Goals

The Nashville Alliance for Public Education works in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools to identify areas of need and directs private resources to accelerate academic achievement. Most importantly 100 percent of all contributions are disbursed as designated by our donors. Please see a menu of our areas of focus below:

Reading
Reading is the essential and basic skill necessary for all other learning to occur. We know it is important that children read and comprehend at grade level as they move through their education.

Currently we are providing “Books in Backpacks” for children receiving weekend food packs from Second Harvest Food Bank. We are piloting this program beginning in September 2009 in Buena Vista Elementary School and anticipate that we will expand the program to serve all seven schools that are served by the backpack program. This program assists in meeting the goal of creating print rich environments of young children, which is an essential component for successful readers.

Additionally, we seek to advance our high school libraries with new volumes of non-fiction and fiction selections to support the new state standards and subject level curriculums. The oldest collections in the school district are at Overton High School and Hume Fogg High School. Both collections are average aged at 20 years or older. Current library materials are both accepted compliance and important resources to keep our students up to date on the most current information available.

High School Small Learning Communities are in great need of vocational and Career Technical Education resources to support the academic component of the Small Learning Community (SLC). These academic and career academies are located in 17 high schools and are focused in areas that include:

Science and Math
These are the top two targets for improvement nationally—and locally. Also key areas to develop excellence to assure that students are equipped to compete globally for 21st century jobs.

The Alliance has invested $999,824 in new science lab equipment in middle and high schools since 2006. In 2007-08, we began an initiative to place the appropriate number of digital microscopes in all high school programs in Metro Nashville Public Schools. These sets of 15 cost approximately $11,400 each. To date, we provided set in the following schools: Cane Ridge, Hillwood, Hunters Lane, Hume Fog, McGavock and Stratford. We have 19 more to go!!

In 2007-08, we began to place Super Source Math Kits in elementary schools whose needs for these materials were not met through district of federal funding. We have prioritized the need for these materials in some of our most challenging schools. The kits provide manipulative materials that aid in the teaching and student comprehension of counting, adding, subtracting, grouping and other basic math concepts that help to prepare them for the more advanced skills in middle school. We have provided 21 sets with many more to go.

Music and Visual Arts
Music and Visual Arts were among the first priorities since the inception of the Nashville Alliance—this is Music City after all! The school district had been unable to significantly purchase or refurbish instruments since the early 1970’s. This became an immediate need in a city branded for its music and a district of large numbers of students unable to afford their instruments. The music education in Nashville schools continues to grow each year with student participation and new instruments that provide new opportunities to appreciate and perform in a variety of genres. Many thanks to early partnerships with an anonymous donor, the Nashville Symphony, the Curb Family Foundation, Gaylord Entertainment, Mad Booking, Quandra Productions, Inc. and dozens of other donors.

A partnership with the Country Music Association has made this program boom in recent years with their Summer Music Festival proceeds now totaling over $2.2 million. The program has provided over 2,200 instruments in 42 schools.

We are pleased to announce our newest partner, Kyle Bush------- for his sponsorship of two new Gibson guitar labs at Overton and Glencliff High Schools. Together we are all chipping away at this large initiative, which is making such a difference in the quality education provided by our school district. Just this year, 98.7% of students participating in performing arts graduated from high school. That’s impressive! For more information on how music education training influences the learning success of students click here.

Visual Arts needs attention as we seek to assure that our teachers and students have what they need to fulfill the curriculums and standards to meet the requirements of a quality visual arts program. For our high schools to provide programs that are curriculum appropriate, they need a minimum of $20.00 per student per year. Currently, the school district’s average art allocations range from .88 cents to 6.00 per student in these programs. For a direct link to the new art standards for Metro Public Schools, please click here. The Visual Arts Institute was created five years ago to provide professional development on best practices in arts education. Funding disappeared in of the fall of 2008, as we continue to search for funding to make sure the institute moves forward. Only one third of our teachers have been trained thus far. The institute has become nationally known through presentations at both state and national levels on the success that has been created through its excellent training.

For more information on quality visual arts education, click here.

Other Areas
Professional Development became a major focus for the Nashville Alliance for Public Education when we partnered with the school district to renovate the Eakin Elementary School into the new Martin Professional Development Center. The center took the place of an antique barely adequate building that had been used by our teachers for more than 20 years. The new facility, which has been open for one year, provides a state of the art learning environment for both large and small groups of educators training in curriculum best practices, standards reform, and technology staying up to date for maximizing excellent teaching for student achievement.

The Nashville Alliance for Public Education in partnership with the Healthways Foundation provided a grant for distance learning as another means of training teachers on content, skill-based practices and the opportunity for peer mentoring via the internet. This has been an exciting addition to teacher professional development with limitless potential to yet be developed.

The investment of private resources positions the Nashville Alliance for Public Education to have a large interest in quality teaching for the long term benefit of pupil success. Watch for our new initiative to be announced soon!

Debate Program Development has also been an original interest for the Nashville Alliance for Public Education. Through the generosity of several donors, we established an endowment account to support competition and travel fees for high school debate students to have the opportunity to leverage this training for college scholarships. For the last two years, the Antioch Debate Team has graduated every senior with a scholarship in hand. Impressive!

Donors desiring to support a specific class or program at an individual school may fund Schools and School Programs privately. Or simply support areas of greatest need per the principal’s discretion.