This post is a guest contribution to the SCORE Sheet from Laurie Brown and Ashley Buckelew who attended the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit last week. Last week, we attended SCORE’s Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit to highlight the work of the Higher Achievement Summer School (H.A.S.S.), an intensive four-week summer experience we put together…
As a member of SCORE’s team this summer, I have learned a lot about the education issues that our nation faces and have dived into the very lively discussion between policy-makers, educators, parents, business leaders, and students themselves. What I have found, is that the term “at-risk” is thrown around a lot. It seems…
SCORE, along with the Ayers Foundation, Niswonger Foundation, Rural School and Community Trust, and Tennessee School Boards Association, kicked off the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit this past Tuesday. 500 attendees, 14 breakout sessions, and 786 tweets using #ruralsummit later, the Summit concluded. As one attendee remarked, “Excellent; great discussion; now it’s time to get…
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This Op-Ed appeared in today’s Tennessean. The recession has hit hard in rural Tennessee. While statewide unemployment hovers at 9.7 percent, in the past year a few of our rural counties have faced jobless rates near 20 percent. Additionally, rural poverty in Tennessee is well above the national median. In today’s global economy, Bell…
The Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit is SCORE’s effort to start solving the problems facing rural schools today. Our aim is to bring together rural educators, administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders for two days of engaging sessions to highlight best practices and influence regional and national policy concerning rural education issues. Take a look…
Here at Hamblen County Schools, community and regional partnerships have been the key to our success. These partnerships have enabled us to do things that we would not be able to accomplish on our own and enhance efforts we already have underway. Even though we have been recognized nationally, most recently in the Washington…
I thought I had left the judgmental eyes and awkwardness of middle school years ago, but I was transported back to this strange world last month for the start of summer school. As I quickly realized, middle school math is the last thing 7th and 8th grade students want to do in the summer….
Since this is my first blog post for SCORE, I wanted to use the opportunity to introduce myself. Born in Chattanooga, I now live just miles from where I grew up. I have two young children, one of whom just finished 5th grade at Normal Park Museum Magnet, a Hamilton County public school, and…
This post is a guest contribution to the SCORE Sheet from Dr. Gina Kunz and Dr. Susan Sheridan as part of our series on rural education leading up to the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit on July 19-20. Despite the fact that more than 25 percent of U.S. schools are rural, much of the existing…
A few months ago I attended a community meeting where the topic of discussion was public education and how community members could support teachers, students and families. The folks around the table shared how the organizations they represented were working to support public education. A professor from an area college spoke about the college’s…
Kids just don’t wake up one morning and decide, “I think I am going to drop out of school today.” Dropping out of high school begins much earlier, before students even enroll in their freshman courses. Much of the focus of drop out prevention in the past has been on making sure high school…
This morning, Governor Haslam and Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman held a press conference to discuss statewide, preliminary results from this year’s TCAP test. The test measures student achievement in math, science, social studies, and reading. While specific data about school and school systems have yet to be released, the message from these initial…
Knoxville News Sentinel’s Humphrey on the Hill has posted that Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam may seek a waiver for the state from meeting federal No Child Left Behind requirements. Governor Haslam acknowledged a “very real possibility” that many Tennessee schools will not meet NCLB requirements in the upcoming school year. It is not yet clear whether Governor Haslam is…
Note: This post is part of a series of posts highlighting the challenges that rural communities face in improving public education. This series precedes SCORE’s Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit on July 19-20. An issue in education reform and in my world of workforce development is the fact that young people do not possess…
I’m sitting at a table in a chair designed for bodies much smaller than mine, going through the motions of giving a diagnostic reading assessment to a boy whose face is still wet from tears of homesickness. I point to a list of ten words and say, “Can you try reading these for me?”…
The July/August issue of The Atlantic magazine featured a fascinating article on German scientist and education analyst Andreas Schleicher (“The World’s Schoolmaster”). Schleicher was a leader in creating the PISA assessment, a survey given every three years to a sample of 15-year-olds in every country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). First…
I have always been interested in salary reform for educators. I was once a very good teacher; creating interesting lessons, differentiating my instruction, and stretching the abilities of my students. I worked long hours, cared about every student, and believed that it was my job to reach the student; not the students’ job to…
In three weeks, education experts, including Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the U.S. Department of Education’s John White, and Rural Trust Executive Director Doris Williams, will be speaking to educators, administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders from throughout Tennessee and as far away as North Dakota at SCORE’s Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit. The…
Welcome to The SCORE Sheet. A blog designed for all those passionate about education reform, The SCORE Sheet will become a central forum to discuss the work that is being done to improve public education in Tennessee and across the nation. It is clear that there is a lot of work to do. In…