprised of the Local School Board member in which the schools reside and I know we have one of the local school board members from Memphis Shelby County here hope to hear from from her soon um the school
principal three parents and those parents are actually appointed by the uh director of schools and then there's four teachers on the committee two are two of the teachers are appointed by the director of schools and two of the
teachers are appointed by the local school board the um each of the pilot schools also asks for district folks to be on the committee so they were there as um really as con for consultation
purposes but the committee were uh is comprised of those members the committee has a um pretty big task because like I said they're the drivers they recommend the partnership with the turnaround
expert that look different in each district um in Memphis Shelby County the the turnaround experts came before the big group and were voted on some of the districts um Cho their local Schoolboard
chose along with the school turnaround committee so um the the committee chose the experts they um assisted with this development of the school turnaround plan so they partnered with the expert and the
district folks to create actually create that school turnaround plan they then submitted the plan to the local board of education for approval and they are tasked with monitoring and revising the school turnaround plan throughout the
entire year so the school turnaround experts this is the um statutory requirements for the school turnaround experts they collected and analyzed data and this is really important because they didn't
just come in and look at one part of the school they looked at the data from the achievement data growth data they looked at Personnel they looked at culture finances curriculum assessments
instructional practices how it was how the school was governed the leadership the finances and the policies of the school um they were they are also charged with recommending changes in any
of those areas if they see that there's a shortfall in any of those areas that that U may be contributing to the underperformance of that school they are charged with the development and implementation um along with the with
the school turn Committee of the school turnaround plan and they also monitor the effectiveness of the plan and we'll get into that in a little bit but it's a little bit different model than what we have in the rest of the state because we
go through a 30-day cycle so it's a very short cycle of monitoring and in that short cycle the school turnaround expert and the turnaround committee have an opportunity to make changes if they see something going off rail off the rails
or to increase something if they see um a strategy is really being successful the school turnaround expert is also um tasked with providing ongoing implementation support and coaching for
both the staff and the school leader so another thing that the department was tasked to do is to develop a model School turnaround plan and so in the spring of 2021 we partnered with experts from
wested the West Ed um uh Center for school turnaround to develop a model School turnaround plan now this is a template it was not designed to be a you have to follow this plan but it was a
template that that really brought in best practices from turnaround turn turnaround practices Across the Nation and it focused on those conditions necessary to make those rapid changes in
in student achievement and growth but also to think about how do we take this organization the school and turn it into a high performing organization so that's a little bit longer process so the short
cycle student achieve and growth and then the longer like really making this into a high performing organization so that's why it is a template we also recognized that this is an Innovative
pilot and we did not want to pigeon hole um the district um the districts the schools and the experts into a plan if they had some innovative ideas and also recognizing that our school turnaround
experts have been doing this work they have some strategies that work and we wanted to make sure that they were able to implement those strategies so the model School turnaround plan was used to create the school turnaround plan and
they um both the model School plan and the turnaround plan have these elements in them so first of all is the finding of the comprehensive School analysis that big list of things that I said that they had to collect data on that
comprises the comprehensive School analysis and this is really an important part of this turnaround pilot in that we recognize each campus has unique needs has unique strengths and we wanted to
make sure that the comprehensive School analysis drove the plan that the plan really focused on what the shortcomings were of of that campus and also the
strengths the um then the the plan also includes recommendations regarding the Personnel the culture the curriculum assessments instructional practices governance
leadership policies finances and any other areas that may be necessary to actually implement the school turnaround plan it had to include measurable student goals and achievement a professional development plan for the
teachers that um really addressed instructional practices a leadership development plan to build the capacity of the school leader a monitoring plan to and a a communication plan to how to how to
communicate that um the progress to the stakeholders as as well as a timeline for implementation that aligned to the timelines established in the program so from there the department put out an
RFQ and we identified two turnaround experts to choose from and so the the districts and the uh turnaround committees were able to choose from two different turnaround experts um these in
statute the turn around experts had to have the following uh minimum qualifications first of all a a credible track record of improving student achievement for different types of
students and that had to be um evidenced by Statewide assessments they had to have experience in designing and evaluating datadriven instruction systems in public schools they had to have experience coaching administrators
and teachers on datadriven instructional models they had to have experience collaborating with various educate education entities that govern Public Schools I know you'll hear from cognia in a little bit about their partnership
with the Lea with the state department with other entities that govern the public schools experience delivering High high quality professional development and coaching and instructional Effectiveness to public school administrators and teachers and
the ability to travel to whatever school we um that we had identified because at that time we had not identified the schools so the next thing that the department was tasked to do is actually identify the schools and we
began um in the summer of 2021 that process to identify eligible schools the schools that were eligible to participate in the pilot program were current priority schools who had been
identified um at least two consecutive Cycles or that's six years so they had been identified as a priority school for at least six years and either had stagnant or declining Tas scores so
stagnant or ining growth and so from there we came up with a list of schools and these are the schools that were chosen as you can see they are diverse across the state the statute required us to have at least one school in each
Grand Division and at least one school in each grade band so there's one high school two middle schools two elementary schools um Hamilton County Jackson Madison two in Memphis Shelby County and
one in Metro Nashville and also listed is the turnaround vendor that was chosen so three of the schools chose a direction to the schools chose cognia the statute also allows for the Department to create an implementation
Grant to sort of jumpstart the implementation of the strategies in the in the actual turnaround plan so in 2022 23 school year the department used School Improvement funds so that's title 1A
School Improvement funds and used a per pupil allocation and you can see on this slide what the allocations were to allow the schools to really be Innovative think outside the box and use these
funds to implement new new strategies that were not funded with other funding sources the contract payment is a little bit different from a traditional contract in that 50% of the of the funds that are due to
the turnaround experts are paid on a pro-rated basis throughout the contract as the services are rendered so they get 50% of the funds they do not get the additional 50% unless the school EX
meets priority exit criteria so these vendors knew this upfront they knew they had a challenge to get these schools off the priority list to set them up for success and they took on that challenge knowing that they
may not get paid the additional 50% the department is tasked with providing information on the progress of this pilot to the general assembly by October 1st each year and so we have filed reports and those are available if
you guys want them we'll be happy to get them to you um around the implementation and the effectiveness of the school turnaround plans and the pilot itself these are some of those vendors were able to get into the schools in
January December January and start the work and so they were in the schools December 21 or January of 22 to actually start the work some of them actually didn't start the work until about April
so there's a mixed bag of when the work actually started depending on when the contract was approved by the district this is the year 2 Data so this is full implementation of the pilot program and
I'll give you a minute just a look at that I do want to highlight though um a couple of things from year one to year two Lincoln Elementary went from a level one to a level five in
TAS Hawkins Mill Elementary went from 11.3 teap success rate to 20.1 and both Hawkins Mill and Tresvant High School exited the priority met exit
criteria we do plan on updating this um chart be happy to give you this years after the data embargo is lifted so if you want that information just let us know the final report and remember this is a
pilot so the whole idea is to compare what we did in this pilot and if it was successful as compared to the non-pilot schools so at the end of this Year we will file a final report by October 1st of
2025 that compares the student performance outcomes for the pilot schools and the non-pilot schools also what we're going to compare is how the pilot schools and the and that met exit
criteria how those plans are different from the pilot schools that did not meet exit criteria and to identify the um what basically what worked and what didn't and if any of the pilot schools
um that didn't exit did they improve what areas did they improve in and also to make recommendations as to whether the pilot program the pilot plans based on the model School turnaround plan
should be implemented in non-pilot schools before we get to any questions I do want to point out now that at the end of the slide deck that we have included timelines for the pilot program and
Milestones that we look at every year if you want to look at that in more detail and with that I'm happy to take any questions you may have thank you Miss cop questions for Miss cop Mr Jensen I do have a question around and this may be in the next
presentation um when you look at the program it's very well done and appreciative of what you're doing curious about wraparound services for the the children coming out
of environments that are are maybe not conducive to learning or they don't have underpinnings just curious what that looks like I mean if I know I know tresman High School um outside of
class um Boys and Girls Clubs the various Ministries that are doing this kind of work with kids in the neighborhood if that's a part of what they're doing to incorporate those I didn't see anything in here about because kids are coming out of
environments that are not necessarily supportive and it's pretty hard to think that that you can get everything done uh in a in a school day over a year just curious if that's a part of the overall thinking of that that's a great question
I think we all recognize that the students in underserved schools most of the time face challenges that other students don't face and so that is part of the program um you will hear quite a bit uh from Hawkins Mill and Tresvant
about the Partnerships about those wraparound Services that's part of what that additional um implementation Grant funded so I'm I don't want to uh steal the Thunder of principal Wilson and um
and principal Brent but they will talk more about that other questions I have a question um you talked several times and one of the things you looked at was the school
culture uh and maybe this will come up in the next session I know how did you measure the school culture and uh how did you change the school culture within a year short period of time that you did and the impact on that so I'd be really
interested in understanding that so the school culture can be measured in several ways and it was measured in different ways by the the two different vendors a lot of the school culture information is through observations through of student
engagement through the opportunities that are given to the students through through interviews focus groups those kind of things the cognia does a u diagnostic review is what they call their comprehensive School analysis and
Ed direction does a little bit different but they really focus in on the perception of the teachers the community the students and the principal and and really take all that information and
look at what can be changed did that answer your question well may maybe I'm still struggling with how you how you identify it I mean it's a very general term how you
quantify it to know what you're going to change so do you when you say you speak to the students about the principal about the teachers what are kind of questions are you asking them are they being responsive are they listening uh I mean I'm just trying to understand when
you talk about measuring or identifying School culture how you do that well I am going to let cognia talk about how they do it the department doesn't our department doesn't actually measure the school culture in this program um we
that's the um the school turnaround experts we do track some things that help us determine what the school culture is teacher retention is one of the things that we look at our teacher and the and the
um my mind just went blank the survey the teacher survey that just came out um there's some great questions on that that that tell us are teachers being valued are and the students answer too
so are they being treated with respect so we the department has some ways that we can measure um School culture but it in this instance for the pilot program it was measured differently with
cognia and and Direction but we do use the the survey that is the department puts out we look at teacher retention we look at student out of school uh chronic absentee we look at um student
suspension rate and the commissioner I know you have unmuted just wanted to add I mean we have to think too School culture is it's very localized right so to have the state kind of try to dictate what school culture is good or bad that's really up
to our local leaders to really be able to understand diff you know because we're not it's not one siiz ofits all so I think two that's why I think it'll be great to hear from the principals to hear how they're really engaging and ensuring that that school culture um is
solid and that everybody feels like long these results that we've seen so far look outstanding and very glad you're doing this and be looking forward to in the future how you can take this to other school I mean I know you haven't made that decision yet but if you get progress that this is showing I
think it's great thank you I jump in with one and this may tee up the next presentation but thank you for being here sharing this with us and I'm already thinking about our fall meeting next year and I would love to hear kind of what that final report details in terms of sort of the final Lessons Learned are there things though that you
can like point to that are kind of rising to the top in terms of like the leading sort of factors that again we'll probably hear about in the next presentation that are are helping to affect the change in these schools that have seen success and the second part to that is like how different is the school turnaround plan than like the plans that
other schools are currently utilizing like what are the things that you're starting to see that distinguish the work that's happening with success in the pilot schools yeah great questions um first of all absolutely we see some things that are making a difference we
know that the Buy in makes a difference the buyin from the community makes a huge difference letting the having the school The Local School Board member be part of this that's huge I think one of
the other things is that comprehensive School analysis where you don't just come in and look at one part of the school you're underperforming and achievement and growth and sometimes that's what we focus on but there are other mitigating factors that might
cause this school to be underperforming and having that outside those outside eyes look at the school and give a very objective um analysis of what is causing those schools to underperform is huge
and I'm just going to say you know leaders matter it one thing thing that we have seen over and over again is the school leaders in those schools are the ones that will make or break this
program so the great one of the great parts of the pilot is this the school leader is part of the decision making because they are an integral part of that school turnaround committee but they also get coaching from the from the
experts and the other thing thing is the experts matter I mean they have to be experts they have to have done the work they have to be able to walk alongside of the the school leaders and give side
by side coaching to those School leaders in real time so those are just a few things that matter I think the um the difference between the plan that we that all schools in Tennessee do and this
model plan there's a couple of big differences one is the comprehensive School analysis um instead of going into in Tenn which is our plat planning platform and looking at your data from last year maybe comparing a few of the
paring comparing your school to like schools which is the process that a lot of the uh schools go through this looks at every single piece of the school it also um I mean you have to be vulnerable
as a leader and as a school because when you open up your school to an outside vendor and they come in and identify weaknesses in the school leadership in the school culture and the governance of
the school or maybe the district then that's very different than the way we plan now and the other thing that I think is so important is this short cycle monitoring that we do and so every 30
days we meet with these folks over here the principles what you see what you will see from cognia is what we see every month um and we recommend changes and they actually we don't have to
recommend a lot of changes with these two principles because they have they have already figured out what they need to do um but those short Cy monitoring because what we see a lot of times in the school turnaround plan I mean the school Improvement plans is that schools
will develop these plans they're due in September they may have a midyear monitoring they may have quarterly monitoring we do have turnaround districts that do quarterly monitoring with their schools um and sometimes it's
uh semesterly and sometimes it's at the end of the year so this that's very different with this turnaround mark model and if I if I could say this too is um we really pushed having the focus
be primarily on really good tier one instruction that tier one instruction has to be at grade level we have to give the opportunity to those students to access high quality instructional
materials and at T in tier one at the rigor level of the standards and I'm not saying that everything else doesn't matter but if you don't do that they don't the students don't have the opportunity to succeed and that's where
this Pro this pilot program is pushing when I look at this data like I say TCAP success rate is that for the whole school is that for particular grade or that's all students all gr happy to break it down if you guys want
additional information I was just trying to understand that so there were a few categories where they actually dropped from one year to the next so I presume you're looking at that data to try to identify why they dropped and what what
might be done in the other schools they may have gone up so what were the other schools doing differently that these schools were doing where we saw a decrease is that part of the analysis absolutely we are doing that um and there is a a bit of a caveat and I'm
sure you're aware of this is the cohort data for the high school has changed um graduation rate has changed from state to Federal so there are a few things that have happened during the pilot um that we are also looking at but absolutely we look at um what's
happening in one school and our what we're tasked um to do as a department is to look at the the pilot as a whole and to see where the successes are and where the challenges are and so although
you'll hear from cogn and these two schools we do compare all five schools um just to be transparent there was a bill that was um introduced that allowed schools to exit and we did have one school that exited the school in
Hamilton County exited um and so now we're down to four schools but we will continue to compare their um their progress even though they exited um to the pilot
schools thank you other questions thank you Mr cop thank you next item then we're hear from some of the schools so cogne and Memphis Shelby County Schools turnaround partnership Dr Connie Smith Dr Setta Watson M Alexis speed
also principal Claude Wilson principal Eric Brent Dr con Mr chairman excuse me I've been in schools all week and you know when you're around kids you catch things um Mr chairman board members Dr Morrison
I knew her when she was Sarah haburn uh commissioner uh my name is Connie Smith um it's been a while since I've been before the State Board of Education uh I was uh assistant commissioner for uh the division of accountability and
assessment for 12 years uh No Child Left Behind uh Etc and my job was to come with bad news and we always had a list of schools that we put on the list commissioner and the high priority list today is a
celebration of success with two schools in the Memphis Shelby County Schools um that were on the high priority list for 12 years and they have come off the list um in two to three years so we are
celebrating and all these questions you've been asking about culture and uh Services I've been chopping at the fit to get up here because it's not my work that's been done we happen to have the experts with us today now we have a
PowerPoint here if I can get it to come up going the wrong way by the way I want to say that we have a great partnership with our state uh Department uh Tennessee doe uh
colleagues uh many times you know I'll get in trouble and they always bail me out commissioner so thank you very much for allowing us to to work with them this was a uh pilot program where out of 22
candidates 22 turnaround special we were selected and my company is cognia now in Memphis they call it cognia so I call it cogia cognia wherever I am but you may remember uh the southern Association of
Colleges and Schools and that's our organization it's 125 years old but I like to say it's not your grandmother's accrediting agency because we are all about helping teachers teach and students learn so my part of this three
and a half years ago um I always got to had to put schools on the list I've never had the opportunity to get in there with teachers and help teachers teach so that's why I'm excited to be here with you this is a good news story
so what I would like to say um before we get started is um I want to ask the person who is responsible for us being here to come to the podium with me uh she is the vice chair of the school
board in Memphis Shelby County Commissioner Stephanie love and I want her to have a few remarks because she is the reason we're here okay because we we were SEL thank you for having us
today I am not the Mastermind of this the principles and the teachers and the students are this is a great project I have been representing the Frasier Community for 11
years um the things I seen in this turnaround work is remarkable my only hope is that y'all can expand the turnaround model in more of
my schools in the district schools this is a great way to have the parents engaged and the community engaged along with the school that is The Mastermind parents send their children
to school and we teach them um I did a community tour with K to let them see how the kids were living in each of their
communities that is what it takes hands on the ground thank [Applause] you if I tell you that she's been at every meeting and every data meeting at
both schools I want you to believe me she represents since the Frasier community and you know I've been a a principal in Spanish Harlem I've been a school superintendent during covid um uh special ed teacher was my favorite job
but if you don't have the support of leaders like like commissioner love you're that's one of the elements of our success so cognia um we work in uh 50 states and 90
countries and my job was to put together a team of turnaround Specialists literacy numeracy uh people who could work your good culture question people who could understand I mean culture is everything
and what we have to remember is that we are Outsiders okay even though I've worked 40 years with Memphis Shelby County Schools I'm still an outsider so the people within the school the teachers the principal the instructional
leadership team those are the people who make this happen and so as an organization people keep asking us what did you do that was different what what did you do that's different from what's going on with
Gates and Little Red School House well I'll tell you um my expertise is putting is matching uh talent to areas of need and we did once we went in I remember one of the teams said said Dr Connie are
you going to make us buy another curriculum and I said absolutely not I said we're going to come in and look at what uh you're using how are you using it effectively and then how are we going to use it in a better way so we are boots on the ground
side by side we're there probably three weeks out of four two or three days a week and we have been there for three and a half weeks we did not bring in a new curriculum we did get our arms around the data we uh developed uh key
performance targets and we developed a 3060 90day action plan and so what I'd like to do now is to bring in I want to introduce first the team uh we have with
us if you'd stand uh Dr celita Watson is a distinguished former superintendent in Georgia turn specialist would you help me welcome her we also have Alexis speed Alexis uh was for 10 years a
principal in the Middle East she's from Frasier originally and and then went to Texas and now she's moved to Nashville and uh she is a fabulous person to work with leex but now you want to hear from the real expert
and what I'd like to do now is to bring out our principles and our team will be available for questions but let's get right to the the heart of of the issue um Claude principle Claude Wilson has been
uh the turnaround principal at Hawkins Mill Elementary and we've work together going on four years and so I want him to come and talk to you about about how he reduced chronics absenteeism you know I
was in the Ohio legislature last week and they asked about chronic absenteeism it is something you cannot talk about it's a byproduct of a struggling school okay it's something you can't talk about in isolation so I
want Claude to go through his data if he would good afternoon how you all doing today Claude Wilson principal at Hawkins M Elementary in Memphis Shelby County Schools Frasier to be exact 38127 right so we think about the work that's been going on at Hawkins Mill the
work that we've done over the past three years we've seen a lot of growth and so one thing that's been constant is just ensuring that the leader myself being very uh observing what's going on in our district in our school community and also being very reflective and so I
think about where we were then to where we are now going to walk you through and just kind of show you some things that we've changed over the past three years and how we're continuing to grow and so as you can see on the uh slides one thing that does show is The Chronic athletism so I think on the next slide
I'm not mistaken it shows data I right so we have some Hogs day that I like to share with you all so think about before we got into the turn around program we sitting at roughly 5.6% of our students who could actually read on
grade level looking to where we are now 27.4% you see where we are starting to make changes when you think about making changes you start talking about the shift in the culture in the building how we're actually buying into what's going on in the schools and especially in order to meet that number you have to have students who are in school and so
as you can see our chronic app season rate which was at almost 30% in 2021 and is now currently sitting in the single digits how did we get there it took about it took time to really have the process of having parents understand the importance of having your students here
in the building and we also had to have a winning team in the building so of course when you have teachers in the building it does vary when you have some that are experts I'm privileged to have roughly 90% of my staff has been there with me for the past three years so how do you keep 90% of your staff in your
building for one you had to treat them right that's the first thing you have to know that they're going to be treated with respect with dignity and they also know that you're right there with them in the trenches so as they're teaching I'm right there side by side teaching with them coaching them up making sure that they can see me in the classroom
and also being someone who is supporting any kind of needs that they may have whether it be from an instructional standpoint from a non instruction standpoint nowadays you have to look at it from a personal standpoint with the many personal challenges that we have day to day but just making sure that I'm there and being very attentive to their
needs so they can be attentive to the students needs and so we think about The Chronic athletism rate it also consider how we had to get the parents on board what did that look like of course in the elementary school that's prek through fth grade there's 300 students and growing we have students who cannot
drive themselves to school correct they have to either walk they either have to ride a bus or their parents bring them in the car so what do we have to do differently Mom Dad wherever the guardian may be we have services and supports here that can help we have a nurse on staff who can come in and help
if the child has a call who can make sure they say hey we have some call drops for you this that and the other we were offering gift cards to parents to say hey we're gonna have a raffle this month to have a $50 gas card just so we can see the increase of traffic in the actual school and having no barriers and
no excuses of why we can't get students in the building and also we want to make sure we incentivize them so incentive became something that we did daily weekly not only with our students but also with our teachers and also with our parents and so when we start to see the increase in uh um achievement you see a
decrease in chronic athmosphere I feel like they're correlated together and you're also able to see things that's going on with students feeling a part of the school Community what has happened over these past two years we've been recognized as a level five school back to back we've been recognized as a reward school back to back and so now
you have parents in the community that know what it feels like to win I want to be a part of the winning brand I want to be a part of the winning team and I know where we were before we got to this winning formula how far we had to come here but it impossible and once have
parents's going students theity Partners recognizing this is a brand we want to latch on to so we think about our Community Partners who have worked with us at hog mill whether it be risen Savor Community Church brother Incorporated the Memphis Department of Corrections Facility the Memphis redds and also in
South Haven where they have the um myis hustle has also provided things that we have directed them to show how we need their support sometimes you have stakeholders who don't know how to support to schools so it was my task to them an idea how you
can support yes popsicles are fine but we're on third grade science and we're doing something about garbage and recycling can you provide some books on recycling for my third grade students we got you Mr Wilson and so being very intentional around how the supports are linning up to with our initiatives it's
also helping our students meet their successes in regards to our chronic ath and also our Ela and math these are things that we've been doing and we're going to continue meal it's been a great pleasure working with Coga um also just seeing how I become not only a better
leader but a better person myself and so being able to really walk this line I'm looking forward to seeing continued growth in achievement and academics and also with our Chic aism as we continue to work with our Community Partners to continue to make Hog meal one of the best schools in our area
isn't he good can I get a name in he is a fabulous person he was a brand new principal when we first came in and the Partnerships the teachers turned over 50% every year you couldn't re retain a
teacher and he has one teacher who has left in the past couple of years and I'm I'm telling you uh he went out in the neighborhood he had cookouts with the neighbors I mean I have found that if
you can have kids in music and art and then have food you can get parents to school okay so they know him they know him and they respect him and uh one of the secrets we found is in keeping kids
in school is making schools relevant for students safe for students and a fun place to be and so he had a he had chronic absenteeism for his teachers and staff as well as students I want you to
think about that and one of the secrets is you have to be they had to be willing to allow us to become a trusted partner okay we are a trusted partner they' had to see who were and we had to do exactly
what we said we were going to do okay because people watch what you do so one of the secrets of this work is they know that our agenda is all about kids and all about the teachers and and leaders in that school and so and and I'll tell
you this I've been in it 40 something years and I'm having more fun than I've ever had so uh we just appreciate I want to bring up uh our high school principal now high schools are tough to turn around can I say that out loud I was a
middle school principal for many years and I thought that was tough but Trent High School is a great place to be it is the Trent family and a couple of things have happened to this principal who was
a brand new principal two years ago okay uh one of the school high schools closed believe it was Martin Luther King and he went from having 500 plus students to 900 students I want you to think about
that okay and 17 year olds in a ninth grade with 15 year olds so put yourself in this man's position please help me welcome principal Eric Brent good afternoon everyone like Dr C said before my name
the proud principal high school as always be massive be massive is our man that we use stand for believe everyone make AC stes so I value education uh this what we're instilling our Scholars daily to be able to come to school and be able to take upon accountability for
their educational uh needs for their future uh you look here uh with the with the help of cognia being a part count before this is my second year as a principal I've been in ch High School eight years I've seen the school go from and when they say we started from the
bottom now we here um we have done a a tremendous job of trying to educate and Foster a conducive learning environment that will be man there be will strive help our Scholars strive to be more than what they ever could imagine if you dream big you become big um if you look
here before you see here we met the State graduation R for the first time in 20 since 2011 12 uh my graduation rate has went up to 79% uh you look at 2021 was at 63% if you notice that for our T composite scores went from one to and three we're
steady climbing uh what was alarming this past year that we had that we're not going to be at the score we want to be but we're trying to get there every day um with the help of cognia has been so much um for us being able to reach those partners that we have to be able to get those wraparound service that you
were asking about earlier um to be able to mention from to from two to 18 currently right now so it's one of those things that we want to make sure for EXC I don't know at this moment proed do I come back ahead okay
so I am the wrong personology but so okay so why while she's going U going back to be able to help this technical difficulty we have if you look at our current rate um to it's it's steadly going down but some of the um nature
that some of the things we have to worry about is the U outside U resources or outside entities that play a part to our community of course we Foster a safe SP at our school but our students still have to face adverse adversaries daily
um and it's totally impact our our uh Cent after rate over the seven over last seven years um you look here for as you go next up you just stay with me okay um see we're we're Partners I'm telling you and we don't move without each other um
we as as a outside group came in and we did uh as suggested earlier we had something called a diagnostic review okay it's A needs assessment and it's a peer review group that come in and look
at the teaching and learning they look at the leadership they look at the organization of the school and they produce a report at the same time our team our turnaround specialist were in there getting to know what the teachers were teaching in other words that's the
curriculum were they teaching the standards how were they teaching what were they teaching uh direct indirect instruction uh did they have a plan for teaching what did was it a l to what the state expected and would be tested for
students to know and be able to do then we looked at uh the time on task the time on task um and then we also looked at the use of assessment to determine success were they using a formative assessment or how were they using the
summative assessment they were looking at value added the gain and growth might be great but the proficiency was low so we came in with what I call a agnostic prescriptive model it's a medical model but
again they had to have this was hard work but I call it heart work because they had to have Open Hearts for us to come in okay so we got root Clauses we always planned with the turnaround uh committee at the school we always
planned with the leadership team we never did anything in isolation thank so we look at at chman high school highlights um one of the most proudest moment in my life this past graduation my first graduation we completed class of 2024 um CH High School ready
graduates gr graduate was at went from a 26% over the previous years to this past year to 70% for really grads and so we was able to graduate 113 Scholars uh as those 113 Scholars we had two young men who was our Val sou who are currently attending
UT Knoxville and Alabama very um also how as well increasing the partnership I said before um for his faith base we have the Innovation church we have Faith Fellowship we also just partnered with we be doing our ribbon cutting on tomorrow with Ikea um several
also uh Partnerships we have with Tennessee home builders which is added to our added value to us because we incorporated that course into our curriculum so now that we have several students going on to the field of construction and who got a career making 60 or more thousand a year um upon
graduation last year um this year Dr kind said before we have inherited over 400 new kids um coming into T High School which is a big job and if you know anything about high school with all the moving parts and so that big jump with not we've been very intentional about our N grade academy there it's a
school within the school uh my vice principal is the she's took on that load for us the N gr Academy and those students are having a great time they're very um intentional about all the programs they're in uh like with our partner our girls and boys club that's
inside the building also that we have each and every day they to attend it's also our extra curric activities um also we parted with maps pal to be able to just name a few to help us out with those servic that we have with agap and
others now for I keeping 100 attendance challenge so this dist had moved forward with us we have come to win and this help with our current seon also because come to win you have Champions you have winners you have participants and of course you know Champions at the top level but with the initiative of for
come to Wednesday count on me every day I took upon myself to put make an acronym for win and win stand what's important now and what's important now that we get each and every scholar to come to school currently right now our attendance rate is at 90% um the district for mod wants to be at 93% or
higher but we're at 90% And the reason why that our attendance is fluctuating and going down with that is because like I said the influence of student is still registering every day um lastly or what not Tennessee home builders uh we're partnered with them also and also we have extension with the Cruz family who
their father was uh was a graduate of TR from high school from the community and so they want to make sure they give back and so we're doing a lot with this when we part also with Mr Jo T wood former superintendent Le Tennessee those provide help provide those Services make we have the resources that's in the
north Memphis Community or Frasier to be able to have those Outlets that some schools not have as part of municipalities of nature missionary graduation rate um last year our graduation rate was seven I'm sorry it was 70% in 2022 23 this past year
like I said before currently is at 79% for federal rate we're at 70% on Federate this current year and year before that so that's a big increase you can clap up clap that's a good thing for us go ahead I'm proud of that so with that being stated that we
had a 208% r rate and now we're at 70% though we had to give a great influence to project also we partner with J tenness grad we partner with those with those entities also to be able to help us increase those grad rates we could be able to move forward with
that report C indicator scores um right now we don't know our achievement and growth as a point of now for our growth LS but look at 2223 achievement was one and growth was a three grow for loss was a five gra was a 26% for his graduation
so now we know our graduation are 7% for a graduation grade uh currently our letter grade was last year was um right now it just been embargoed or what not if I have to stay again be again but we know we're going to increase that going forward I do ask of that for Cog with us
for a few more years as a second year principal they have been very beneficial in my my first two years uh as administrator and like said for this past year um I said just going through the changes that we're going through and been experiencing the changes we wanted to make sure we move forward and I feel
comfortable with them each and every day when they come to my building be able to provide those resources being that that thought partner that I need right now so success rate plan so currently right now we know for is the new instru model we have is that we're we're faced at a at a point that that
for as assigning a veteran teacher to our English two courses um for as our teacher um shortage that's going on at this point right now we're having a deficit for us having teachers and so what I did was to make an executive decision with also the leadership team
that we would decide to assign a veteran teacher to our English two courses and so also to be able to create us a additional honors course so with that being stated that we identified 55 scholars in our school and those 55 Scholars that we identified uh those
students were did had great growth for as algebra one to be able to help us be able to move forth the needle to be able to get the pre um to move forward this year to be able to get the games that we need also we um we took previous English
two assessments from the district for master connect we did over the years uh right now that we're doing our short cycle assessments when you do by 2 by six two or you do one by three and one which is basically on just 10 questions or five questions that we use we identifi a coach from external coach
from outside should be able to coach up and do some things that's differently with our instructor to make sure that she stays on task and be motivated throughout the rest of the year uh we differ our ins to professional developments so now when she go through PDS for herself or what not will look
totally different than the rest of the student I mean for as the other teachers our building uh we also review professional development time for for on Fridays she have extra planning to be able to be ready for prepared for the prep for the next week um we also identify external uh performing teachers
in the district for we you go visit so we can be able to see what Exemplar instruction look like throughout the district so we can be able to model and own on to that something I want to take personally ownership on myself for our sustainability factors
want to be for ongoing support for us two years after school exit prior to this uh like I said before we just found on last year it was one of the most the proudest days of my life personally Miss C and Miss tub came to the school personally be able to share that moment
with me U like I said before being at treas for eight years prior I mean with prior been eight years in so last year uh when they shared the news it was like very oh it's just a great feeling to be able to experience that to let you know the work you've done uh has not going on term and those ladies been there been
there since the beginning so they was very proud also uh for our professional learning and our critical area of needs we want to make sure we hold on to that for we focus on that and be able to be intentional with that for our professional learning and so we have Dr
BJ won he comes in and he provides great uh tools for us to be able to expand our toolbox also sustainable for us human and Financial Resources um this is a great facility here here in Stan Tennessee I'm from a small town called
COV Tennessee not too far from here and so to be able to see that my Scholars could be able to be able to utilize this facility for is getting the service they would need uh for us benefiting from programs will also be a need in our community also in the 38127 retention and recruitment um we
have created the pipeline I'm a l college graduate and so one of the things about L College was a school for us for as teachers so I reached back to my my Al model to be able to recruit teachers to be able to come to trans currently right now on my staff I have 10 L graduates on my staff at this moment
right now um and so lastly but least is foru support for school leaders I want to provide that also for the support um today like I said before I have my board member here and also my network not my network lead but my transformation offer Dr Richmond he's here also so those are some of the things that we want to make
sure we sustain at TR high school and be able to move forward to keep Legacy going forward as we move into our new school in three years if it's not any question I yield my time I for got to celebrate we got to celebrate right so here are some
highlights P's meal from the past school year U Amo goals met that mean we met all of our Target goals for ELA Math and Science for the past three years met for past three years bullet number two we
had the 10th rank third grade math scores in Memphis Shelby County Schools so when you think about that that's big in the words of uh principal Brent that's massive right and so when we think about that that's showing that we're building not only students but
we're also building teachers right we also are in the process of going through the steam designation to be one of the uh few schools in the 38127 zip code that is a steam certified school by the state of Tennessee so we're going through that process currently we think about I talked about reflective
leadership and self- practice and also we're noticing that our teachers are becoming leaders and so we have to build teacher leaders in house the teacher leaders help the work go and so when I think about building players on the bench and building them up to teachers I have two teacher assistants that have
become teachers they're seeing firsthand the instruction that's delivered by the classroom teacher and now they're coming right on down the pipeline so that's building not only in-house leaders that's building in-house teachers which helps create a sustain retention rate
for the staff in the building and this just gives a a snapshot and we normally talk about this when we're in our meetings with uh Robin and Penny we talk about where we currently are in our attendance the goal is to have everything on the right to be green right you want to have the green arrows popping up mean we're changing in
the right direction so for the past school year or so far in 20242 we've increased our attendance rate we are currently at on target for meeting our Cron AB you know we do not have that data just yet but we are in the process of being on taret for meeting our
chronic absm goal we look our perfect attendance rate has increased from 12.2% to 59.1% and you think about suspensions that's something that we do not do a lot of so you think about students being in school also ensuring that we're having
positive effects on them behaviorally so they can maintain their level of Effectiveness in school and having those students in the building so that was a quick snapshot of just the highlights that's going on at Hawkins Mill um I would definitely be remiss but I not bring that up and I have to thank my
staff I'm standing here on behalf of them because in essence they do the work that's my staff that's my parents that's also the students this is for you all so they see me on some TV screen or they'll see me on some video just know I'm doing this for you all hog M and I'm once
again CLA Wilson glad to serve and glad to be here alrighty you see how we work we work together as a trusted partner uh we work together with our trusted Partners In the state department we have our trusted Partners in the school board and the
central office and the principles are rock stars right can I say hello Rock rock stars they're absolutely rock star so I want to ask my colleagues if they would come
forward Dr Watson oh my goodness speaking of rock stars Dr Rod Richmond is here please come forward sir I want to say something about him I've known him 30 years he is the original architect of the eyesone he
is now the chief over over transformation they got the right person in the job and he works with all the struggling schools and I'm so happy he's here he's one of the reasons that we're in the district now from three years ago thank you thank
you first I'd like to start off by just saying good afternoon uh I'm Dr Roderick Richmond uh and as Dr Smith shared I'm the transformation officer it's a new uh position uh and one of my roles is to
trans form our dnf schools to hopefully C or better uh schools I currently have a portfolio of about 139 schools 55 of them are charter schools and the other uh 94 schools make up uh our schools
again that have a drf drf designation which includes 10 of our Charters and 84 of our traditional schools and we're hoping uh to move some of those schools out of what our super attended has branded as soup schools into what would
be ignite or Source schools as Dr Smith shared um I've been in this work for a long time I remember when uh Governor bres uh first brought School turnaround uh to the state of Tennessee and we branded our schools striving schools and that's when I had a chance
to work with Dr Smith uh and when we worked together we had a C- management relationship when I look at what we have here we have what is a Cod management true collaborative relationship it's not a relationship where we're asking people
to cooperate we're truly asking people to collaborate and when you have a collaborative spirit I think we can see the byproducts uh of that that's who Dr Smith is she's the type of person that brings people together uh I appreciate
uh Miss cop and Miss tubs we work closely with them and again cognia from day one has truly been a partner when I think of this legislation as a pilot it started off with a community match process to
involve the community and to have them to select someone that they believe in to have a company that they believe in and want to partner I think that's important but also for that partner to come in and to not be uh too uh dogmatic
or to ask people again to cooperate but just to collaborate I think that speaks to this part partnership truly working in the essence of what a partnership should be uh and I want to thank Dr Smith and I want to thank her team for
that but I also want to thank those two uh principles uh principal Wilson and principal Brent School turnaround is difficult work it's difficult work uh I've also heard Dr Smith talk about is
very very situational uh I'm a byproduct of this community I'm a proud graduate of tresan so uh I take this work and particularly the work that's going on in that school and the community that I'm a product of I take it personal I also
want to thank board member love because again we'd be remiss if we didn't have the support of our board members so again I appreciate you all asking all of us to come here to present I think this is important it's important work uh we want all of our communities to have
strong schools I talk all the time about having strong feeder patterns uh you should have an elementary middle and high school and a K12 feeder pattern that's strong in parents and the community can believe in and so again I want to thank them for helping this
Elementary School which feeds into Tres helping this school and this feeder pattern to strengthen itself so that this community can continue to be proud of the work that's going on but also uh the outcomes uh that are being uh poured into uh our students so again thank you
all and thank thank you Dr Smith [Applause] thank if you have somebody like that in your corner whose knowledge base exceeds everybody I know you're going to be
successful and he is he his one thought is about kids helping kids and he did go to tresmond and I believe they named him an auditorium after him so he's quite famous um I want to ask the team to come stand
with me because we always stand together uh but I want you to think of two stats okay tresman High School in 2122 their grad rate was 63% it is now commissioner
79% that is significant and they also met all the state requirements to move off the list that they are off the list as a high school okay number two in Hawkins Mill I want you to think about in
2122 to now they reduced their chronic absenteeism rate for students by 77% it just takes my breath away what they've done okay and they did it it's the teachers in the classroom who were
willing to try something different perhaps to help kids and the leadership of these principles and the support of Dr Rod Richmond okay uh my team I want them to talk because they talk so much better
than I do but uh please Sela jump in not true you all know Dr conic Smith um it's just a pleasure and honor to be here being an outsider I'm from the state of J um to see the intentional
collaboration with the state department The Local District the schol based leaders and the community um I would like to say I started two or three years ago um this has been a Monumental
experience for me that I would never forget and we talk about turnaround schools all the time and it's intentional but it's intensive I always refer to it as intensive care if anyone has ever been to the hospital or passed
by the ICU unit they have personalized doctors that check to them maybe every 30 to 40 seconds whereas in the other side of the hospital floor General um you may have a rotating nurse right and
so the support system has to be intentional but um very intensive in addition to that the alignment of resources and what I've seen from this turnaround pilot is not even the alignment
of the great leaders that's transferred and transition up to rock stars as you say um but I will if I can talk about the um support model for cognia and the
support model for cognia um the support model for cognia is supporting from The Boardroom to the class is what I say because in any District do know that there's levels of support te teered levels of support and
so I've had I've had the pleasure of working with Dr con Smith um we each have a designated area of focus so Dr Connie Smith of course will be um P side by side with the district leaders you know District policies management budget
contract and then you'll have an ex excellent leader um Dr Dr DJ woron who actually trains and coaches the principal and then myself and Alexis we are boo on the ground with the sports team your instructional coaches your
academic coaches your attendance um any other support that the principal May necessary for us to actually move the needle it's very important that we level that support because often times you may just be supporting the princip and you forget about okay I need someone to help
us with the policies or you're supporting the instructional coaches but the principal and instructional coaches may not be on the same page so I AB absolutely love the um transformation tier support because I think it addresses not only the whole child but
the whole adult and when we talk about wraparound Services we talk about the ties of life and which I identify that as the physical intellectual emotional and social being of the school and so I'm really really um proud of this model
and I'm grateful for Dr Connie Smith to actually lead this learn learning as it relates to supporting the schools from The Boardroom to the classroom um what did we learn what did we learn you want to learn okay what did we learn we learned
a lot um everyone knows there is not one size to fit all it doesn't matter if you're in public private corporate education there is not one size that fits all um the second thing is we' got to get the kids to school we talk about chronic
absenteeism this District Shelby County I've seen um a plethora of resources um they have and I'll talk about the high school treent high school has a boys and girls book inside of the school so any
academic learning tutoring um before and after school the resource is there um they also have my gosh a plethora of um Partnerships with the faith based Community which they kind of spoke about
but is I've actually seen one of the pastors substitute teaching in the school so when you talk about the community supporting the school this this is what we're talking about in order for your students to be high achieving learners but also learn those
life skills in doing so and so um another thing we've learned you have to train them first and you have to model we say inspect what you expect you have you have to mod model um what you want the teachers to know what you want the leaders to know what you want the
community to know it's all about modeling and standards based instruction and evaluation as you see that the both principles talked about how achieving students but also impacting the teaching and learning in the classroom this is key to me
relationships matter I often say 80% of what we um do is based on who we know sometimes and 20 after that but relationships matter and as you see that's why we're here today based on these sound relationships
culture there was a question about culture earlier you have got to identify with whom you serving I call that knowing your audience you've got to know your audience in order to Mo the needle and culture is key behavior is key and understanding who's in front of you and
more specifically um you as a question on how we do that we spoke about the diagnostic review process in that process we have surveys with focus groups as spoke about and we continue to look at student engagement um build relationship and Report with
the students inside of the classroom these two say we're Outsiders but I believe things like that I tell dry I think we could come family here and we have a slide here that says Road this has been Hills and Valleys ands and
and lows and changing things throughout um U as the district changes things or as the need changes and um action plans are monitored as we spoke about um and the turnaround work overall it says here it's not cookie cutter it's not and it
is situational specific but most importantly I think what drives the three of us is we like coming back to the bowl and saying H this work that H as meal uh let's see if we can get it to work at no elementary school high school but we enjoy uh those uh intellectual
conversations of trying to figure out how to make this work for this specific school um it may look like this over here um I've worked um abroad I've worked and I'm one thing I should have said in the beginning I'm happy to be working uh in Tennessee most most
specifically Memphis because it is where I was born and raised and it's actually the first time I've ever worked uh in this state um as an educator so I feel like I finally bring it back on home as my grandpa says you've been overseas a while you've been in Texas you've been in Alabama you've been here you're
finally home and um I actually I when I learned that we'd be I joined the team um earlier this year when I learned that we'd be working with Tre but I was like hey if I were uh still in high school that would be my High School uh because now it's rezoned um and so I'm I'm
really enjoying the work but um as I was saying um as crazy as it sounds we actually do really enjoy the the hard work the hearts work and as we said making those action plans identifiable and getting back um getting the feedback from the school leaders and the teachers
and building that that rapport with them to make sure what we're doing is actually servicing them and not necessarily serving us so it's never personal is always professional and it definitely um is a is a great opportunity for me and as I said theyve
welcome us and bring us in like family um kind of just talked about recognizing each school is different um start with the small WIS first we celebrate everything every it's always a celebration um with us and we find that you need this in this work because it
gets tough it gets hard you you kind of you know looking at yourself like did I make the right choices am I you know but U like as I said um we don't try to do too much at one time we're always checking in we're always reflective we're always surveying ourselves speaking to ourselves speaking to the principles as I said the teachers and
even the students because we'll walk in some classrooms and they'll be like oh that's your little friends yep him last week now he's doing his work um you know and it's just it's just been it's been a great time what a team huh so Mr chairman I
think we are are finished with with our talking uh I'd like to bring the principles up to answer any questions that you have and Dr Richmond come up well first I think this deserves a big round of
[Applause] applause you know I I sit here people know me know I'm a study leadership I'm going to talk about two different forms of leadership that you all exhibited here there's a book called the
leadership challenge by K's imposed it says five things a good leader does first is he challenges the system he inspires a vision he enables his people the people he models the way
and then they celebrate afterwards you talked about every one of those today and secondly is a quote from Chinese philosopher laoo that was given me about 45 years ago says a leader is best when neither
seen nor heard not so good when glorified or adored worse when hated and despised fail to honor your people they will fail to honor you but at the end of the day your aim fulfilled but people will say we did this ourselves you
principles exhibited that thank you [Applause] Mr Vice chair hi I'm from Memphis Tennessee always uh a pleasure to
celebrate great work and great things that are happening in Memphis um definitely applaud all of you all's work uh as you were talking I was reminded of um quote from the famous Management Consultant Peter duer who said culture
eats strategy for breakfast and what you've shown in terms of establishing culture and when I'm thinking about culture in this work it's from the outside in and from the inside out um and the three tier leadership that you
showed um and support involving the district um the internal aspects within the the school itself and definitely involving the community uh as they say it takes a village and you all created an outstanding Village and it definitely
is exemplified in your work so I want to thank you for being a exemplary model for the state in terms of the work that you've done the partnership that you've established the collaboration as Dr Richmond mentioned and uh today just feels like Memphis day
to me because we had the superintendent here we got uh commissioner love who I've known since she got on the school board now she's the the queen be so to speak um Dr Richmond who failed to mention he's a member of the greatest
fraternity on Earth cap alasi and we go way back so um thank you for bringing the family reunion to standing uh but keep up the great work and we appreciate all you do as a shining example for
us other comments yes Miss Maxwell well I would just love to say you are an inspiring group as a retired educator first of all to these two principles I want to say where were you when I needed principles
okay um you are the leader in your building and you many people say this famous people in education say this if you catch a cold the whole school catches a cold well I can tell you all are very well fit and very healthy because the things you are doing are
incredible so I appreciate the intentionality so many things that you're doing that I hope you will be able to share in the future but I also hope they'll let you rest just a little bit because we want you to keep going for a long time we need good strong
leaders any other comments Dr Morris I really don't have anything to add to what's been said I just want to glom on to the Gratitude and the inspiration that you all have brought to this room because being a principal has to be the hardest job and being a principal in a turnaround situation and doing it with
that open heart and that like desire to do what's best for your kids whatever that takes it's just it is a model for our state and I appreciate that you all willing to take a day of your time away from your school to come and share that with our board because I can't tell you how instructive and how meaningful it
will be to us as we think about our role at the state level and thinking about supporting schools across the state so I just thank you thank you for all you're doing yes we've got to learn how to take that model across the state for sure any other
comments thank you very much [Applause] Mr chairman thank you to the members of the
committee ASD didn't work because they haven't involved the community parents and our school system this is what works
thank you thank you all right we have to top that one Miss Brown Next cop 2024 teap and accountability okay so that was inspiring and I I would like to Echo congratulations to those School leaders and teachers and students
for the inspiring um um hard work and success that that has led to um certainly principal job is is very challenging so congratulations those schools again good afternoon board members and board staff commissioner Christy Brown Chief academic officer
with the Department of Education to bring some updates related to spring and summer 20124 program data and today I'm going to be um presenting some information about 2024 summer programming also third and fourth grade
promotion Pathways and then I will uh welcome David L Dr David L to talk to you all about teap data so the I'll start with the summer programming from 2024 as you all know
the overview from that is up enacting the learning law teny learning loss remediation and student acceleration act during the special legislative session of 2021 summer learning camps and stream camps were funded for two years and the learning loss Bridge camps were
established in inde definely during legislative session of 23 summer learning camps and stream camps were funded indefinitely and grades rise in grades K and nine were added as grade levels to support students during key transitions as they
move into kindergarten and into High School the law was further amended this last year to remove the requirement for leas to administer preest exams for students enrolled in summer programming can see here um the types of Summer learning camps that were offered the
summer learning camps in Rising grades K3 the stream M camps in the same grade levels and then Summer brid Bridge camps for students going into grades four through nine I'm going to take just a minute to not go over all of these data points but to point out some highlights from each
of um the slides that you're going to see today overall enrollment for 2024 summer programming was 89637 students and that is um we're averaging around 990,000 at this point
from the high that we had fall in 2021 of about 120,000 so we're leveling out an average around 990,000 students across those grade levels we had an attendance rate for all students a 79.7 which um I think it's notable to
say that that's over a 14 point um 14 percentage Point increase from last year so attendance is improving uh quite drastically from last year this year and the rates were similar um rates were similar for all students that are represented here um
with economically disadvantaged students non-economically disadvantaged students in all student groups and then finally Rising grade four students account for nearly a quarter of all summer programming enrollment with the second highest attendance rate Behind Rising kindergarteners so those uh students
ready to come to kindergarten um all right we'll just keep moving some high points here due to the removing of the requirement to administer the preest this past summer it um had some implications for the way
we assess summer programming and determine the academic growth so for Rising grades one through three in ela the spring administration of the district selected Universal reading screener was used as the Baseline to measure um in blue of the summer preest
each of those approved uh URS platforms students student growth using different scales and measures which um ultimately U resulted in us changing to a mean percentile ranking being used as the consist most consistent measure
similarly in grades 1 through three um there's some changes there there's no growth measurement that could be made as a comparison because the preest was removed and there's no requirement for a spring screener in math so that that those results are reported as a mean
score for for all valid test takers in those grade levels and finally in grades 4 through n in ela and math the spring teap served as the Baseline to measure academic growth in Le of the preest it's notable to say that the summer post test
um also consisted of some new questions that were standards aligned that approximated the blueprint of the 2024 TCAP assessment all right so we get to some highlights and some impact U from our summer learning programs so our
strongest gains were in early literacy we saw overall increases in 1 through three and some educationally significant um impact in grades two and three specifically in math the post test scores um indicated that students um in
grades four through nine in Rising grades four through nine that nearly all grade levels experien some level of gains with most of that being in four six and nine and as expected students who are who attended more often uh saw better
gains across all grade bands in ela and math and this is an interesting um data point the recent analysis that we wanted to look at to measure the gains for summer programming of course it's a short 16 or to 20day program uh for for
students and we ran the data that was a spring Universal reading screener the end of the end of the school year compared to the data entering the next grade level for fall all URS data and we compared it for students who attended Su
Lear camps and students who did not and so what we found was is students who participated in summer learning programs maintain their learning while students who did not demonstrate summer slide summer slide and the educator highlight um
indic we had 11,873 teachers uh Educators that were reported to the department with um overw really highly effective teachers there with level of effectiveness of 4.1 on a
scale of one to five most districts 96% U reported on our survey that that number was adequate a number of teachers to support the programs and then um also interesting is teachers that don't have a teaching license maybe they're
educator prep program candidates um that were hired to to teach and summer programming uh can also uh do that if there's not certified teachers available and so with that I pulled the data around the number of
users who took the and completed the uh required training course that if aspiring Educators um are required to do if they're teaching in summer programs was 300 11 all right and some District Reflections um these were District
Reflections that we we've gathered over some time you all can see the districts represented there mostly expressing just being grateful for the opportunity to continue to serve students accelerate their learning and also expressing the feedback that they've gotten from parents their satisfaction with the
program and what their students are engaged in and what they're learning in summer programming and then a one that's not reflected here um I'll mention is that it was interesting to hear about districts who were having teachers that they've hired for the upcoming school year to go ahead and put them in those
summer programs and they get you know familiar with the students that they may be teaching the next year U have relationships with the teachers in the building get used to the school they're going to be teaching in often times and that was reported as a a a success as
well for your convenience we've added all of the summer uh programming reports right there and those links with the slide deck that you have and I'll move right on into third and fourth grade promotion Pathways okay so you all know that there
are multiple ways and Pathways uh for students to be promoted from third grade to fourth grade um and first of all we want students to meet or exceed expectations at the in the third grade ELA portion of the teap
so that's um obviously um they just are promoted right on and also uh students are promoted through exemptions if there students who are English language Learners with less than two years of ela instruction previously retain students in grades K through3 they have a disability or suspected disability that
would impact reading those students would be exempt um although they're often times offered the same supports uh that other students get on promotion are offered on promotion Pathways if students score approaching um those are highlighted there um won't go through
all of them but I will say that this graphic was updated in May of last year to reflect the changes um I know that the thir the 50th percentile there um that was um put into place as a promotion Pathways there the conference pathway that reflects um a promotion
pathway from for students from fourth to fifth grade as well as indicating the requirements of the ground one parent appeal that was uh put in place by this board okay I'm going to just do a couple from each of these things here we've got
um promotions U Pathways here with third grade spring teap and the retake so we had you see the number there over 74,000 total number of third grade students with 73,74 per of our third graders were U proficient and had valid tests that met
those requirements of the 4498 that were eligible for a retake you can see the number there 22,7 45 did um were eligible and then that resulted in an additional 3,274 additional third grade students
that reach Prof proficiency to be promoted into the fourth grade okay um in addition we talked about exemptions here you all can see the five types of exemptions um that are available to students and the most
common exemption that was um that was used here for a promotion pathway was the students with a disability that impacts reading another promotion pathway is through parent appeals and so this is what you're seeing here this is available for students who scored
approaching on the elat cap had to be approaching um and this is a ground one parent appeal that requires the student to have scored at or above the 40th percentile on the universal reading screener um and other requirements established by the board golf can see that and that resulted in
2895 students being promoted and then the ground two appeals the catastrophic situation that parents were able to F with that as well I will say that the number of those ground one appeals were decreased um but when you look at the
total number of students that were promoted on the 50th percenti pathway and add it with this one for the parent appeal for ground one it's similar as what we had for last year okay students can also meet adequate growth in summer programming if they
scored approaching this represents a 5 percentage Point increase on the post test from the Baseline score and we had 1,124 students to meet that Mark and also maintain 90% attendance that was required we have several um
qualifications and teing Pathways for required tutoring in fourth grade you all to see those there this includes the 50th percentile uh pathway to the Tennessee URS uh there is no requirement for adequate growth if you all remember that is an individual adequate growth
projection there that students um are required to meet for some of the pathways at the end of the fourth grade students who score below and on the TCAP assessment um where they could retake uh the assessment they could uh they were required to come to Summer programming
Sumer learning camps with 90% attendance rate and U participating required tutoring for the the whole year and then they had the fourth grade adequate growth requirement as well okay all right so students who required tutoring they and re-enrolled
in in fourth grade they were promoted on started fourth grade received tutting for the entirety of the Year U those students um were this is some data that I think um is important it reflects the number of students this first number
that you're seeing after the the year of student you know supports that were in place we had an additional 1,740 students who were proficient meeting grade level standards on the fourth grade ELA teap the following spring um that were
not proficient the prior year um that represented 14.99% of students who were eligible for that pathway uh in fourth grade and we had another nearly 4,000 that met the adequate growth Target if you all remember from last year this puts those
students on the trajectory to become proficient over their period of time with um during the time that they are assessed on the ELA exam and then uh finally we have students that were promoted through the conference pathway if they did not meet
adequate growth you all can see that number represent there okay so this is the summary of all of the information that I just mentioned uh this was based this data that I'm pres presenting today is based on um available data that was
reported on September the 6 and then uh also this is before any kind of accountability protocols were applied and also it's important to note that students may have qualified for multiple Pathways or exemptions and so the way that students were counted as unique
individual students here was in the order that's listed on our chart here is the way that we applied how students were counted so in in in that order whichever one that they um qualified for first in that order is how the students were counted individually I'll note that you can see
um that we have a number of um data points here again I mentioned that combining those tutoring Pathways results in about the same as we saw last year and then we saw um also that we had a total of 88% of students retained in
third grade which was uh 6 students I'll move to fourth grade data overview so this is the first time that we've been able to present on this uh particular U way that students are promoted from fourth grade to fifth grade because it's the first year that it's been implemented and so you all can see here that students that were
enrolled in fourth grade with required tutoring was 12,260 and then you can also see those student that I mentioned that became proficient those who met adequate growth and then also confidence pathway summarized there and then um you all can
see that we also had students retaining fourth grades 132 students at 1.08% it's important to note that the percentage that you're seeing on this slide is the percentage of students who were required to have tutoring through fourth grade this is not representation
of the entire population of fourth grade and that's what was reflected in the fourth grade data it included all students this one includes those that were eligible for this tutoring pathway okay so where we are now uh we have updated uh several resources and
documents based on uh updates to you know policies and laws after the following last spring also we wanted to be responsive to school districts last year we were talking about um timeliness of get information out to parents and to schools and of course
students um but we have done that through a number of resources been updated for example we have um guidance on suspected disabilities conference promotion pathway updated uh graphic this graphic here is um updated to clarify information that we received the
most question about questions about and this one's actually already published on our website as well as the other ones that I mentioned it's available now there's just some clarifications on this one again just based on some uh feedback that we had um from you know parents and schools other stakeholders so again
trying to be responsive to that all right and then again those are available now okay so any questions for me I run through few data points U if you have anything I'll do my best to answer make sure that you have the information you provided questions for Miss
Brown Mr Jon so in preparation for summer camp last year there was a lot of consternation or about knowing what they needed how many has that been smoothed
out or figured out can you give me some kind of feel for that do you understand my question what I'm asking I think so please redirect if I don't answer your question fully um so I know when the the ground one appeal U those eligibility
the requirements there we wanted to make sure the information was communic about that and the conference pathway was um also put in place during legislative session last year so that's during that spring that they're going to have to implement these things in in that summer
and so uh yes I mean we did hear we need to understand this better we need to get resources and again we've tried to be responsive to that um with starting um you know planning for the summer program and making a the application available earlier for
districts and already publishing the resources that I've ition and response to that concern they were worried about going to Florida so I just trying to help people their thank you for that question Dr Morrison yes I don't want to jump in
front of you hold of you um I have two questions the first is as we get a little further down the road here with the summer learning and the tutoring how are we able to study the effectiveness of either both you know like assessing both when what what
summer school looks like when it's done well and then the impact and similarly for tutoring like are we able to start to assess the sort of value especially as you know funding becomes more of an issue talk to me a little bit about the the research certainly thank you for the
question so first of all I want to say that my academic team did at least 50 School visits to Summer learning programs um and walkthroughs of these trying to learn ask questions what's challenging what is working so certainly
been able to learn best practices and share those across the state we have um some learning networks um around that as well and so that's certainly been helpful the other piece that more data driven is we're looking for ways to most
appropriately assess the summer learning and so what we found with the period of time 16 to 20 days they're um that you know essentially given a version of a teap at the end as a post test we have that data that's what we're required to report but really what we're seeing is
the effects of the decreased summer slide or the lack of it for students who are not who are participating compared to those who are not so those are some things that we're considering just to be sure that we're using the appropriate me measures for what is the intent the program is and also to we saw increases
in attendance too and I think that districts have adjusted school districts have adjusted to um appeal the students while keeping the rigorous instruct with the ELA and the math Ma so we're seeing you know increases in that too and overall with tutoring we have done some
um some studies if you will with the across the state and with C certain school districts and we're able to report out on that and the gains that districts have seen laas have seen when it's done really well um and we uh have our shooing convenings and networks that we do there share share best practices
so we are um hopeful that we're looking closely now and upcoming with this fourth grade piece where we know that that tutoring is required it's high do low ratio with Fidelity um in those places and how we can replicate them no yeah on the summer learning that makes sense and it's exciting to see that
there is you know between the Su the spring and the fall USS Administration you know some gains to go to summer school and I agree if you see attendance increasing that I think speaks to the value maybe that families are finding in it so that's encouraging and so I will say too I always take the opportunity to
say that when we see the gains we've seen in third grade proficiency and the year-over-year gains in fourth grade the decrease in the number of students um on those summi assessments that are scoring in that below category I think that's important to mention too that students who are in the below category that
they're moving and we're decreasing those numbers of students and what they know and are able to do um in reading so that's encouraging and I I'll I'll add this um you know commissioner emphasizes it's not one- siiz fits-all it's a combination of the things that we've done with you know professional learning for teachers and summer programming and
tutoring those things customized for those students to see the Gams I think that we that we've seen in Tennessee thanks thank you Mr Hulk you I've got an observation and a question um so can we go back a couple of slides for the fourth
grade maybe TR break it and if not I'm happy just to make the observation without it because we all we all saw it um so I was just encouraged to see that of the fourth graders who were promoted
with tutoring for all of fourth grade that almost half of them either scored proficient these are students who were not proficient exactly right either scored proficient in fourth grade with the benefit of tutoring or hit our what I understood to be a fairly aggressive
adequate growth measure that we adopted and I know we talked some about is is this measure for radical growth is is going to capture enough students but we decided to do what we did and yet we now have almost half of the students who went through the process appear has benefited from the tutoring because they
went from approaching or below to proficient or on track to be proficient so I was encouraged to see that thought that was great and then almost 44% um are being promoted to fifth grade and have the benefit of tutoring in
fifth grade so I just I thought sort of stepping back we've had a lot of conversations about this over the past year or two to finally have the numbers to see that the needle appears to have been moved in a positive way like that I was glad to see um on the tutoring in
fifth grade my question is what you all are hearing about the resources for that if that because I remember there being some discussions about whether that could be a constraint um to have the resources for providing for the tutoring for you know it's 50400 students across
the state for grade is that something that is sustainable that we can continue doing or how's that out so I appreciate that question I know there was some concern even going into this and there were some um um flexibilities that apply to fifth
grade tutoring that are broader than what it is um in fourth grade so um you can use an RTI model there with the same ratios there so that does give a little bit more capacity uh for fifth grade tutoring um so I I do think you know
districts have have worked with an RTI model for a long time and I think they are prioritizing these students and seeing the gains that it that it has when it's done well so I want to um continue to work with our school districts of course and evaluate that
and continue to support sustainability efforts and and guidance and best practices that are being done so is the fifth grade tutoring not necessarily the same um High ratio it is uh it is in fact it's not
mean the 1 to3 ratio that we have for in place but it does expand the ratios to meet the RTI which is a little bit more one to four one to one to six perhaps um and there's some flexibility there depending on the amount of time and
frequency that's offered for RTI and what's been done there so they can meet that requirement with a bit larger ratios I also say that the research that our children is based on does indicate that those smallest smaller ratios are
more effective in the lower grades um and of course you want to keep it as small as we can but um but still effective in the upper grades if it is just a little bit more than the one to three it can be done one to four and maybe a little more but we don't we don't want to go too far beyond that
great thank you thank you for that M Maxwell thank you so much for this information I just have a wondering out of the 655 third graders that were retained and the 132 fourth graders that were retained are there
plans to look at the effectiveness of that retention meaning did they still maintain the same growth level or exponentially you know grow just a thought I I would be curious
you know in the future future to see what happens to those students that were retained and what their academic progress was of course because you you do want those learning supports in place um really effective supports in place
for students who are retained and so uh we want to to look that students actually that were retaining K2 as well as in third grade and they are required to have a tutor assigned to them so that's is going on there and I think you're right I think it's a great question and we will certainly maybe
look at some longitudinal things I'm looking at David L back here so toh to help provide information on that going forward thank you so much for that I had a couple questions uh first let me say that your flowchart is the best way I think I've
seen to show the various Pathways very taking something very complicated and you made it as very very as clear as it can be made so let me thank our comm's team for that they have worked and worked to try to get it to one page so I appreciate that and I do think it's it's
certainly as concise as we can I understood it so perfect no thank you for that and also all the data that you're getting is very good is going to provide good information in the future I did have one question on the data I think it said like 500 students who
didn't reenroll or some number of students didn't reenroll and some number districts didn't report so first on the questions districts didn't report why didn't they report those students and then on the ones who didn't reenroll was
the percentage of those percentage of not re-enrolling of the ones who were obviously on the borderline was that greater than the percentage of his normal uh the typical student who didn't reenroll
so that both those thank you for those questions um so I can say that um I'm going to make sure that I get both of them I'll start with the this last one with the re-enrollment that you've mentioned so um I don't we've not done
that I'm aware of an analysis on re-enrollment rates through across grade levels but what I can tell you from the the data that I have is compared to last year we had um students in 2023 that were not enrolled in a Tennessee public
school for the fourth following fourth grade um at 2,296 of those students and then this year it was 1,898 students with a decrease in percentage as well so we do have that data and I looked at the data from fourth to 5ifth I thought I
might be able to compare that but that's a different count as the students are eligible for tutoring so I can certainly follow up with you with that and let you know how that TR yeah that might be interesting to look at to See's an adnormal percentage that were that didn't reenroll that were in that group
of student versus just a typical non- reenroll I think the other question you had I want to make sure I address uh what you why the districts didn't you had several hundred that districts didn't report so why wouldn't the districts report so some of the challenges there first of all September
6 when they come back into school and they have this period to get the information to us so we did work with districts um really quite literally reaching out to get us the best said that we can uh in the time frame we were asking it asking for it so some of the challenges that we heard about were
students that change school districts uh over the summer and where those students enroll at do we have the information of what pathway that they are on and so we have some missing information there or you know calls back like okay wait wait a minute
so this is the information we have now so we continue to improve that data quality and actually look and ways that we can streamline that or capture that in other ways it's it's District rerostering of students how they were um either retained or promoted reported
back to the department that's that's helpful thank you thank you any other questions all right Mr L good afternoon chairman you members of the board I Am David lir the assistant commissioner for assessment accountability and research
um I'll start just by adding one other brief observation about the summer slide analyses uh as we were doing that work we were looking at different levels of Camp participation trying to figure out what it meant to have have participated we were really surprised to see statistically significant differences in
students who met 50% of Camp attendance versus 80% Camp attendant we're only talking about 16 to 20 days and getting from 50 to 80 actually made meaningful differences so even just attending a few more days of camp it didn't wildly sling the results but we did find
statistically significant differences with just a couple days of Camp um I am here to chat about uh an overview of TCAP results for the 2024 school year as this data has been publicly available for a while and
we have a packed agenda I will move pretty quickly uh but I'm happy to take questions and elaborate as needed um this chart presents overall Ela performance over time uh this is all grades 3 through eight uh Ela performance we continue to see positive
results um performance uh the number of students meeting high expectations or the percentage of students meeting Tennessee's high expectations is 38.9% and that is an increase of 1.8% over the prior year uh the highest gains were observed in Elementary grades uh 45% of
students in grade four um were met or exceeded expectations while the lowest level of performance is in grade eight where just under 30% of students are meeting or exceeding expectations for math we see similar
overall levels of performance 39.7% of students matter exceeded expectations last year which is a significant increase it's almost 6% increase um in year-over-year results um if you look at the trajectory here you can actually see the covid slump was more pronounced in
math um we did not dig out as steeply as we did in ela but we are ultimately catching up and now math performance in 3 through is actually just slightly exceeding Ela performance overall um we also see similarly lowest levels
of performance in these grades um is observed in 8th grade as well where only 34% of eth graders are meeting your exceeding expectation science performance is a little bit more uh positive than we see in other grades 44.2% of student
students um are proficient or meeting exceeding expectations in science again just over a 1% increase um similarly and this is a bit of a trend highest overall performance in science in the middle or in the the lower grades is in grade four 48% students meeting are exceeding
expectations and the grand grade eight is the lowest um of those assessments with only 40% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in science in grade A for social study studies similar levels of performance to science we see
um 44.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations last year in social studies it's a 1.4% increase year-over-year and again 8th grade is the lowest um performing grade of our uh AC tests with
but still 41.6 the Gap in social studies in 8th grade is not quite as pronounced um US History performance perance also would probably be the lower performing of our social studies test with only 39.5% of students passing the US History
test but that in and of itself is still a 1% increase year um further requests of the board I'm going to talk through some more specific results with third grade uh and fourth grade ELA and math and third and fourth grade or rather 8th grade ELA and
math for third grade ELA we see a 05% increase in proficiency rates rep 41% proficient in third grade um I do think as part of this story though it's also important to note while third grade growth has leveled off a little bit we
are seeing pronounced growth in Prior years continuing to progress up into the Middle grades fourth grade uh Ela performance was up 3% from last year uh and we interpret that as to say that some of the pronounced improvements that
we've seen in early grade literacy were able to maintain those right previously we saw a huge jump in third grade ELA those students are continuing to perform well and as that cohort moves through we expect to see and we'll certainly be paying very close attention that we can
maintain those improvements in ela performance as we get into middle school and fight some of that historical slump that we've seen where Ela scores have tended to to fall off so um we're very encouraged by what we're seeing in fourth grade and we'll pay very close
attention to what we see in fifth grade next year in terms of subgroup performance U I'll provide just a little bit of an overview because we see very similar Trends in third grade ELA math and eth grade ELA and math um the essentially performance gap for students with economically
disadvantaged does seem to be closing to a modest extent the economically disadvantaged subgroups growth is outperforming the growth that we see Statewide for all four of the charts that I'll present um however the students would disabilities unfortunately is in the opposite case we're not seeing as much growth as we
were observing Statewide but they are at least growing to some extent um in each of the four charts that I'll present for our English learner subgroup it does depend a little bit versus the Ala or math their performance is more flat for English language arts but we are seeing similar gains in math for English
language Learners compared to the Statewide average um so for here again we as I've referenced the growth um 41% Statewide of students are proficient uh for all students whereas
that percentage for our English or our educationally disadvantaged group is only 24.4% but again that is a 2% increase um year-over-year for economically disadvantaged students shifting over to math for third
grade um proficient or meter exceeds expectation rates is 39 .7% that's a 1.6% increase so we are somewhat flat an increase for ELA in third grade we see significant increases um for Math and as
you look at the um sorry I hit the wrong button PA I'm going the wrong way for math third grade ELA subgroup performance again we see similar Trends here economically disadvantaged students are closing the Gap um whereas and as
our English language learners whereas our students with disabilities while gaining are not gaining nearly as much as we're seeing Statewide eighth grade performance as I've suggested is precipitously lower than what we see in the lower grades um these charts will reflect that only
29.2% of our eth graders are meeting or exceeding expectations in ela and when we look at subgroup performance while we do see improvements and we we do see a particularly significant reduction in gap for economically disadvantaged students we're not maintaining that same gain for
our English language Learners and our students with disabilities and then lastly for math um proficiency rates here are slightly better than they are in ela but they're still lagging behind math at other grade levels only 34.1% of our eth graders are meeting the
exceeding expectations in math and as I've said a few times when you look at the subgroup results we see SAR Trends reduction in gap for economically disadvantaged students a reduction in gap for our uh English language Learners and yet we're not seeing that necessarily maintain for our
students with disabilities not to say that they're falling off we're still seeing some amount of growth but not the exact same levels of growth that we're observing for all students for uh and with that I'm happy to uh take questions or elaborate uh as we be helpful questions for Mr
L I have a couple of questions uh um first I know it's historical but why is social studies and science always higher than math and Ela I would probably have to to tag in some of my partners this what are we what are we do doing differently what
are we doing differently in social studies and science that we're not doing in math and Ela that's something might want to look at we we we're certainly happy to take that back and reflect on it it's certainly a relevant question and then next
question uh it seems like eighth grade is always lower and it's a different group of students coming up every year and they're doing lower so what is it that's going on in eth grade that we ought to look at to find out why that's
lower you know I think there's the summer slide conversation that we've had definitely I think has us thinking about that a little bit um if you're looking at that change in experience and performance if you're only seeing a three or 4% percentile shift or students
falling back that much in a year it might not seem significant for that child over a summer but if you imagine you aggregate that together over multiple Summers right you're losing three or four percentile Point ranks every summer but you do that up until
8th grade you can suddenly have a child that feels very far behind at that point um and so it could be we're curious to continue to explore whether or not we can combat that as move forward I was also wondering if does this include students who are taking algebra
in eth grade or does that get factored in no those would be reported independently so if you factored those in my guess is 8th grade May would be substantially higher algebra one performance has historically outpaced the e8th grade generally there's
stronger students that matriculate into that class so that might be something that you think about in your reporting because I think it does give a false lower rating than what's actually happening in our students so it might be worthwhile looking at y uh and I'd say the only reason we're leaving them out
as the historical Trend with our new algebra tests we can't we couldn't report that historically but we will be able to do that thank you any other questions hey Bob I just wanted to follow up so just a couple of things to also consider we
have to remember that our pandemic kids are now in middle school so there's going to be some cause and effect there and and and if you look at you know uh across the United States or the nape scores everything flatlines right there
at eth grade um one of the good one of the cool things though is that we received a 27 million doll Grant which we're going to apply to adolescent literacy strategies which again is different from you know learning to read it's it's the comprehension piece it's
that reading to learn piece this is where kids are really in that space they're the content is a lot more um rigorous and you know so they they really need to have those foundational skills and if they miss some of those years you know it's they it takes
different strategies when you think about older kids you can't put them in front of you know basil readers and go okay read out loud in front of all your peers um so absolutely there's a lot of good work that can continue to be done and we're really focused on looking at
that Middle School space and thinking about how we can we can support our school districts in in much better ways thank you any yes Mr Hol um so quick question on the um jump in math dcat
scores so we saw that six percentage Point increase across all students for math for proficiency which is a big jump as you noted we've spent so much Focus recently on early literacy and it's interesting that we get this giant jump
up in math I'm wondering what if anything we can learn from that other than I know you mentioned Dr L that um you know that might just be sort of a reversion to the mem from kind of the covid drop in scores but is is there
anything else happening there that we might be able to point to for this big jump up in math I would um I mean part of the argument for the focus on early University is its additive effect every right that the ability of students to
engage with text should ultimately improve their ability to perform across the board and so I think it's a plausible assumption that some of the literacy improvements that we've made are actually allowing students to engage with all of the material across the curriculum um I'd want to think a little
bit more substantively I'm sure there's other things that that would occur to us but that's definitely the first thing so wanted to add to so last um legislative session the mathematics supports actors passed so we're currently in the mode of um
implementation of that which includes doing a landscape analysis really understanding what districts are doing we're finding some really um really great successes in some little tiny rurals and and and in some you know larger communities so we're really gonna
we're really trying to understand what it is is going out there we're we were we just surveyed a bunch of educator prep programs to also understand what that prep a looks like so we're kind of in that in that qualitative research mode to really understand what's going
on in the state of Tennessee so that that we can then once we get that understanding then be in the position to maybe recommend you know here's why we think these you know numbers are better again Tennessee did a lot better than the rest of the country in math scores I
had a number of colleagues um from across the country call me and say our math scores were down 7even % I'm like well we that so um thank you uh uh uh schools of Tennessee so there's some good stuff happening out there and we're
going to try to find out and figure out again in the professional development we're also having an expert review Community review our professional development how can we make it better how can we make it more accessible those sorts of things any other
questions all right break just don't go on the record so I don't forget I would love if it makes sense when it makes sense to have a conversation at a workshop about that landscape analysis and just what you're learning I think that would be really interesting to all of our board and also on that grant that you mentioned which I think is a federal gr Chris Brown I've been in touch it
that's huge and like supporting adolescent literature L literacy in that way again conversation maybe the future Workshop about what that looks like as it comes together that's exciting just forget all right let's take a break it's uh
255 we're scheduled for a 15 minute break let's try to make it like 12 minutes e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e two minutes e e let's get back together next is State accountability for opportunity Charter Schools Dr David Lair Mr Jonathan Chris thank you for that
one second outstanding we are here today to share with you the opportunity Public Charter School accountability framework so in the presentation today we'll give you an overview that the law um requires from public chapter 1066
that has been recently passed and then um some details about the accountability group uh that was part of that law uh and the the ideas that were shared during that time and then we will give you the proposal of the accountability framework for opportunity public charter schools
so public chapter 1066 um establish the creation of opportunity public charter schools U they they are public charter schools that serve at least 75% of atrisk students um as defined within that law um very specifically in grades 6 through
12 uh they are in the process of applying right now the opportunity public charter schools they may begin in year 2627 so at risk is very clearly defined in in the law itself it is not U what is
always considered at risk uh in uh accountability measures um there are eight uh criteria that are here so the first criteria is that um the student and the family does not exceed
um I think it's the does not exceed 400% of the poverty level so that is the foundational piece for them to qualify and then they have to meet one of the eight criteria that you see up right now so I'll give you a moment just a look at
that as you're looking at that I will tell you this and this is a a note to have uh this does not include free and reduced lunch as school nutrition defines it so that is not an at risk
category listed in the public chapter so sometimes that gets confused in how accountability is measured or direct certified um is measured but that is not listed as one of the eight categories um it may impact the eligibility of the
income but it does not meet one of these eight can I ask a question yes uh and I don't know how at risk is uh defined within the typical category of at risk for for the districts but is that the
only criteria that isn't included here or there other criteria how how the district would Define at risk versus is the definitions here so the at risk David please help me is identified in accountability would be solely based upon
income migrant homeless foster care they are four income migrant Foster and homeless good question thank you so the the accountability framework requires the the department to recommend
to you and then for you to adopt an accountability framework the charge that U we had from the law was one to uh create an accountability working group and to gather feedback from various stakeholders uh we've done that uh we
had a a really great meeting the first time and then we've come back and and presented what you will see today um to that group uh for additional feedback um in developing the accountability framework the department considered the modifications to the current
accountability system um and then taking into account what we believe the law the intention of the law was to bring to you something um that varies from the current accountability system based upon the feedback that we received from the working group um we believe those two
things were the intention of the law and so we bring that to you today to have the opportunity to review that and ask questions about that so the considerations in the context uh School accountability varies across States obviously um the purpose of Tennessee's
a through F serves two purpose one is to tell through growth how schools are doing are you making an impact and it was fun to listen as a former principal today to hear our principal stand up here and tell the changes and the growth that they are seeing not only um the
growth in uh uh academics but also the growth in achievement which is the second part of the state dep or the state's accountability model is to tell the story to parents and to children and to schools and to communities what are the outcomes being produced so the
accountability model as it is currently designed is to tell yes our students are growing and here's the ultimate outcome through achievement so uh the novelty of this approach Department's ability to model the recommendations was very limited
obviously there are no accountability public charter schools that in there are in existence if you look at the eight criteria that make students eligible to be considered part of the 75% for an opportunity Public Charter School we don't have the ability to Mark some of
those so we don't know if a child has been through an abusive situation that's been documented we don't know if somebody's been pregnant or is a parent there are things things that are included in this accountability model that make a student uh
criteria wise eligible to be at considered at risk for those 75 that we can't Mark or we don't track so uh our data and assessment team our assessment accountability and research team try to go through that and David will do a good
job of explaining exactly how what comparative models we tried to pull but we just don't know and so in that what we want to do today is present to you um a framework but also present to you with
the understanding we intend to come back and have this conversation with you again in six months eight months a year whenever it is feasible to say we now have an opportunity charter school we know who they are we know who those students are uh we know what the 25%
that are not at risk what does that look like um how are they programmatically serving these students and then we can bring back to you the uh the data to really have a deeper discussion of what an accountability framework long term to do both of those to say schools are
effective and schools here's the outcome of students that are being produced um and within that we uh will once we have a accountability framework approved we will go back and um look at the performance framework for Charter
Schools or for opportunity charter schools and what that framework looks like um and a lot of the feedback that we received um from the the working group um if if authorizers decide to to follow that or pursue that or think those are important they could put those
in in in the model framework not necessarily the accountability framework so I want to make sure I distinguish those two for you um as we have this discussion so for the accountability working group question yes so because this is new to Tennessee but I think
other states have have done similar things has the department looked at how other states hold these opportunity Charter Schools accountable within their framework yes um the the unique
circumstances in Tennessee is that the way that the opportunity charter school is outlined in public chapter does not align with a lot of other states and the data of schools that will look similar to this because they Mark those as um
alternative schools and so accountability if you read the laws that go with those alternative school models in different states it is defined differently in statute for alternative schools in Tennessee so alternative
schools in Tennessee are uh defined as a short-term placement it's never designed to be a long-term placement um alternative schools in Tennessee do not receive an accountability mark because of that um so we we've looked at a ways that several states have sort of
addressed this student population but the accountability piece for each of those States is so different because of the way Tennessee is designed in the opportunity charter school and the alternative schools being a completely different pathway for schools
to look at yes um so the population though for these opportunity Char schools is going to be the same type of population that other states have for alternative schools correct I mean this is a
75% at risk with that largely being I mean we looked at categories but chronic absenteeism is one of the I assume main categories that will factor into that being involved in juvenal justice system having DCS having found that they've experienced abuse and neglect um
pregnancy being a parent um I we looked at we we heard from the turnaround schools earlier today do incredible work those are schools that they were experiencing I think on average 30 to 40% chronic absenteeism and they were they've been selected for a pilot
program for turnaround schools so what we're looking at as a population that's just it seems to me is just categorically different from even turnaround schools that are having 30 and 40% of their students chronic absentee this is double that at a minimum to qualify for it so it just
feels to me like we're talking about schools I know it in legislation they are denominated as opportunity schools but the population is effectively the same other than the kind of short-term duration of what other states I think have with their alternative schools so
to Dr Maxwell's question about shouldn't we be looking to those sorts of metrics for evaluating accountability for our comparable system here in Tennesse and I think that's a great philosophical question that I think that lays before
the board today of what does that look like um ultimately in Tennessee the the state has decided the department has decided the parents have decided you have decided there's a standard like and when we talk about accountability here we want to do two things how's the
school doing is it making an impact growth and what is the outcome so if if you remember back several years ago we had several schools that were in the single digits of academic achievement but they were producing really good
value added and the argument became we wait a minute we don't want to give an a to a school that has six% student achievement so let's create an accountability system that does both of those things celebrates growth celebrates School impact but also
there's a there's a standard and and in comparison to this standard here's the here's the ultimate outcome that is being produced from those schools so It ultimately is a Phil philosophical conversation of what does this look like um again that's why we come with the
intention of looking at this again in a year because right now we just don't have any data that says if we moved it 5% 10% 20% 50% one way or the other or we added this or we added that we could give you an answer of yes this
accurately does both of those things um and so great question great conversation um a lot of information out there but at this time that that's why we we've brought to you what we've done is saying we still want to hold the standard of
accountability and growth and with the idea of there's some variance in here based upon some of the things that the working group said would be important and then finally we're going to have to bring this back to you for a deeper discussion that we can actually make some valid decisions long term
based upon data that we have I guess what propped my question was just this foundational issue of what are these schools that we are talking about are these sort of schools in in the general population that have a a
relatively high percentage of at risk students or are these schools that are just fundamentally something different that are more like altern what what are termed alternative schools around the country um because it feels like that's sort of a threshold question for how we should handle accountability for them if
it's just these are like any other school um we think they have the same types of challenges the same in essence student population I feel like that's different than if these are schools that are more like what around the country are often term aled schools I know Tennessee we have something a little
different here um so I'm just interested in kind of is that where where does the department see how what these schools are going to be well we we don't know the answer to that that's really the reason of a year from now we need to have this conversation
again I will tell you what we did was we looked at schools that would qualify in this category now but the only thing we could use was above 70 above the 75th percentile of chronically absent so there were less than five
schools in the state that would be able to qualify for that okay multiple of them were are alternative schools no no we did not include alternative schools in that of accountability so there are five schools in Tennessee that could qualify public schools now that could
qualify to be opportunity Charter School rules based upon solely chronically absenteeism so the question becomes philosophically what do you do with those five are do we continue to say yes there's a standard and the standard is
we expect growth we want growth and we want outcome and we want achievement or do we treat them differently the public chapter actually gives way for those schools to be converted into opportunity public charter schools um in a process to be able to do that um so again we we
look at what is the ultimate desire of the state when we talk about education we talk about accountability and right now the standard is growth and achievement as we move forward question so you just said that there were five
schools that met that criteria already are those Charter Schools or are they traditional schools I do not have the answer of of what they are categorized I just know there were there were less than five okay that's using only the
75% chronic so if you use some of the other categories that number may go up it could yes sir uh without say say if they were in the traditional schools not in the charter schools why could they not also be under
the same accountability uh framework that you're talking about for these opportunity they could the public chapter allows them to make that conversion based upon laa Lea recommendation in the process that's outlined in the public chapter and not
going to an opportunity charter school but St as a traditional public school no sir they would have to make that change to be able to be held accountable under any alternative accountability measure so then they would be managed by charter school as opposed by the
Traditional School correct Mr chairman Mr Jens can you go back to that sheet where you're showing the eight U eight things here go I
am I may just be missing this so bear with me but what I'm reading is that a household income that does not exceed four times the federal property
hypothetical you have a household that $1 over that or10 or hundred then I've got eight any one of the other eight what if they're they don't qualify on the first one and you
got they have all eight of the of the next things is that mean I'm sorry you're you're not eligible to be considered for is and and then my second question is where did that sheet come from is that part of the statute that is
part of the statute and the statute very clearly says the first criteria that has to be met is the income and one of those eight you you understand my concern is is that somebody might be right at the border and have five of
those categories in their life and that and they're not able to enter into that level I I don't know if that's got needs to go back to I understand what you're saying but uh maybe Miss supe can if that's what the law says I don't think that would be
anything that we would have a choice option for at this point in time is that correct uh that's right uh Rachel supe general counsel State Board of Education um to Echo what was said uh this is set in statute that the student must not
only meet the income requirements um but also one of the additional criteria to your point about perhaps missing it by $10 you know I think it's a it's a valid concern um I think
there's other areas in the Tennessee education laws where we we do look at income levels um you know as a as a test for whether a student might be eligible for a certain program or scholarship for example um so it is you know Common to to set a threshold for this kind of
thing but I I think you know the concern um could be addressed by the legislature if they if they wanted to do that so if it's the law I hear what you're saying I mean I understand that and but
it just it does not seem like uh if I've got student that's got six out of eight of below the in the boxes and they I'm sorry you're $5 dollar over the poverty level but you can't be a part of it so I
again it's an objection I I don't know that I make it to anybody but just concerns Mr Hol and miss me and just real quick because Mr Jens and I had the same concern so I Googled what the federal poverty level is and for for a household of four four times that it's going to be over $100,000 a year so I
think that we're we're talking about families that you know that have decent resources and so maybe that's part of but but I hear you on the fact that you know you can have decent resources and still have a you know child who's pregnant or substance abuse or all those other things but at first when I heard
poverty level I was thinking something look more like poverty and that that four times number gets you up there m mcer and also 25% of those students can go without meeting those criteria correct right so I meanor 25%
of the student population do not have to meet that correct so that I mean that you would be able to have students like we're talking about still be part of opportunity sorry Mr Crystal go ahead no problem
great discussion I will say this and the Commissioners made this uh very clear since I've joined the Department we never want to create an opportunity where schools can say you're at risk therefore we will not expect you to learn and the accountability group and
the department have all in agreement straight out of the box that said just because you're at risk does not mean you should you should have a less of an opportunity Unity to be successful um we heard some great news today of of
students in schools um that are traditionally underserved and when given the right environment and when given the right expectations and the right people in the right place we see good things and so we do not want to lessen uh from a department standpoint a place where we
possibly somebody could say just because you fit this description we lessen our expectations of you and your Ed educational opportunities so at this time I want turn over uh to Dr Le to be able to walk you through the the
detailed explanation of the the proposed framework good afternoon chairman e members of the board I Am David L assistant commissioner for assessment uh accountability and research uh and I'm going to walk you through the the larger part um how we propose doing opportunity opportunity
school accountability and some of the detail but I'm happy to uh to adjust as necessary and take question at any point um this slide sort of depicts I think what are the large pieces of how we envision modifying our existing
accountability system to better suit these schools and I do say that very intentionally um per Jonathan's comments the Department's intent here is to find a version of our letter grade system that is more appropriate for these schools we just released the letter
grade system last year with a very specific intent to essentially rebalance how Tennessee had done accountability previously um our accountability system prior to the release of this version of letter grades was heavily focused on
being sensitive to the impact of the school in that in a year right it looks predominantly at the movement of students in a year's time what is this how is the school will change the trajectory of kids our letter grade system does something very different it still
attempts to speak to growth and impact but it also attempts to speak more directly to communities and to parents about what is actually being produced for kids so a strong piece of that is the impact of the school but another piece of it is to what extent are students in that school actually
achieving the benchmarks that we know are critically important and as as Jonathan said at some point in time it feels dis uous to tell communities that this is an excellent school and it's an a school and it's serving your community incredibly well if it overall is not
getting students to a place that nobody feels particularly good about and so as we just released a letter grade system that tries to rebalance how we do both of those things we are purposefully engaging in this opportunity school conversation from that lens how do we
make sure we're communicating about what's being produced for kids as well as trying to be sensitive to how the school itself has moved kids from wherever it received them and so it really is a balancing act in this single letter grade World in which we live it
is very hard to find the right Tipping Point between doing both of those things and so in terms of what we're proposing um firstly the department feels very strongly that we should exempt these schools from actually receiving a consequential letter grade in that first year to the point that Jonathan was
speaking about earlier we just we know very little about them we've tried model this out but we don't have great data um delaying the release of a meaningful letter grade A year gives us a year to actually look at their data um to run these rules that we're proposing see
what it's achieving um and come back and have another conversation about what's ultimately how this accountability system is actually behav um second piece uh we do want to adjust the waiting of our accountability system to some extent so right now for
all regular public schools in Tennessee half of their evaluation is simply based on the academic performance of kids in that year regardless of how much it's changed or what the impact of the school has been in that year it's based on how far kids have gotten the other half of
that is for middle schools the growth the actual impact of Educators in that year and for high schools It's a combination of growth and College and Career Readiness what we're proposing is to for these schools soften that absolute performance of student achievement to an
extent we're going to drop that percentage of their letter grade calculation from 50% to 45% and for middle schools redistribute that 5% to growth and for high schools redistribute that 5% to College and Career
Readiness the third sort of large adjustment sort of Cornerstone of what we're thinking about we would think of this as a continuous enrollment waiting adjustment and we would Factor this into all of the indicators in the accountability system that we could and
so at a base level what we're suggesting is that we would change how we calculate achievement we would change where we we would change how we would do growth where we could we would change how we would do a College and Career ready and give additional weight in all of those indicators for students that maintain
enrollment at any of these opportunity charter schools and ultimately are successful so if you imagine how we'd adjust the achievement indicator 45% of their letter grade for these schs it's a simple calculation it's the percentage of students who met or exceeded
performance on the test over the total number of kids if a child is enrolled in Opportunity charter school for one year and that child meets or exceeds expectations they' count once in the enumerator and once in a denom however if that child comes back
for the second year and in that second year they meet or exceed expectations we would actually count that child twice in the numer just getting these kids to come back and stay engaged with an educational with a school is wonderful that's what we want these schools to
achieve we want them to be better at this because these are kids who had major life disruptions however we're not going to lower the bar of what it means for these students to be successful so we want to try this we want this to be impactful we want to be meaningful doubling the weight for a child who's
been enrolled for two years potentially significant will also go as far as if they come back for a third year so if they show up in sixth grade and they stay till 8th grade and they ultimately achieve the meter exceeds expectations in eth grade that child would count three times in the numerator of the
calculation and we would do this for the achievement indicator but we would also do this for the College and Career ready indicator so if they maintain connection to that child that child ultimately becomes College and Career ready through a variety of different Pathways that child would count more in colge career
ready rate the longer they were able to maintain that connection to this please back go back to the Chart please so that is the traditional framework yeah what you see here on the right is what we traditionally do so for the your proposal would be for middle
schools 45 achievement 45 growth 10 and then High School 45 achievement 30 growth 10 growth in the smallest 25 and then 15 for that correct just make sure
thank um so again i' i' I've talked through this slide I'm going to move through it but again this is a a description of the continuous enrollment waiting for the achievement indicator um for growth the department is proposing one piece of this that is new um as you saw on the previous slide
with the pie chart we used two growth indicators in our existing uh accountability framework there's the growth of all students the Tas score the school composite we also report growth of students in the bottom 25% um the idea here for all of our schools is we want to make sure that
we're incentivizing to moving every student even their lowest performing students need to grow and so we separate out the growth of those students in our accountability system that will still be an option for the opportunity Charter Schools however the Department's thinking on this is that given the
disruptions that the students are likely to have experienced in very high concentrations at these schools we're concerned that the overall level of academic performance may not have a lot of variation all the students in these schools may be low performing the difference between a student in the bottom 25% and those that aren't might
not actually be that significant and so we considered an alternative growth measure um in terms of our general approach we'll calculate it both ways and we'll give the opportunity Charter School the more beneficial of the two options when we looked at some of our modeling data the growth of the students in the
bottom 25% does seem to be impactful for the schools that we see um but we also wanted to give them an alternative and so what we're suggesting to use is a relatively simple calculation based on existing tbos data we can calculate for
every student what we would call a growth percentile a child who's at the 50th percentile from one year to the next grew the average amount observed by any student who started where that child started so it's relatively exact same
starting point how much average growth do we see if the child makes average growth they're at the 50th percentile if they make 55 if their growth percentile is 55% they've made more growth than the average kid who started where they started if they make 45% growth
percentile they've made less growth than students who started where they started from and so we can average this together for a student and then we can average all the students together and produce a growth percentile measure for schools and so what we're proposing to
do here is to say that we will evaluate opportunity charter schools using this growth percentile mechanic we'll calculate a half a standard deviation around the 50th percentile if you can get above that you'd earn a four or a five if you can get above a standard deviation but one of the reasons why we
wanted to pursue this path is this version of a growth calculation would also allow us to do the continuous enrollment weight so it allows us to create a version of growth where we can continue to reward schools for getting these kids to continue to come back and ultimately
show Improvement and show growth and so again I think the other consequential piece of this we'll do it both ways uh and we'll give opportunity Charter Schools the more beneficial options we don't want to preclude them from using growth 25 but we want to give them an alternative should growth 25 just not
really be instructive for these schools um terms of the College and Career Readiness indicator as I've already mentioned we use the continuous enrollment waiting for that but there is other one other specific adjustment for here um the use of the act in determining whose College and Career ready presently for schools is a pretty
simple calculation a student has to achieve a qualifying score 21 or higher to achieve College in career Readiness through the ACT pathway we're proposing that an alternative pathway exist for opportunity Charters they could be
identified as being College and Career ready by virtue of the ACT if they increase their composite score on the ACT by at least four points four points or more so even if they don't get all the way to 21 if from the first time they take the ACT up until the senior
retake they increase by at least four points they also can be identified as being college and prer ready um it's an impactful adjustment not wildly so we generally see about a 1% increase in College and Career Readiness attainment rates if we apply that rule um we would
expect and are hopeful that given the programming associated with opportunity charter schools that they could do even better in that space so it does not change things dramatically I don't want to oversell the impact of the adjustment but it's also consequential as well please Four Points seems pretty
high right to get to rate I mean that'd be like a 24 to a 28 that's hug where did you get that well so they can go from a 13 to a 17 and they haven't gotten to the 21 right where they would need to get to but as long as they get those four points they'll still be
identified as College where did that like where did you get the four point indicator well so yeah actually it is one of the pieces of feedback that you received from other folks was trying to keep all of these systems in alignment and so we took that out of Tissa because that's a familiar metric that people are already
shooting statistically what's that probability that a person will increase by Four Points over we see about a 1% increase in attainment rates if we apply that rule over and above over in addition to the 21 rule that we
have now you get about an additional 800 students across the state make that Benchmark but don't make the 21 800 out of how many we have in a graduating cohort 70 some odd thousand it's not a big
Mr h a quick question um I believe you all mentioned earlier there are five schools that would qualify at least just for the chronically absent in the state right now as being over 75% um did you all look at what the
state letter score um letter grades are for each of those so to get more schools we actually dro the percentage down to 50 um and we found 26 schools in the state that had chronic absenteeism rates above
50% um if we had run our accountability system for those schools with no adjustments at all all of those schools would have earned a d and f um if we run this version of the accountability system two of those schools actually earn B's I can't remember exactly how
many earned C's but it's it's a far more significant amount than what we would have seen previously it does not wildly the outcome I mean the fact is if student achievement is 45% um that is going to always be significant because that is always what we're trying to do in Tennessee with
letter gr we're trying to communicate about what's being produced for kids um so it doesn't swing things wildly but with the models that we see we do see student we do see schools that we expect or hope to be similar earn bees um and there's no reason why they theoretically
I was actually looking at the presentation earlier today and seeing that one of the schools that was presenting went from 4.5% proficient to 177% proficient if you factor in the continuous Improvement adjustment for a school that makes a move like that um that school could do
exceedingly well with the system what about um you know 75 plus percent because it seems like 50% that that I think this goes back to my earlier questions which is and I don't know if it is a philosophical question are these fundamentally different or or
are these just on one end of the Spectrum this the uh turnaround schools we looked at earlier today I think the average chronic absentee rate if I remember the chart was roughly 35% but there were some that were closer to 50 and yes they have seen incredible gains
um but if we're talking about 75% it looks like we do have five of those schools in Tennessee did those all receive FS under the letter grade I couldn't tell you where they came out whether it was the 50s that are in be we happy to follow up with the board on that topic but I I couldn't tell you off the top of my head
we weren't looking specifically at that once we identified the sample so I don't know but happy to follow up on that thank you the reason for my concern is my understanding and I'm not incredibly well versed in in the history of legislation but was that there was a
desire to potentially bring in you know Innovative models and operators into this space um to kind of improve this especially high at risk um School set that we have in this State and if these
schools just given the the extremely challenging students group that they are serving are very very likely even if they run incredibly well relative to expectations and peers and Tennessee or nationally if under this proposed
accountability system they are very likely to get a dnf then are we going to be fulfilling the intent of the general assembly in this law in attracting high quality operators to come and innovate and succeed in this space um and I just
I don't know the answer to that but my concern is if if if we're not actually seeing the possibility of schools with that you know 65 70 plus percent chronic abs and T rate being able to score a d
above an F or a d then are operators going to see that and think I'm going to go to Florida Texas Colorado you name it instead of going to Dr Morrison may be as good a time as any need to jump in thank you Dr lard
and Mr CHR well so I think it's fair point I've also been wrestling with this in terms of the other sort of pieces on the chessboard so we've got the accountability framework which the board will come together to vote on at a special call meeting in December then we've also got the performance framework
and the application which again because of the way the statute was written these schools are not subject to the automatic closure of the law so if they're in the bottom 5% of schools they will not automatically close like other charter schools in the state uh the performance framework is what's going to determine whether or not they stay open so the application and how we support
authorizers and reviewing operators to ensure that we get those Innovative operators up and running and we out B actors that will be really important I think to consider and then the performance framework um which maybe we can talk about at some point is my understanding is the department will develop a separate model performance
framework for these opportunity Charter Schools the districts can take and adopt and amend as they want but that will be sort of the the progress measures that will determine whether or not the school stays open so I think that is also important to remember in terms of ultimately where accountability will fall for these schools um just as we're
considering this piece of it I understand the desire to reach you know these at risk students but did you look have you looked at the impact what this program will be on the
traditional schools in other words you got 75% chronically absent you said you've identified there's at least five schools right now that are 75% chronically
absent so if you reach those students then one way to reach them that's what Mr chriswell said is to turn those over into opportunity charter schools so what's that impact on the traditional public
school you're obviously going to get students hopefully get students moved over you know if a charter company comes in and they're going to get students from all over and that will be an impact but I look one thing I look at is your accountability working group that you
had there I saw one public school traditional public school I think that was because it was from a charter part of them you know did we talk to the districts about get them involved in
this process because I think it will have an impact on we had this discussion with the executive superintendent study Council uh the feedback that we get from them is that there should be one accountability model I understand that and that was
this week or something like that yes sir yeah so you know it's it's beyond the fact that you know would have been nice to have included them upfront when you had started these discussions so they had a better understanding of what you're talking about or maybe they
understood at risk differently than what you defined it that might be helpful but to get their input upfront I think it's critical because I think we're talking about impacting not only these students and these Charter Schools but I think
we're also talking about impacting the traditional schools in some way shape or form and I don't know what that is yet until I see those numbers but I have heard from several of them uh saying exactly what you said is they a lot more
said they have more than five schools out there I've heard from more and maybe it's because they don't Define at risk the same way as as the statute defines at risk but um you know I mean their position is okay if you're going to have an accountability different
accountability program for these that are at risk why not put our schools under the at risk schools under the same type program so you're comparing Apples to Apples and that's what I heard many many times as you're comparing apples to oranges so I think it's something that
you ought to look at uh I know we have an emergency rule coming up in December and I know you said that we're going to look at this a year from now that there not going to be any accountability grades out for the next year or something like that the the atrisk definitions are not Apples to
Apples they're not going to be Apples to Apples the intent of this law was really to to recover students that have probably left the system or on the verge of leaving the system so if you talk about the impact on Public Schools
they're actually almost going I mean where these operators May operate they're actually going to help them because they're going to be taking kids that are probably in that very bottom 25% and focusing solely on their
achievement we're not talking about taking kids out of public schools that are somehow going to penalize the public schools this is a very un unque student population that is my understanding that
that is what the that is what this community the Charter Community that supported this that pushed this legislation was looking to do to again create an Innovative way to be able to bring students that are on the verge or out of the system back into the system
to give them a future After High School many of these kids if you look at that list are going to be at a point of very severe disruption in their schooling these are probably the kids that are I mean if they are sitting
if they are sitting in an alternative school could be disciplinary could be behavioral issues the the I just I'm I'm struggling to understand how this would impact Public Schools as far as like whether
it's dollars or student population there it's very likely we're not going to we're not going to get a whole mess of these schools it's a very unique student population a very unique set of curricula and supports that are going to be needed to help these
students become successful so at a 45% achievement level this is very rigorous for them and I don't disagree with anything you said there but I think what could have helped greatly or what helped be a better communication because the comments that I got from the dist from
the directors was you know this week this is the first week I've heard of this so I don't think they've had a chance to look at it to see if in fact it does impact them one way or the other so I think that's that's a qu comment I have is when we go in and we make these
changes let's get everybody involved in the process and I'll take responsibility for that too for the State Board staff because I think together you know we'll be bringing the rule we can take that feedback and think about what Outreach looks like because I do think some communication would help to better Define how we're talking about at risk
for the purpose of these Charter Schools versus how we talk about it more broadly across the student population in Tennessee you're absolutely right I think there is confusion there some homework Mr chairman Mr H and I think kind of going back to what I've
been trying to communicate is if if we think these schools are just sort of different and we're sort of tweaking the standards the accountability standards a little bit that's different from saying this is a unique population and for a unique population maybe we need to rethink the standards a little bit more
so that then it's not like we're just we're taking the bar and we're lowering it just to Tad in a way that that traditional Public Schools might think why would we do that if these are similar to our schools but if we're talking about what's really a unique population that's comparable to alternative schools then maybe instead
of comparing Them Apples to Apples to all of the using the same accountability framework with some tweaks um that we have for all of our schools Statewide maybe we should look at a little bit more fundamental of a change and how we're evaluating them if that might have
the benefit of then bringing in these operators who want to shake up this system and and bring change here and who might be deterred if if they feel like you can almost get sort of the worst of Both Worlds where you've got traditional Public Schools who aren't happy because they think why is the bar being lowered
a little bit for this group and then you've got the people who wanted to come in and start these opportunity Charter School alternative schools who are saying well wait a second we're going to be a d or andf because it's a fundamentally different population and we're just struggling to keep these kids coming to school and not drop out and
stay out of the justice system we want them to get like a high school degree and be productive Citizens We're not trying to get them from not being able to read at 16 years old to being proficient in ela the next year like we just can't you can't be compared that way and so that's that's sort of my
concern is you know if we're sort of trying to do it in the middle like are we at risk of of of not doing either thing that that maybe want do good point any other comments or questions I'm sorry I'm sure we cut you
off go ahead and finish presentation oh you're done thank you we'll come together in December you'll have the opportunity to ask questions work with h the collaboration here moving forward make sure we communicate with um uh local
districts to be able to understand what is happening here but also the law and the intent of the law uh and what uh as a department we are charged with bringing to you um but again the intent is to continue this conversation not just within the next month but within
the next year to make sure that we U bring before you what we're charged to do which is an alternative an accountability system that's based upon the law that's based upon the input that we been given from the working group and I want to make it clear that
the State Board we do have uh some responsibility for ProMag gating rules but this is not a rule that's going to be voted on tomorrow and let me ask our attorney kind of talk about what our
responsibility and our process going forward might be hi there I I'm happy to give an an update on the status of the opportunity Charter School rule um as everyone might recall that was passed on first reading
uh back in August 2024 we are now going to have a special called meeting in December on December 18th and at that meeting which will be virtual we will present to the board an emergency rule regarding opportunity
charter schools and then we will also work to finalize changes to the permanent rule which will then come back to the board for final reading and at the December meeting as we've heard we will also have uh tdoe
present the opportunity Charter School accountability framework for the board to adopt and I'm happy to add any additional details on that update and so the December meeting is when we would be
voting on to adopt the uh accountability framework is that correct that's right the plan um is to hear it in December on both first and final reading since it doesn't live in a rule or a policy thank you other questions or
comments Mr chairman I think we have one commitment before you right now to run specifically the data that is addressed for those schools that would qualify for the 7 percentile based upon chronic absis and we will do that get that information to you um between now and
the next time that you meet we are more than happy to run any scenario that you think would give you better data or better insight into the decision that you need to make to be able to do that so we make that commitment to you as well let me ask one other question I've
heard from you uh quote terms intention of the law associated with uh the framework accountability framework can somebody explain a little bit better what you believe is the intention of the law I'd ask our attorney to also say the
same thing with regard to the difference that that uh they're separate between the uh opportunity charter school and the traditional schools are separate accountability Frameworks that is in the
law I understand but somebody talked about it int of the law what's what's the intention of the law I'm going to read a quote directly from the the statute um the department shall recommend and the State Board shall adopt an opportunity Public
Charter School accountability framework in compliance U with the federal requirements under Essa um it says the opportunity Public Charter School accountability framework must include multiple measures including performance metrics uh targets that ensure students
are prepared for post High School Success um my understanding behind the legislative intent was for for the opportunity Public Charter School accountability framework to be separate
and in addition to the regular accountability framework um it gives a lot of you know flexibility in the laws to to what can be included but uh it does appear that the legislative and was for it to be separate um and perhaps even I would say
targeted towards the population uh aimed at who who these schools will serve in particular so it's just required that they be separate they could be the same or they could be different the work but but they are separate the law does not specifically
ex would you like the attorney the law does not say alternative accountability measure it does not say different accountability measure just simply says that the state board will adopt an accountability framework we believe the intent through discussions and through the way the law
is crafted of the you are to have a an accountability working group to give you feedback on how it could be different uh we believe that it is supposed to be different um and so to Mr Holz
uh uh Insight earlier that said that um the change changes could be drastic or they could be minor um based upon the the intent of what the law was to encourage people to come in and to set up an Al opportunity Charter School to
serve this population of students um we we the ultimate end of this conversation is we just don't know we just don't know if you made them completely opposite of each other we still don't know if that's right or not and So based upon that
found we come with an accountability model that's based upon what we have here with some limited changes based upon the data that we do have and that we could run and say this would make a difference if
the school looked like this but we don't know what that school looks like at this moment and that's the challenge thank you thank you any other questions Mr cins I had to step out for a work call
but I was just wondering if if we had discuss performance framework the perform the performance framework for opportunity public charter schools will be developed once the accountability measure is um adopted um
and in that framework you there will be an opportunity to for uh for authorizers to adjust according to what they deem is necessary for accountability to hold Sarah you
have to help me here to hold them to a standard to stay open I mean that'll yeah will the working group or has the working group had any input on that will that will the working group
have in put on the uh performance framework piece we will we will gather more input um from the the charter school community be able to have those conversations of what that should look like just like we're currently doing for
the the charter school performance framework that's not opportunity Charter so we will gather that input too and to Chairman 's point we will include public schools in that conversation any other questions thank you Mr chrisell thank
you David Mr L all right next item is licens your discipline Todd Madison Ryan Shanahan good afternoon members Todd Madison Ryan Shanahan associate councils for the board we'll be presenting for you tomorrow um the staff
recommendations for ler action uh something to note for you we will or we do anticipate one individual coming to speak on her own behalf that would be item D on your board meeting agenda miss Helen Campbell can can you speak up just
a little bit I'm having a hard time hear you oh I'm sorry sure so wanted to note for you all that uh we will have or we anticipate an individual um showing up tomorrow to speak on her own behalf that's item D on your board
agenda Helen Campbell and with that we will take any clarifying questions you have or note any items for further discussion tomorrow aside from Miss Campbell who will be showing up any questions for Mr M just
clarification it's my understanding everything's worked out with her is that correct I believe so yes okay so she just wants to speak for the group that's I think she just wants to be presentent in case the board doesn't agree with our
recommendation but she does want to speak is my is that correct that's my understanding okay so we we will pull her out separately any other questions for Mr Madison none that's
it thank you sir thanks any final discussion any other comments from anybody purposes of the committee of the whole being fulfilled I declare the board meeting adjourned that was what they were installing for