Tennessee hires D.C. district chief as first faculty turnaround chief

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Tennessee has appointed a faculty enchancment chief to handle all of its faculty turnaround work underneath a robust new place that may contact city, suburban, and rural districts.

Bren Elliott, who was a Nashville faculty administrator from 2001 to 2007 and has been faculty enchancment chief for District of Columbia Public Colleges since 2017, will start her job as state turnaround superintendent on Tuesday. 

The Tennessee Division of Schooling introduced Elliott’s rent on Thursday, three years after launching its first search to fill the job. The place is taken into account key to jump-starting faculty enchancment work in Tennessee, which has helped pioneer a number of turnaround fashions with restricted success.

She is among the many first main hires for Schooling Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who began her job on July 1 with an early deal with faculty accountability.

Elliott’s expertise in class enchancment “shall be an asset to the state and supply intentional help to those colleges to make sure all college students obtain a high-quality training,” Reynolds stated in an announcement.

Chief amongst Elliott’s new tasks shall be overseeing the Achievement Faculty District, the state’s most aggressive lever for bettering low-performing colleges. The state-run district, which takes over colleges and assigns them largely to constitution operators to handle, has itself struggled, with little to point out to date for its turnaround efforts over the previous decade. 

Elliott additionally shall be liable for supervising interventions for all 95 of the state’s so-called precedence colleges — people who rating academically within the backside 5% — in addition to colleges that want focused help attributable to massive achievement gaps amongst teams of traditionally underserved college students similar to English language learners, college students with disabilities, or these from low-income households.

In all, almost 300 Tennessee colleges fall in these classes.

She will even work carefully with native leaders of district-level turnaround initiatives, from the Innovation Zone in Memphis and Nashville to the Partnership Community in Chattanooga.

“I look ahead to working with our colleges most in want of help and intervention, together with the Achievement Faculty District, to enhance scholar achievement and assist all college students in these colleges succeed,” stated Elliott.

Turnaround efforts are at a crossroads

For a lot of native faculty enchancment leaders, the training division’s naming of a statewide turnaround chief got here as a shock. Beneath Gov. Invoice Lee, the division launched a number of searches to fill the job, even naming three finalists in 2021. However these searches stalled as a result of pandemic, funds points, and uncertainties about what route the state needed to take its turnaround work.

Victoria Robinson, the division’s spokeswoman, stated making the rent was a precedence for Reynolds.

“Dr. Elliott was recognized a number of months in the past as a possible candidate, and since that point has accomplished the interview, hiring and different processes with the state, together with with Commissioner Reynolds and TDOE management,” Robinson stated.

Reynolds has not stated what she has deliberate for the ASD and different turnaround work. State legislation provides the commissioner the authority to determine colleges for state takeover and place them within the ASD.

Beneath Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn, the division unveiled a brand new imaginative and prescient for the ASD that may have had a “smaller footprint” and new takeovers, however not one of the updates materialized. 

The ASD, which launched in 2012, has been largely a disappointment. Beneath constitution administration, its colleges usually carried out no higher than low-performing colleges receiving no intervention. Consequently, Tennessee has not taken management of a neighborhood faculty since taking up 4 in Memphis in 2016.

A lot of the ASD’s colleges are Memphis, with just a few in Nashville, however the district has shrunk by greater than half to simply over a dozen colleges in recent times. Just a few have closed, some have returned to their native districts, and many who have proven probably the most enchancment have moved underneath the oversight of a new state fee for public constitution colleges.

An absence of regular management within the ASD has sophisticated the complicated exit course of for colleges as soon as their constitution contracts expire. The district’s final chief, Lisa Settle, departed in summer season 2022. Since then, different workers with the training division have managed it.

Elliott has Tennessee ties

Elliott, who’s a member of Chiefs for Change, an influential nationwide training management community, is a local of North Carolina and no stranger to Tennessee.

She was a instructor and administrator in Nashville public colleges for 15 years, and spent her final yr on the district as a director centered on precedence colleges. She earned her grasp’s diploma from Tennessee State College.

In 2020, Elliott misplaced a bid to change into director of Metro Nashville Public Colleges to Adrienne Battle, who was the interim chief on the time. This summer season, Elliott was a superintendent finalist for Huntsville Metropolis Colleges in Alabama, which additionally picked its interim chief as an alternative. 

Earlier than becoming a member of the Washington, D.C., faculty district, she spent eight years as an administrator for 2 faculty districts in North Carolina, the place she centered on help companies for college kids in Wake and Guilford counties.

Because the state’s overarching turnaround chief, Elliott additionally will work with native officers who handle district-run turnaround fashions.

Memphis-Shelby County Colleges operates the Innovation Zone with funding help from the state. The so-called iZone provides its colleges autonomy over curricular, monetary, scheduling, and staffing selections, just like constitution colleges.

State officers even have labored carefully with Hamilton County Colleges’ Partnership Community, a mannequin that seeks larger collaboration between the state and the native district.

However the ASD is the state’s most scrutinized turnaround program.

This spring, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson acquired bipartisan help for a invoice that may revamp the state’s turnaround mannequin and halt faculty takeovers altogether.

On Thursday, the Memphis Democrat stated the division wants a faculty turnaround chief, whether or not his laws passes or not subsequent yr. 

“We must be using and placing our efforts and sources behind these practices that really work,” Parkinson stated, “and cease feeding hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into the practices that didn’t work.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Colleges for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Attain Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.