Strategies for student success
I had two interesting meetings last week with folks who are determined to make a positive impact on students who attend failing schools.
One group is doing so at ground zero. The other is providing valuable datadriven assistance to Shelby County Schools Supt. Dorsey Hopson in his effort to make sure all SCS students are succeeding academically.
Tuesday, I met with proud Hamilton High School alumni Juanita Truitt, class of 1953, and Mabra Holeyfield, who graduated in 1961. Both have had successful careers.
Truitt taught Spanish for 35 years in the legacy Memphis City Schools system. In 1969, she was one of eight African-American teachers who were transferred to White Station High as the result of a court order to diversify the teaching staff. At the time, she said, there was only one African-American teacher at White Station, and she taught home economics.
Holeyfield describes himself as a “serial” entrepreneur — a successful one, I can add — who is probably best known as a hotelier.
The South Memphis school has a rich history of graduating leaders in politics, education, business, law enforcement and criminal justice, the clergy and sports. But like so many inner-city schools, it has fallen on hard academic times. It was moved into the Innovation Zone, SCS’ treatment for schools performing in the bottom 5 percent.
That did not sit well with Truitt, Holeyfield and other alumni, so, at Holeyfield’s urging, they decided to do something about it. They started the Hamilton High School Alumni Association Tutorial Program.
Holeyfield said the program is patterned after millionaire commodities trader and social innovator Charles McVean’s Peer Power, the after-school tutoring program he set up and funded at East High School in 2005. Two years later, he added money for Whitehaven High School.
Peer Power has expanded, in collaboration with SCS and the University of Memphis, into the recently announced “Memphis Model,” which will provide high schools with 1,000 hours of paid tutoring a week. Tutors initially will be paid $11 an hour, with raises up to $12.50.
Students’ test results showed that Peer Power worked. Holeyfield and his fellow alumni are confident it will work at Hamilton.
The tutors, who will be Hamilton seniors, will be paid $7.50 an hour for 10 hours of tutoring a week. Holeyfield said if 100 or so alumni association members could donate $12.50 a month, that would cover the cost of five tutors, trained by school staff, next school year. He wants to raise enough money to boost that number to 10 tutors.
“We all understand what kind of home background some our kids are growing up in. We can’t change that ... I think it’s time for us (alumni) to step up (to get involved in the school),” he said.
Wednesday, some board members for the PeopleFirst Partnership visited The Commercial Appeal’s editorial board to talk about the Seeding Success initiative. The group included Barbara Prescott, who is executive director of PeopleFirst, a Memphis Fast Forward Initiative that is a broad collaboration of top leadership focused on building a competitive workforce by strengthening education from early childhood through career, and promoting strategies to recruit and retain talent.
The other visitors were Mark Sturgis, executive director of Seeding Success, a local partner of the national Strive Together network that has a goal of using data to support collaborative education strategies to support the success of every child; Blair Taylor, president of Memphis Tomorrow, an association of CEOs of Memphis’ largest businesses; John Daniel, executive vice president and chief human resources officer for First Horizon National Corp.; Nancy Coffee, president and CEO of New Memphis Institute; and SCS’ Hopson.
The group talked about a lot of things that impact student achievement and successful adulthood, but stressed the overall agenda of their collaboration is to give children positive outcomes from cradle to career.
The group talked about quality pre-K education, reducing by half the number of chronic truants enrolled in SCS schools from more than 22,500. They talked about the 44,000 SCS students who have chronic health issues, half of whom suffer with asthma.
They talked about increasing the numbers of students who have a postsecondary degree or technology certificate and how to retain that talent in Memphis after they graduate.
More important, they talked about using datadriven information to develop effective strategies that are flexible enough to address specific needs for students and their families. That is an important shift from the one-sizefits-all culture that has permeated these kinds of programs for far too long.
For me, it was refreshing to listen to people talking about making a difference in children’s academic lives at ground zero.