Business and community leaders recommend plan for student success in Metro Schools
2018 Education Report Card focuses on Social Emotional Learning
A five-month study of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) efforts in the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has led a committee of 21 business and community leaders convened by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce to urge Metro Schools, MNPS School Board, Mayor David Briley’s Office, and the Nashville community to strongly consider recommendations focused on advancing skills students need to function in school and in life. These skills include managing emotions, creating positive relationships and setting goals. Committee co-chairs Dane Danielson of Gould Turner Group, P. C. Architecture and Clifton Harris of Urban League of Middle Tennessee issued the 2018 Education Report Card today before stakeholders and members of the public at the Nashville Public Library in downtown Nashville.
The report states that, too often, SEL is mislabeled as “soft skills,” reduced to discipline measures or made secondary to academics. Increasingly, the conversation around SEL is interdisciplinary, making its way into sectors like business, healthcare and criminal justice. Industry leaders recognize that the skills gap keeping students from being successful are often not technical, but interpersonal. The report also highlights the importance of a committed leadership creating a positive school culture for embedding SEL practices in all aspects of teaching and learning. The report says the focus on SEL does not take away from academics but provides a more holistic approach to student learning. Research links SEL skills to positive gains in GPA and test scores and decreases in absenteeism and suspension rates.
The group made five recommendations to support the district’s progress towards its goals.
- The MNPS School Board should enact a policy that ends out-of-school suspensions, expulsions or arrests in Pre-k through 4th grade, except for the most egregious acts (as identified by PASSAGE).
- MNPS should create a program to identify and develop highly effective principals as mentors for other administrators, with a specific emphasis on setting a school vision, establishing a restorative culture, and galvanizing multiple community resources to bolster SEL and academic achievement.
- MNPS should require every in the school in district to identify one peer-elected teacher to serve as an SEL lead and provide them with the additional planning period to support and train other teachers, provide feedback on classroom culture, and communicate directly with the SEL department.
- MNPS, in direct partnership with community partners, should conduct a cluster-based needs assessment with the goal of aligning MNPS and community resources across school tiers to provide consistent access for students and families.
- The Mayor’s Office should create an action team made up of representatives from the school district, Metro government, and the business and non-profit communities to consider the impact of the city’s growth on our youngest Nashvillians, specifically gentrification and displacement, and focus on how services to address these issues are mindful of the needs of families with children.
“In no place are the challenges, opportunities, and potential of Nashville better reflected than in its public schools. MNPS has ambitious goals for its students but cannot reach them alone. The obstacles are too great and the needs too high,” says Danielson. “So long as we, as a community, continue to ask ourselves what children need in order to be successful in life, we believe that MNPS can fulfill its vision of becoming the fastest improving urban school district in the U.S.,” adds Harris.
The 2018 Education Report Card is sponsored by PNC and marks the 27h consecutive year a report on strategies for greater educational attainment has been issued by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s education committee. A downloadable copy of the report can be found at here.