Why is the Achievement School District’s work important?
Anderson: There are about 35,000 students in Tennessee’s priority schools, which are the bottom 5% of the schools in the state. Of these 35,000 students, less than 4% -- fewer than 1,400 -- are on track to college and career readiness. If we do nothing, if we continue to allow these lowest performing schools to remain without a significant intervention … we will have lost a generation of students who otherwise could become fantastic contributors to their neighborhoods, to their city and to their state. I think it is our collective public priority to make sure that we do not lose the potential of the students to low performing schools, and for that reason, having the Achievement School District as a vehicle for turning around these schools and unleashing the potential of these students is critical — not just in their own lives, which is important enough, but for the success of Tennessee as a whole.
Why is this work personally important to you?
Anderson: My grandfather, Kelly Miller Smith, Sr. was a civil rights activist and pastor of First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, which I can see from my office window in the Tennessee Department of Education. He was the founding president of the Nashville NAACP. He spearheaded the lunch counter sit-ins that students led to be able to demand equitable access to services at restaurants downtown. His daughter, my aunt, Joy Kelly Smith was the first black child to integrate her elementary school in the first grade. My mother was an activist in her own school and staged walkouts and protests when she and her classmates weren’t receiving equitable educational opportunities … some teenage white boys sicced a ferocious dog on her when she was in elementary school walking home because of the ruckus my grandfather was causing in the community. That was their way of protesting — siccing a dog on a child.
The investment of sweat, tears and blood that my family has invested in the civil rights movement in this state is something I am very proud of, and it also gives me my North Star.
I’m very clear about why I was put on this earth and the charge that I personally have to continue to fight for equity — to fight for equitable access to the American dream for all the citizens of this state and country.
When I look at the data around how schools are performing and how they are underserving black students and low-income students of all ethnicities, it is both heartbreaking and it is galvanizing for me to refocus on what matters for them.
Why is the situation still so challenging so many decades after your grandfather’s work?
Anderson: Systems of inequity, systems of racism are very difficult to dismantle by the very nature of them being self-propelled systems…We have taken our eye off of the ball and allowed system forces that favor the privileged to propel us forward to where we are today. It takes concerted, collaborative and aggressive action on our part to counteract those forces. It happens because we let it happen. It happened on our watch, so it is our responsibility to set things right and to do so now.
What should parents, students and educators expect to be the same under your leadership of the ASD?
Anderson: I think that both parents and educators can expect that the ASD’s very rigorous expectations for the students and the adults that serve them will remain the same. We expect that students are growing about a year and a half in the span of a year in order to close the preparation gap that exists among our students.
What changes should people expect?
Anderson: We’ve had a very informing relationship with parents … I think the next step of this as we think about the future of these schools and these students’ lives is empowering the decision-making of parents. We need to bring parents and community members to the decision-making table around things like which operator will be matched with a particular school. Starting this year, we’ve asked for input around the ASD’s decisions, and generally followed the recommendations of our parents and community members. It’s not enough to know where the decision-making table is and what decisions are made; we must actually give parents a seat at the table as shapers of their children’s educational lives.
Will this change be visible beyond community meetings?
Anderson: What I envision is stronger front-end communications to educators and parents about the performance of their schools. There should be no surprises. We’re all in this together. I would like to see joint communications with the local district for parents and educators regarding the performance of schools and the opportunities available to improve them, agreeing on a joint school performance framework so there is clarity regarding how schools are performing across districts, having a universal enrollment system so there is transparency in the availability of school information to inform parents’ decision-making about which schools are best suited to their kids’ needs and equity in access to all schools, and then continuing partnership around shared resources. We all have — all the operators in Tennessee — a collective need for a pipeline of high quality educators who are prepared to serve students in priority schools, which is a unique population. Working independently to bring these resources to bear on a collective need is inefficient and ineffective. We could be working more closely together to strengthen the talent pipeline here, to support and celebrate teachers in order to be able to retain our highest quality educators, and then to help them make informed decisions about working in the schools that are best suited to their professional goals and passions.
In the first few years, it was clearly a challenge to achieve the ASD’s mission of catapulting schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25% statewide. Is that goal going to remain in place?
Anderson: The bottom 5% to top 25% goal was intended to be galvanizing, aspirational. It wasn’t originally intended to be the goal upon which the success of the ASD was pinned on. It has gotten a life of its own as we’ve used it as our aspirational tagline over the last several years. Because we are a learning organization that is focused on learning from what we’ve done and achieving very high goals for our students and our schools, we will spend the next several months engaged in deep reflection regarding what the aspirational goals for the future will look like. The core of this organization continues. Our North Star is around creating great school opportunities for students in priority schools.
How would you advise someone starting a similar state turnaround model in another state?
Anderson: I would say, “Go slow together to go far.” One of the charges that we had from the very beginning was to serve as many schools as we could do well as soon as possible. And we did so while building the infrastructure to support them … I would absolutely recommend starting with a strong infrastructure.
